Home School Marine Biology: Secular Science for Teens

ByJenni

So your teenager is curious about the ocean? Fantastic! There are lots of great resources for building a home school marine biology curriculum for teens. Personally, I love the 7 principles of ocean literacy but without a background in marine science they can be a bit incomprehensible. To help I’ve pulled together some resources which should help.

I thought I’d break this down into 3 sections

  1. Home Schooling Resources
  2. iGCSE and AS and A Level Resources
  3. Assembling course materials

Please note that these resources are above the age range for which I currently write, so I haven’t bought these resources myself – I’m going on the recommendations and reviews of others. If there are any issues with any of these resources, or if I’ve missed something, then please let me know!

Marine Biology: Home Schooling

A few years ago Jennifer, ‘the organized homeschooler’, put together a marine biology curriculum for her children. They use secular science resources and she’s explained in detail her experience using these resources – check out her full blog post here.

Jennifer recommends Amy Hill’s Marine Biology: An Introduction to Ocean Ecosystems (but she doesn’t recommend Amy Hill’s teacher’s guide or lab manual). She also recommends the Marine Biology Colouring Book, She has a breakdown of chapters, field trips, and activity ideas so I won’t go into too much more detail here.

iGCSE and A-Level Marine Science

If you’d like a more formalised approach to your home school marine biology – Cambridge International now has iGCSE, and AS and A Level, courses for Marine Science, they usually have a course textbook, a workbook and a teacher’s book for their courses

Despite being for older kids and teens, the courses are roughly broken down in a similar way to my workbooks: Oceanography, Marine Biology and Human Interactions (which I refer to ‘oceans and us’ and ‘people and the oceans’).

I’ve read through the syllabus breakdown for both courses, and there are similarities between these courses and current common core curriculums such as; plate tectonics, weathering and erosion (geography) or cell biology and the animal kingdom (biology). So, I would recommend that for additional resources in units 1 and 2 (both iGCSE and AS and A Level) look for geography curriculum resources and for units 3-5 iGCSE and units 3-7 AS and A Level look for biology curriculum resources.

iGCSE syllabus is

  • The Earth and its oceans
  • Marine Organisms
  • Sea Water
  • Nutrients and Energy
  • Marine Ecology
  • Human Influences on the marine environment

And AS and A Level syllabus is

  • Water
  • Earth Processes
  • Interactions in marine ecosystems
  • Classifications and Biodiversity
  • Examples of Marine Ecosystems
  • Physiology of marine organisms
  • Energy
  • Fisheries for the Future
  • Human Impacts on Marine Ecosystems

But where you’ll find differences between these courses and core curriculum materials are iGCSE 6. Human influences on the marine environment and AS and A Level 8. Fisheries for the future and 9. Human Impacts on marine ecosystems. There won’t be many materials out there targeting younger readers 

For some video links and reading about how we use oceans check out

For a fisheries gear guide 

For sustainable fishing

Assembling Course Materials

The iGCSE and AS and A Level courses should provide what you need, but if you’re finding there are some gaps and you feel as if you would like some extra materials, or ocean-specific examples rather than more general geography or biology examples, then I have some suggestions…

For something interactive, I would recommend the Nat Geo Resource Library and selecting examples such as their introduction to MPAs

For older kids and teens, I would highly recommend FutureLearn courses. Some teach wider topics than just oceans but have individual modules which are relevant such as this one from York University, – you could pick out the relevant modules. There are a lot of options for oceans on FutureLearn, you might want to explore the courses.

For younger kids, the Marine Conservation Society has teaching resources and lessons which cover some of the issues raised in iGCSE units 6, though these might be a little light for older kids and teens they do introduce aquaculture, fisheries and MPAs.

For all ages, Andrew Cain’s book series (ages 12-18) has been popular for quite some time. There are 3 books in the series; Incredible Oceans, Marine Ecology and Marine Biology for the non-biologist.

For a bit of fun, there’s Juila Rothman’s Ocean Anatomy

Good Luck with your learning!

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