Why We Shouldn't Waste Water - FREEBIES

We have been working on a unit our unit for Common Core Standard RI.3.3 - Describe the relationship between a series of historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, or steps in technical procedures in a text, using language that pertains to time, sequence, and cause/effect.
We had previously compared the amount of water and land on the Earth.

Today we learned why we shouldn't waste water even though there is so much of it on the Earth.

I started by asking the kiddos to name all of the ways that they used water.  I had them come up to the SmartBoard to write their answers (for some reason writing on the SmartBoard has been a great motivator).

Here were some of their ideas (please forgive their misspelling - I wanted to get through this part without correcting them).

Then I had them look at the inflatable globe to remind me how much of the Earth was covered with water.  I asked them, "If there is so much water on the Earth, why do we always talk about saving water?" I used the inflatable globe as a discussion monitor.  They couldn't talk unless they were holding the globe which I threw to them if they raised their hand.

After we discussed their ideas (which included because water costs so much - in our town it does), I asked them to make a prediction about how much water on the Earth is drinkable. 

They wrote their predictions on index cards.





Then we talked about how much it really was.  They were surprised to see that we really have a small amount - just a drop really!

 Then I had them write a paragraph comparing their original prediction to the results from our model.

 I will be putting this unit together in a complete unit, but, for now, here is the lesson plan from today including how to model the amount of water on the Earth. 



Here is the lesson plan for this activity.