Topic: The Water Cycle

Teacher:
Unit: How the World Works: Weather
Grade Level: 1
Class Size: 20 students

This 5E Learning Cycle will be completed over the course of one week in which
the students will have 6 class periods of Science. Lesson #1 - Engage and
Explore (2 class periods). Lesson #2 Exploration #2 and Explanation (2 class
periods). Lesson #3 Extension and Evaluation (2 class periods).

Descriptive Objective
Students will be able to identify stages of the water cycle and be able to
explain the terms evaporation, condensation and precipitation.

Student Outcomes
- Skills: Students will be able to identify the stages of the water cycle,
and the part that each stage plays in the cycle. Students will learn the
vocabulary: evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and water cycle.
- Knowledge: Students will extend their knowledge of the concept of
systems. They will observe that different types of cycles and systems
exist in nature. Students will also develop an understanding of the
cyclical nature of water they use in their everyday lives and gain a
deeper understanding of weather.

Prior Knowledge
Students were introduced to cycles in an earlier unit on Life Cycles and
already have the understanding that a cycle is a set of events or actions that take
place in a certain order and repeats itself again and again.

Misconception Information
- When water gets used, it is gone forever.
- Rain comes from clouds. (no connection to water cycle)
- Puddles dry up because of heat. (no connection to water cycle)
- Water on the outside of a glass filled with an icy drink comes from the
ice on the inside.

Classroom Safety
Since we will be working with electrical hot plates, students will be taught
about the dangers involved and the necessary safety precautions.

Materials
- Pencils
- Sticky notepad
- Water
- 2 glass beakers
- 1 electric hotplate
- 1 plastic cup
- Ice cubes
 - Poster board (4 sheets)
- Markers or colored pencils
- Magic School Bus Video
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyaBs-zi00E)
(Appendix A)
- Hot Plate Experiment Worksheet (Appendix B)
- Icy Cold Experiment Worksheet (Appendix C)
- Water. Up, Down, and All Around Book by Natalie Rosinsky
(Appendix D)
- Water Cycle Song
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWb4KlM2vts)
(Appendix E)
- Water Cycle Experiment Worksheet (Appendix F)
- Water Cycle Presentation Rubric (Appendix G)

Engage
Students will be seated on the carpet and the teacher will begin by
showing a short clip from a video entitled The Magic School Bus Wet All Over
(Appendix A). The teacher will only show the first few minutes of the video
(stopping 5 minutes into it) just to get the students to start thinking about water
and where it comes from. Each student will be given a sticky note and a pencil.
The teacher will then ask the students to take a moment and think about water,
where it comes from, and what happens to it. The teacher will then draw a big
cloud on a sheet of chart paper, stick it on the wall and tell the students to write
down on their sticky note paper what they wonder about water. Once the
students have written their question they will come up to the board and stick the
sticky note on the cloud. The teacher will then read everyones notes about what
they wonder, and share all the different responses with the whole class.

Possible student responses:

I wonder where water comes from?
How does water fall from the sky?
I wonder what happens to the water after it rains?

The class will then discuss the different student responses and students may
share their ideas on what other students wonder about water or discuss what
they wonder with their peers.

Explore
Now that the students are very curious about where water comes from
and what happens to water, the teacher will tell the students that they are going
to do an experiment with water and a hotplate to learn more about water. The
teacher explains that they are all going to be scientists today and will be given a
special paper to record their observations and predictions about what happens
to the water. The teacher will then have the students sit at their seat and will
distribute a worksheet where the students can record their observations and
predictions. The teacher explains that we will be using something called a
hotplate and that it is extremely hot and can burn you and no one is allowed to
touch anything, that we are only using our eyes to observe, not our hands. The
teacher then fills a glass beaker half way with water and places it on the hot
plate. Before turning on the hot plate, the students are called to have a close look
at the beaker on the hot plate in groups of four. After each group has had a look
they return to their seats and record on their worksheets (Appendix B) using
drawing a picture and a short sentence, What do you observe in the pot that is on
the hotplate? What do you think is going to happen when we turn on the hot
plate?
After the water has been heated for a few minutes and is boiling, the five groups
will be called back up to the hot place to make a second observation, What do
you observe happening to the water in the beaker?
After the water has boiled for some time, and some of it has evaporated the
teacher will then turn the hot plate off and call the five groups up on at a time to
make another observation and record it. What did you observe happened at the
end of the experiment?

Possible student responses on worksheets:

- It bubbles.
- It evaporates.
- It goes up into the air.
- There is steam.
- It disappears.

Explore #2

The teacher will tell students that we are going to do another experiment using
ice to find out more about water! Similarly to the hot plate experiment the
teacher will hand out student worksheets (Appendix C) and call students up in
groups of four to make observations and record them on their worksheets, using
a drawing and a short sentence. The teacher will put some ice in a clear plastic
cup and call students to observe at the beginning, what they see on the outside of
the cup and what they feel on the outside of the cup. The students will then
predict what they think will happen on the outside of the cup and what they
think they will feel on the outside of the cup. Lastly, after 5 minutes the students
will record what they see and feel on the outside of the cup.

Possible student responses:

- The outside of the cup feels cold.

- I predict that the outside of the cup will get wet.
- Water came from the inside cup to the outside of the cup.

Explain

After we have completed the two experiments demonstrating evaporation and

condensation, the teacher will have the students sit on the carpet and will play
the rest of the Magic School Bus video (Appendix A) that was used to engage the
students at the start of the lesson. In this video the students will be exposed to
the vocabulary: evaporation, condensation, precipitation, water vapor and water
cycle.
After playing the video the class will have a discussion about what happened in
the video. What did you see happening to the water in this video?

Possible responses:

- The water evaporated

- The water drops went up and turned into clouds
- The water falls as rain

After discussing what we think evaporation, condensation and precipitation is,

the teacher will write the students definitions on the board.
The teacher will then read a book to the students entitled Water. Up, Down, and
All Around (Appendix D)
Next the students will watch the Water Cycle Song video (Appendix E), in order
to make further connections about the entire water cycle and hear the
vocabulary being used again. Students will be encouraged to dance, sing and
have fun watching this song.

Extend

In this lesson, students will observe the Water Cycle Experiment. This
experiment is done by using two beakers (one on top of the other) on a hot plate.
The beaker below has water in it, and the beaker on top has ice in it. When the
water in the bottom beaker boils, the water vapor will rise and cool on the cold
surface of the underneath of the beaker placed on top. The water will condense
and the drops of water will begin to fall. Students will get to see the entire water
cycle in action inside of the beaker. Students will observe what is happening in
the beaker and write about it on their worksheet (Appendix F). The purpose of
this experiment is to have students understand how the two previous
experiments they did come together and for them to make a connection between
what they have learnt about the water cycle during the Explain part of the
lesson, and what is taking place inside the beaker in this experiment.
After completing the experiment and recording their observations, students will
be put in five groups of four and will be given a sheet of poster board, pencils and
markers/colored pencils. Each group will create a poster of the water cycle.
Posters should show the water cycle depicted with arrows, showing the correct
order of the cycle and labeling the stages evaporation, condensation and
precipitation appropriately. Posters may also include a short description in their
own words of what happens at each stage, however students may choose to
share this verbally instead. Each group will present their water cycle poster to
the class. This poster will be graded using the Water Cycle Presentation Rubric
(Appendix G)
Closure
The students will present their posters on the water cycle to the class and
the teacher will revisit the sticky notes that the students had written and ask
everyone if they have found out about what they had wondered about water at
the start of the lesson.

Student Evaluation
The students will be assessed using the 3 worksheets completed during
the course of the explorations (formative) and the poster created by the groups
at the end of the last lesson (summative). These assessments will show the
teacher whether the students made the connections between the first two
experiments, the third experiment and the actual water cycle. The water cycle
poster will show the teacher whether the students are able to correctly identify
the stages of the water cycle and explain evaporation, condensation and
precipitation in their own terms.

Professional Growth
Throughout this lesson I would like to continue to strive to improve my
inquiry approach and also to allow students have fun at every stage of the lesson.
I would like to encourage excitement and peer conversations, while maintaining
a safe classroom environment with a reasonable noise level that will not disturb
the other classes. I hope to be able to convey to my students the fascination I
have with the natural world and help them to gain an appreciation for nature
and science.
APPENDICIES:

Appendix A: Magic School Bus Video Wet All Over

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyaBs-zi00E)
Appendix B: Hot Plate Experiment Worksheet
Appendix C: Icy Cold Experiment Worksheet
Appendix D: Water. Up, Down, and All Around written by Natalie M Rosinsky &
illustrated by Matthew John
Appendix E: Water Cycle Song Video
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWb4KlM2vts)
Appendix F: Water Cycle Experiment Worksheet
Appendix G: Water Cycle Presentation Rubric