Water, Water Everywhere (Water, the water cycle, water pollution)

Water, Water Everywhere (Water, the water cycle, water pollution)

1. Title: Water, Water Everywhere (Water, the water cycle, water pollution)

1. Objective: Students will be able to describe the water cycle and identify different types of water pollution.

1. Materials:

1. For ice-breaker: Flip chart paper, an assortment of colored markers, tape.

2. For Wild Water Tales: handout with the text

3. For Water Cycle: Instruction cards (text and cards follow lesson plan), cards with the words/pictures of ocean, river, tree, glacier, mountain, cloud

4. For Water Cycle Puzzle: handouts with the picture of water cycle, dictionary, sticky pieces of paper with the following words on them: evaporation, transpiration, precipitation, run off, groundwater.

1. Procedure:

1. Preparation (before the lesson):

• Set up 6 chairs in the different spots in the classroom - stations;

• Tape the cards with words/pictures of ocean, river, mountain, tree, glacier, ground water on them

• Put 4-5 instruction cards on each of the chairs.

1. Ice breaker: Water Poem

• Divide all the participants into 2 teams equal in number;

• Give each team a piece of wallpaper with the word WATER written vertically on it ;

• Ask the participants to work as a team and make an acrostics using different words describing water or expressing any feelings we have for water, for example:

Wet

Active

Terrific

Energy

• Let one person from each group present the poster and explain how the words they chose relate to water

1. Wild Water Tales!

• Do a brief intro to the topic, as the rest of the course will follow a pattern of dealing with environmental water systems.

• Have the students read the text and discuss vocabulary words within the lesson (text follows lesson plan)

• Lead a discussion about the role of water in our everyday life. Following are some questions to stimulate discussion:

• If every living thing needs so much water, how come water isn’t used up?

• Where does all the water go when a puddle dries up? (think high in the sky)

• Why don’t lakes and oceans dry up like puddles do?

• Where does all the rain come from?

• What are some ways that people change the way water moves?

1. The Water Cycle:

• Have the students come up to different stations, 2 students to each station. At each station (a chair with a card taped on it), there will be 5 instruction cards with phrases indicating where each student should travel in the water cycle. For example, “You have precipitated as rain from a cloud to the ocean, go to the ocean.” The key here is to have one phrase at each station indicating where to go by using the vocabulary from the text.

• Ask the students to go take one card each from the station where they are now. Let them read the instruction on the card and move where the card points.

• Each student should record the path they took as a water molecule in their copybook.

• Let them make a circle (it will take 10-15 minutes).

• Ask each participant to briefly talk about their travel.

• Follow up the activity with a discussion. Ask them how they FELT being a molecule and being a part of the water cycle. Ask the participants to identify the points of pollution within their own water cycles: the places where pollution might occur, for example, a factory near the river.

1. Water Cycle Puzzle:

• Divide all the participants into teams of 2-3. Give each group a handout with a picture of the water cycle and a set of sticky pieces.

• Ask the students to work as a team and put the sticker with the right word in the place on the picture where this process takes place (for ex, put the word precipitation on the picture of rain)

• Go through the water cycle again. Review the material. Be sure the students have learned all the new words so they will be able to repeat them during the next class.

Instruction cards:

TREE

1. You have fallen as a leaf from a tree and became part of the soil. Move to ground water.

2. You have been absorbed by plant roots and are part of the tree now. Stay there.

3. You have just condensed on a leaf and fell to the ground and evaporated. Go to a cloud.

GROUND WATER

1. You have just been moved as ground water to the ocean. Go to the ocean.

2. You have just moved to an underground river. Move to a river.

3. You have just been sucked up by the tree roots. Go to a tree.

4. You have been pulled from the ground by a well and used to water plants. Stay here.

5. You have evaporated from the ground into a cloud. Go to a cloud.

CLOUD

1. You are frozen in a cloud. Stay there.

2. You precipitated out of a cloud as rain into an ocean. Go to ocean.

3. You have just fallen as rain in a river. Go there.

4. You have just precipitated as fog and have been absorbed by tree leaves. Go to tree.

5. You have just fallen as snow on a mountain. Go to mountain.

OCEAN

1. You have just been absorbed by the ground water. Move to ground water.

2. You are forever floating through the ocean. Stay there.

3. You have just been made part of seaweed and have been transported to a cloud. Go to a cloud.

4. You have just evaporated from the ocean and are now part of a cloud. Stay there.

RIVER

1. You have just fallen from a waterfall and evaporated during the fall to a cloud. Go to a cloud.

2. You have just evaporated while moving downstream. Go to a cloud.

3. The ground water has just absorbed you. Go to ground water.

4. A plant has just absorbed you as you are moving downstream. Go to tree.

5. You have just moved to an ocean. Go to ocean.

MOUNTAIN

1. You have just melted from a mountain and moved to a river. Go to the river.

2. You have just been frozen to a mountain in a glacier. Go to the glacier.

3. You have just fallen as rain on a mountain and gone to a river.

4. A glacier on mountain has just melted and you will travel into the ground water.

Text: Wild Water Tales!

What is that wet stuff, we call water? Water is one of the most spectacular things in the world. Without it, the earth would be a rather dry and boring place to live. It’s what makes our wetlands wet and our rainforests rain. Can you imagine living one day without any water? I think that it would be almost impossible to not use water in some way. Let’s think of all the ways we use water! Almost everything we do uses water in some way, if we are brushing our teeth or driving our car. Without water we wouldn’t get very far. Did you know that water covers 71% of the earth’s surface, wow, that’s a lot of water but wait a minute can we drink all that water? In reality we can only use .52% of the earth’s water. Now that isn’t very much water at all is it? Did you know that our body weight is 75% water. So as you can see water is a rather important chemical to have on earth.

So where does all this water come from that we use every day of our lives? Water is constantly moving in a great big circle, from the oceans to the clouds, to the rivers and the ground. There are actually many different processes involved with moving water from one place to another. Can you think of a special path that water takes from the beginning to its’ end?

Lets look at some of these special water paths. When it begins to rain we can call this precipitation, (rain falling from the clouds). At this point it can move to one of two places, a river (surface water) or into the ground (ground water). If water doesn’t go to either of these two places it can evaporate and go to a cloud or a nice big tree might take (absorb) the water for its’ roots. When a tree is finished with water it sends (transpiration) it back to the clouds for it to become rain again (condensation).