-Water

Steps

  • HAND OUT – Hand out student booklets
  • WATCH – Cue up the video below and watch it with the class
  • THINK – Give students time to reflect and complete their booklet
  • SHARE – Have students share their ideas with the class or work in their groups
  • CONSIDER – Go deeper by adding an activity from the extension buffet below
  • COLLECT – Collect workbooks till the next session
  • FEEDBACK -Record your feedback below

 
 

Extension Buffet

  • DISCUSS – Ask students what they love about water. Do they have a special place near water that they like to visit? The sound of running water can bring us peace and comfort and many cultures have strong connections to water. Water is life.
  • GO OUTDOORS – Take your students outside for a water walk around your schoolyard or community and have students identify where they see water and think it might be. Water is found almost everywhere. It is in the plants/trees, the soil, groundwater, clouds, rivers/creeks/streams, lakes, animals, ocean, glaciers/ice caps. After students have explored their local area and come up with at least 3 examples, have them gather into a circle and share 1 of their findings. If you have a globe or earth ball, this is a great way to reinforce the point that water covers most of the planet and makes a great talking “stick”.
  • WATCH – Book reading of Water Walker‘s book, The Importance of Water, and closing Water Reflection (8:16)
  • LOCAL EXPERTS – Invite your communities water manager or a local watershed group, or local First Nations elder to speak about water
  • FIELD TRIP – Take a walk to a local wetland
  • WATER AROUND THE WORLD – Explore how people access water around the world 
  • DAY IN THE LIFE – What if you didn’t have a water system to support you and you needed to haul, clean and remove all the water yourself? What would a day in their life look like?
  • WATCH – meet clean water activist Autumn Peltier (3:23)
  • CLIMATE – Climate specific content *coming soon*
  • ECOCHALLENGE – Challenge students to reduce the length of their showers with the Short Shower EcoChallenge 
  • QUICK SKIT – Have students create a quick skit (like charades with no talking) to share how they use water. Have them do their skit with the class and see if they can guess. We recommend no props and no talking.
  • WATCH – A kid’s crash course on the Basics of Freshwater (4:16)

8 responses to “-Water”

  1. The students are getting tired of the video introduction, and were prefer if the videos were different instead of repeating the same introduction. My class struggled to understand the importance of conserving water because we have so much fresh water. It was difficult for them to come up with ideas to conserve and protect water.

  2. Stopped the intro video a few times for questions and discussion. Had an extended discussion about water treatment plants.
    Great discussions on the pictures of how people access water around the world. Made many students aware that some countries don’t get their water from the tap in the kitchen.

    With the extensions provided and activities and discussions, the lessons are taking longer than I expect…..and sometimes happen over a couple of days.

  3. Explaining the process of attaining clean drinking water was an area that many students did not fully comprehend, making this lesson extremely valuable. I like how the First Nations perspective (Water Walking book) is a great touch to help explain our reliance on the land and the importance of taking care of our water systems. The Water Around the World article was great showing that clean water is still a major issue in the world. Some of the students also recognized that many of the people who were getting water were women and it created an interesting discussion. I know that our high school students get the opportunity to tour our water treatment plant and our sewage plant, so this is a great introduction to get the conversation started. The short Shower Challenge also raised an important fact about how much water we are actually using. Great activity.

    I would like to see more articles/videos about practical things students can do right now to reduce our waste of clean water. I had to find these articles myself (which wasn’t hard), but having these discussions at the forefront of our conversations can have an immediate impact.

  4. We started out by discussing how we use water. We also talked about our how community (Cranbrook) has put water restrictions in place in the summers to help conserve water. We watched the lesson video on “water” and then viewed two additional videos (Basics of Fresh Water and The Water Walker). We had some great discussions on why it is important to protect our water. We looked through the pictures of “Water from Around the World” and talked about what students noticed. We liked talking about Flint, Michigan and how sad it is for communities in countries like Canada and the USA to not have clean drinking water.
    I agree with what Stacey has said above about the BR videos-the beginnings are getting quite repetitive and could be improved. Perhaps do a recap of what has been covered so far instead of starting the exact same way each time.
    During this lesson, we made connections to books we have read and how important water is in our lives.

  5. My class has spent a fair amount of time learning about access to water in Canada and around the world, so they had good background knowledge on the importance of this topic already. Would have already read many storybooks and novel, and learned from some of Autumn Peltier’s videos and articles. However, they had not looked into solutions beyond what they could do personally so it was a good opportunity to look at community solutions. Like other sections, I think more information needs to be provided for students to best understand their options for community solutions. Specific websites or additional information on solutions would give students a starting point. We will go for a community walk later this week to identify water, waste, and energy sources in our neighborhood.

  6. The video was a good introduction but students still had many questions and had a hard time thinking of ways their community could be designed around responsible water use. We used the Minecraft for Education platform to go through their lesson on water treatment. This gave students a very clear view of how filters could be used to clean waste water and then the clean water can be directed back into the community. I found the Minecraft for Education addition to these resources extremely helpful.

  7. This was one of our most important lessons as it tied into our Social Studies curriculum (specifically the Big Idea of “Economic self-interest can be a significant cause of conflict among peoples and governments.”) After viewing Autumn Peltier’s video, we explored water as a resource that some companies and governments exploit. We looked at Nestle corporation and how they have taken advantage of communities around the world. Through research, our students stumbled upon Blue Communities (https://canadians.org/bluecommunities/). We then did a side project of writing letters to Fernie City Council to encourage them to protect our water rights. The students were very passionate about this project. We also worked with our Aboriginal Education specialist at the school who led us on an exploration of the book The Water Walker. This spring, we also worked with Janelle Park on exploring our local Elk River.

  8. Another great lesson. Students enjoyed the “Water” video and lots of good follow up discussions. I agree with some of the other comments about the introduction. A recap of previous lessons might be more engaging than the 40+ seconds of the invitation. Lots of great extension materials to consolidate ideas. Students in my class were quite knowledgeable in this area. Some of them had read “A Long Walk to Water”, and the whole class had participated in the BC Hydro Power Smart lessons/competition in the fall (I would recommend this to complement this BR program.) We talked about shorter showers, and I feel that if students can move forward changing one thing that is a small step in the right direction. A field trip to the local water treatment plant would be a valuable follow up activity.