Learning About The Water Cycle

When asked the question where does rain come from the only answer my students could give me was that it came from God or "I don't know", with a shrug of their shoulders.

Their amazement during our first activity of simply painting water pictures on the concrete and watching the water evaporate showed that this was a new experience and something they hadn't thought of. Because previous to the experiment we had talked about the sun heating up water and evaporating it, this language transferred easily. 

"Look the water is evaporating...it's going up to the clouds!"

Such simple everyday phenomena brought such amazement and when given the words my students could put these words to an experience that although they had witnessed many times before had never contemplated or understood. 

The second activity we learned about condensation by making a water cycle in a bag. Here the students could see the condensation on the side of the bag as the water heated up and then turned to water vapour and then cooled. We made lots of connections to steam around their house and why the mirror was wet after a shower. We gifted and gifted and gifted more vocabulary!

The third activity was creating a cloud in a jar to show what happens when clouds become heavy with water droplets. This was incredibly exciting and a great way for the students to see what happens. Explaining what words mean is a norm within our classroom therefore if the students didn't know what a word I used meant they would ask. I would take my time to explain the word sometimes using pictures, diagrams as I talked or role play.

The last activity was creating a water filter to understand what happens to water as it runs off the land into our streams and lakes. They were then able to make connections to our drinking water and water conservation that we had touched on earlier on in the year. 

The discussions and writing that resulted from this topic were incredible. All students understood the basics of the water cycle and concepts of evaporation, condensation and precipitation. They loved using the terms and extremely easily explained how their water filters worked.

To collect comparative data I compared an EASTTle writing sample recounting doing one of the experiments to writing about something they did in the weekend. Nearly all the students in my class wrote better quality recounts about doing the experiments than their weekend experiences (bearing in mind it was Halloween). In particular, the organisation of their writing and ideas noticeably improved. I feel this is because they had a lot to say and their ideas flowed naturally in a clear sequence. 

Earlier in the year many of my students struggled to put anything onto paper so this change is huge.

I also believe that these concepts and experiences are now able to be built on throughout their schooling. When my students come across content related to water they will be able to draw on these experiences and have the foundational knowledge that can be built upon. We may not see the benefits of building oral language now but I believe that results will be seen further in their schooling.

Evidence of Student Achievement

In the water cycle, the sun heats the water to do evaporation. It goes up to the cloud to be condensation and if the cloud gets too much water it's going to rain. That's called precipitation. 

By Elijah

The Unit Plan