Big Idea
Water is essential to our lives and all life on Earth — so it is important to take care of our water resources and we have an important role to play.
Summary
Once students start thinking of all the ways they enjoy water, but also depend on it, they will be glad to learn that they can play a role in taking care of it.
Engage
The slide deck will guide students through a discussion about the importance of water.
Explore and Explain
As part of the previous learning experience, students may have created posters showing how they use water everyday. If this activity was completed, students may share their ideas from their posters to start this activity. If students did not complete posters about how they use water, have students brainstorm a list that can be sorted.
As a class, students will sort and group like images together and label them by category. One bulletin board page per category. See below for some examples of the list of categories that could emerge
grows food, shower, bath, fishing, generate power for electricity
Ask the following question to your students:
Is there anything you want to add? If time, add it as a poster or just a label
Now comes the challenge
What would happen if we had to take away one of these categories because of pollution or drought?
Ask students to choose one category to eliminate and describe what their lives would be like without it. (as a class and vote) The goal here is to have the students consider what happens if there wasn’t enough water to meet the needs of one of the categories of use. For example, if one of the categories is recreation, what would happen if we took away all of the activities we engage in under the category of recreation (closed pools, no water parks, no sprinklers, etc).
Final activity: How could they bring it back? What could they do? Behavior they could change? They may have started to address this on the previous day. Their posters may have included strategies to use water more sustainably. If they did, this is an opportunity to develop those ideas more fully, using the language of renewable and nonrenewable.
Teacher Support
Who depends on water?
Students will be able to:
Recognize ways that humans benefit from the use of water resources (e.g., agriculture, energy, recreation).
Fresh Water (noun)
naturally occurring water that is not salty, and is suitable for consumption if clean or processed.
Salt Water (noun)
water of or found in seas and oceans, containing salt
Adapt (verb)
make (something) suitable for a new use or purpose; modify
Ecosystem (noun)
a geographic area where plants, animals, and other organisms, as well as weather and landscapes, work together to form a living community
Food Web (noun)
the natural interconnection of food chains of all living creatures within an ecosystem
Impact (verb)
have a strong effect on someone or something
Student will produce a poster that demonstrates their understanding of the many ways people, animals, and our entire ecosystem benefit from water.
PA STEELS Standards
Environmental Literacy and Sustainability