The Natural Water Cycle and Topography
Part 1

How land and water interact with the natural water cycle is a key idea to understanding the definition of a watershed

Driving Question

• How does water move through our neighborhood?

Guiding Question

• What evidence of the natural water cycle can you see in our schoolyard?

Students will find evidence of the relationship of water to gravity and topography in their own schoolyard.  This will help them better understand the definition of a watershed by first defining it where they go to school as part of the bigger context, something they will explore in the next lesson

Teacher’s choice: 

Enrich this lesson with this activity  Make a water cycle model in a bottle as described below.  

To create your model:

1. Find a clean, clear plastic bottle and fill it with about 1/2 inch to a 1/3 of the way up with water.

Optional: add a few drops of blue food coloring to the water to more closely represent a body of water like a river, ocean, or lake.

2. Seal the bottle. Screw the cap on tightly to create a sealed environment.

3. Place the bottle. Put the sealed bottle in a warm, sunny location, such as a windowsill to see changes over time. .

4. Observe: Have students check the bottle often and document observations of the different stages of the water cycle using the stages of the water cycle vocabulary words.

 You can set it up many days before this lesson, as follow up to  the lesson or all year long (through many seasonal changes!) 

Engage

Use the student slide deck to facilitate a review of the natural water cycle.

Slides 3 and 4: Watch one of the Water Cycle videos to review the process, or use one of the diagrams.

You may want to review components on Slide 5 before viewing the videos and then return to Slide 5 after viewing.

Slide 5: Review the natural water cycle components vocabulary. Prompt students to give you examples of what evidence is seen for each of the components.

• Condensation: Water droplets on a cold glass
• Evaporation: A shrinking or disappearing puddle
• Infiltration: When the earth acts like a sponge
• Percolation: If you pour water on soil and it soaks in, this may be happening in the soil, but not something that is actually observable
• Precipitation: Rain
• Stormwater Runoff: water running over the pavement, grass or soil into the street or down drains
• Transpiration is like evaporation but from living plants or trees. It is hard to observe because we can’t always see vapor in the air

Show the class  a google map of the school property to the sidewalk to include the building and schoolyard

Orient them to the map view of their school.  Before going outside, students can have you annotate or mark the map based on what they might see on their walk  as a prediction .  (After their walk they will compare with what they actually saw on their walk)

Ask students what stages of the water cycle they might see outside? Where might they find evidence? Will they actually see evidence of each of all the stages or what is “left behind?”

Explore

Take students for a walk outside –Prepare a note-taking tool of your choice for them to use once outside.  This can be done in their notebooks, a two-column checklist, or whatever works well for them to be able to take notes outside and discuss and review back in the classroom after the outdoor portion.

If possible take your walk just after a rainstorm but if it has not rained recently, take some water with you to pour on various surfaces and a tennis ball to demonstrate slope (that water wants to run downhill) . Examine what happens to the water and have a discussion about how water travels from a high spot to a low spot (there may even be a drain in your schoolyard) .

A tennis ball is a great way to show students how gravity  is at work in their schoolyard. Allowing the tennis ball to roll models how water moves through the schoolyard

Look for evidence of precipitation (rain) and condensation (clouds). Can they see evidence of infiltration (damp soil?) and ask students to mark their maps with their observed evidence.

Have students write down their observations using the vocabulary of the phases of the water cycle to make the connection to the real world.

Explain  

Back in the classroom, review the four main components of the water cycle (condensation, precipitation, evaporation and runoff) As students describe what they observed, have them identify the stage of the water cycle their observation suggests. Review the related vocabulary as they complete their diagrams.

Create a legend of symbols with the students to use when showing where on the map evidence was found. Mark the schoolyard map to compile the data collected by the students.

Elaborate

Here are some prompts to help guide the group discussion and connect back to the stages of the water cycle.

• What did you predict? What did you observe? How were your observations different from your predictions?
• Did you look up? Were there clouds in the sky as evidence of “condensation”?
• Did you see any storm drains? Was any litter collected around it? Why?

Did you observe any trees, plants, soil? (This would be considered pervious surfaces in that water can “infiltrate”

Did you observe anything in the Parking lot ? Play equipment? (If these are impervious surfaces, water will “runoff”

Compare and discuss  how this is similar or different to natural landforms

 

 

Extension

Discuss if there are any days that they experience a problem with water drainage in their schoolyard?

Talk to the building engineer to find out about problem areas on the schoolyard for flooding to start to get a sense of the impact?