The Water Cycle

Activity-at-a-Glance

Students explore the water cycle and apply it to soil.  They play an amusing card game that follows the fate of a water molecule through changes in phase and location.  As an extension, they can also build an evaporation and condensation chamber and/or work with a model of one.

Materials

Water Cycle Cards, cut up in sheets

Water Cycle map (annotated)

Water Cycle map (to be filled in)  

Overview

In this set of activities, after introducing the Water Cycle lightly with a card game - they will revisit it in greater depth later - students undertake a few experiments to enhance their understanding of the essential differences between ecosystems. In the months that follow, students will go into these differences in more depth, in particular differences of light and heat.

Goal and Objectives

The goal of this activity is to introduce students to the Water Cycle System, its variables, and the ways variables can influence the cycle, and hence, the large ecosystems. Students will be able to identify the key steps in the Water Cycle (evaporation, condensation, precipitation), and discuss factors that influence their rate.

Steps:

Day 1

1. Prepare the students with a discussion. Have them consider the various influences on their study site and its ecosystem.  Elicit the idea that influences arrive often in the water (liquid) or air (gas).  

2. Step through the Water Cycle. You might first ask them where there is water in the map and then where there can be water movement. Step through the Water Cycle with your students using a projected  Water Cycle map.  

3. Play the Water Cycle Game and connect the ways water is stored to its availability to ecosystems.   Distribute one set of cards of  Water Cycle Cards to each team. 

A. Students should place seven cards in an order they can support. They can write and illustrate up to three new cards to make a set of ten.

B. Then they should outline a stor linking the cards together and referencing the water cycle.  

C. Have each team stand up and read its story and locate the steps on the water cycle, which can be projected.  Invite other teams to critique the order, and ask students to explain any new cards.

D. Teams can build logical links among the cards, so the story is continuous.

4. Students share their ideas for new cards in the GL forum.   Test their understanding on the same map without annotation.

Extensions: 

1. Build and experiment with a "solar still", an evaporation and condensation chamber.

2. Explore a model of an evaporation and condensation chamber.

3. Explore models of change of state in the Molecular Workbench. Search for Phase Change.

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