Exploring Alaska Final Project

Water Cycle Unit: Water as Life

Objective:

To create a lesson plan that not only teaches the basic requirements of the water cycle according to the Anchorage School District, but also incorporates knowledge from Alaska Native Cultures, uses the Alaska Native cultures as examples that demonstrate the importance of the water cycle in daily life, and to incorporate other aspects of general science knowledge to ultimately create a unit in which science is Integrated and presented in ways that emphasize the relevancy of the concepts in daily life.

Class Outline:

Day One: Water Cycle Vocab

Day Two: Water Cycle background reading

Day Three: Water Cycle in Native life

Day Four: Water Cycle Diagram/Wheel

Day Five:  Water Cycle videos and animations

Day Six: Water Cycle Lab

Day Seven: Water Cycle Lab wrap-up, phase change discussion

Day Eight: Liquid Water on Mars project worktime

Day Nine: Liquid Water on Mars worktime and presentations

Day Ten: The relevancy of Native Knowledge

Detailed Description:

On day one and day two of the Water Cycle Unit I currently teach, students are introduced to basic vocabulary, such as condensation, precipitation, and evaporation, and given a brief overview of how the cycle works and its importance for life on Earth.

Before moving into the diagram of the cycle as we have done in the past, I will now add a day focusing on the importance of water for native ways of living in Alaska. We will begin with the list of Ocean Superlatives and Fascinating Facts. After giving students time for discussion in small groups, I will then introduce Google Earth on the Smartboard, using various views and functions to show that 70% of Earth’s surface is covered by water. Students will have the opportunity to see different views of Alaska, and we will focus on the amount of coastline, the frozen and liquid areas of water, and reiterate the fact that all water eventually returns to the ocean at some point-especially the numerous rivers covering the state.

At this point, I will show the movies “Living from the Land and Sea,” and “The Spirit of Subsistence Living,” found on Teacher’s Domain. At the end of the video, students will make personal lists of ways the ocean affects their life, and will share some of these ways with the class. I may (depending on the class) use some of the discussion points provided with the video to further encourage student interaction with the material presented in the videos.

Using the idea that everything is connected, I will take a day to introduce students to the water cycle diagram, and have them create their “water cycle wheels,” a fun art projects that provides a hands-on illustration of the water cycle. To support the diagramming activities in class, we will use several videos and activities on Teacher’s Domain, including the “Water Cycle Animation” from NASA, and “Cycling Water through the Environment.”  A lab on changing water temperature, demonstrating where energy needs to be added to the cycle fits perfectly at this point, and allows for a segway into a brief introduction to the state of matter, a concept we cover in depth at a later time in the year. The lab on changing water temperature can be modified to include a lesson on state change, or can be followed with a diagram showing the correlation between energy and phase change, combined with a class discussion. For background and supporting information (students come up with some tricky questions!) this discussion of phase changes is a good resource.

To wrap up the unit, students will complete the NASA activity “Is There Liquid Water on Mars?” and discuss what changes would be needed to the conditions on Mars to make the water cycle possible there. In this way, they demonstrate their understanding of the phases or states of water, the steps of the water cycle, and the necessary catalysts and conditions for water to travel through each step. Students will complete the project by describing how the water cycle would is necessary to colonizing Mars. Using their lists, the earlier videos, and class discussion, students will come up with individual paragraph responses describing how and why colonists would depend on a water cycle on Mars. Class sharing of responses would give me the change to reiterate the value of the knowledge native tribes have about the world in which we live and on which we depend.