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How does a first grade teacher engage children in learning about the water cycle?

Heading to Jackson Street School, water inquiry team member Hannah Searles observed Katy Butler’s first grade class and their initial explorations into the water cycle. Ms. Butler sparked students’ interest through reading, class conversations, singing and fun experiments surrounding the water cycle. The exploration culminated in a creative writing assignment, where students combined imagination and acquired knowledge to narrate the life cycle of a water droplet. Examining both components of this inquiry allows us to recognize areas of student interest and opportunities for further avenues of exploration.

Engaging student’s imagination and building foundations

To begin, the class read the picture book All the Water in the World is All the Water in the World by George Ella Lyon. This beautifully illustrated book introduces the idea of the water cycle and water’s ability to travel all around the world in various forms. Hearing that they were drinking the same water the Vikings did was extremely exciting for the students!

To observe the water cycle in action, the students conducted a simple experiment, involving two plastic cups, a sponge, water and a plate. The larger plastic cup represented the world, while the smaller cup with the sponge in it was the land. The warm water inside was the ocean, and the plate with the ice on top of it was the clouds. The goal of the experiment was to see if the sponge would get wet – if it did, it meant that it had rained. The warm water in combination with the cold plate caused condensation, which then dripped onto the sponge.

Students recorded their observations and got a chance to see for themselves what the water cycle looks like. Click here to download the lesson.

Students also participated in an artistic activity displaying the water cycle. Using shaving cream, food coloring, and a plastic cup of water, the class simulated a rainstorm. This project gets a little messy, so it’s helpful to have grownups in charge of the shaving cream and food coloring.

The water in the cup represented the air in the atmosphere, and the shaving cream sitting on top of it was a cloud. When food coloring poured onto the shaving cream, it “rained” from the cloud and into the water, creating beautiful patterns that let students see what precipitation looks like.

Then, using a plastic straw, the students swirled the shaving cream around and pressed pieces of paper on top, creating beautiful marbled art. This activity let students think both scientifically and creatively.  Click here to download the lesson.

How do first graders explain and imagine the water cycle?

Dear droplet you will go up up up up up then you will fall fall fall fall then you will go back and back and back over again over again over again over again you can do this many times again.

To assess student understanding, Ms. Butler asked students to write to a water droplet using pictures and words to explain the water cycle:  “Today you will write a postcard to a water droplet. You will tell the water droplet what will happen to it during its life cycle. You can use words like first, next, then and finally. You get to choose where your water droplet starts in the cycle!” The children’s work reveals interesting patterns, questions, and areas for further inquiry.

Motion and repetition are recurring themes highlighted in children’s drawings and text. The postcard pictured above is a salient example of how children repeat words and symbols multiple times to show their understanding of the water cycle.  Up, fall, again are the most frequently repeated words.  Water drops, clouds and arrows (always shown clockwise) are the most frequently repeated visual images.

Water cycle vocabulary words appear in most of the postcards, more often in the written text than in the drawings. Although there is some variation in the order, most children choose to show or write the terms in the sequence: precipitation, condensation, evaporation.  It’s interesting to think about the connection between the children’s use of water cycle vocabulary words and their ideas about motion, repetition, and what they can observe in the world around them.

Visual elements in drawings include (in order of frequency): clouds, rain drops, water, arrows, buildings, ocean and topography (mountains/hills). Anomalies (each appearing in only one drawing) include: the sun, lightning, volcano, and a viking beard.

The imaginative prompt “Dear Droplet” activates children’s imagination and curiosity:

• “What is like to go all around the world?”
• “You will have a blast.”
• “You might get drinkt and that somebody might be me. You’re probably Viking beard water.”

Children’s questions and theories about how water travels around the water cycle point to further possibilities for inquiry and investigation:

• “You will go around the world.”
• “You will start in the ocean… end up in the same place.”
• “Dear water droplet where are you?
  Are you in New York?…
  Are you in Northampton?
  Are you in Greece?”

Areas for further inquiry emerge from what’s featured and what’s missing in the first graders’ explanations.  For example, the infrequent appearance of the the sun (only once), rivers, lakes and groundwater suggest new questions to investigate:

• What does the sun have to do with the water cycle? 
• How does water travel to the ocean?
• Can we SEE the water cycle? Where? Why or why not? – This could lead to a schoolyard scavenger hunt -style investigation over several weeks looking for evidence of precipitation, evaporation, and condensation.

Join the conversation
These activities are just snapshots of some of the ongoing water studies that teachers are doing with their students. What are you doing with your students? What seems exciting about water to them?

Blog post by Hannah Searles, Ally Ciccarone, and Carol Berner

Jackson Street School, February 17, 2015

Hello everyone! My name is Catherine Bradley, and I recently joined the water inquiry team. I am a sophomore at Smith College, majoring in history with a minor in education, and I am very excited to begin working on this project.

Over the winter break, I took a week-long interterm course co-taught by Professor Berner at Smith’s MacLeish Field Station in Whately, MA. The course, titled “Interpreting the New England Landscape,” encouraged us to interact with our natural surroundings in many different ways.  Inspired by the week, we developed two snow themed adventures, perfect for this time of year.

How Cold is Snow?

In our first snow inquiry, students bundle up and head outside, armed with easy-to-read tube thermometers. With these thermometers, students can measure the temperature of the air, the snow, and the ground underneath (a little digging may be required here!).  Try this in a few different spots on the school grounds:  in the sun and the shade; near the school building; near rocky outcroppings; around the playground.

A student checking the temperature in the air to compare to the temperature in and under the snow.

• What’s do you notice about the temperatures?
• Can you find any patterns in temperature? Any surprises?
• If you were a small animal, like a mouse or a vole, where would you go? Why?

What Happens to Water in Winter?
Make some class predictions before going outside:

• Where will you look for ice around the school grounds?
• Where will you look for liquid water?
• Do you think ice floats or sinks in water? What makes you say that?
• Imagine–if ice sank in water what would change?
• Which do you think is colder: ice or the water under the ice? How could we find this out?

Are there icicles on your building or frozen water on your school grounds?  Take students out to investigate places where ice forms:  Where do you see ice? What’s going on in these places?  If you’re lucky enough to be near a pond or running stream, take the temperature of the air above the ice and the water below the ice (you may want to tie a string to the thermometer if the water is deep). To dig a hole in thicker ice, try using a screwdriver and hammer, or a hand-held ice augur.

Annie Ames, ’15 cracking a layer of ice at the vernal pool.

• How cold is the air above the ice? How cold is the water below?
• Where do you think fish and frogs go in the winter?
• Imagine–what is it like underneath the ice?

Why aren’t we skating at the bottom of the pond?

Curious about winter water and how it impacts pond life? Check out this piece from Vermont Public Radio: Exploring above and below the ice

 Please comment!

What are your students noticing and wondering about snow, ice and where water goes in winter? What snow-related activities incite the most curiosity? And look for the next blog with a winter inquiry that does not even require leaving the classroom!

– Ally, Catherine, Carol and Hannah

Welcome to the Investigating Water Blog, home to all things regarding our water inquiry. Inquiry based learning takes a big question and converts it into a problem for students to solve. Our ‘big question’ – where does water go? – is one that many classrooms have engaged with over the past few months. In this initial blog post, our investigating water team focuses on the beginnings of water studies in five classrooms.

These posts showcase how teachers guide students in building scientific knowledge in active and engaging ways. We hope to encourage dialogue across classrooms, to invigorate ideas and to keep improving our conversations about water. Through collaboration, each classroom can advance their understanding of how water works and how ideas work.

Katy Butler’s first grade class at Jackson Street School opened their study of water through multiple avenues. While reading water-related books such as Thomas Locker’s Water Dance, students became interested in the question of where water goes. The quest for an answer resulted in the experiment pictured above, where students watched Ms. Butler pour water on a number of surfaces in various locations. Differences between predictions and observations, as well as individual experiments, provoked questions. When water was poured on a yellow carpet, for example, students wondered whether the water droplets changed color to match the surface below.

At the Smith College Campus School, Robbie Murphy launched her second grade class’ investigation using the lens of a natural scientist.  The book Henry Works by D. B. Johnson, which tells the tale of a bear modeled after Henry Thoreau, provided an opportunity to discuss the value of making observations. The story opens on a “misty, muzzling morning,” prompting a later discussion about where rain comes from. Students created a series of beginning ideas, among them the intriguing concept that “water has a life cycle”.

On the pine trees it gets stuck on the needles and on the other trees, it gets

stuck on the leaves and fills it up like a cup. Then, when the sun comes out, it evaporates??

Jan Szymaszek started a conversation about water with her third graders at the Campus School after being caught in the rain at recess.  Jan noted that students were “really engaged” in the discussion about water flow on the sloping school grounds.  Sharing observations about where water collected, they began to ask questions about where water goes when it is no longer visible. Does it go into the reservoir? The sewers? Does it become drinking water or does it go where the toilet water goes? Jan plans to take students out during a hard rain and refine the framing question, observing “where does the water go when it is raining?”.

Kathie Bredin set out to discover her fourth grade students’ ideas about water with an eye to sustaining inquiry over time. The inquiry began in her classroom at Jackson Street School with a discussion about water, a resource that was all around them, but often went unnoticed.  The inclusion of “(right now)” in the title gives an expectation for a continuous building on student ideas.

Renee Bachman, a third grade teacher at Leeds Elementary School, decided to take her students outside one rainy day and observe water. While sloshing through massive puddles and watching water pouring into storm drains, students determined that water went towards the “lower ground”. Renee also took her students outside after the downpour. As they were discussing evaporation, students wondered if oil went through the water cycle, and, if so, if it was converted into water. We look forward to hearing more student thoughts on the role of oil, a topic brought forward by both Renee’s and Kathie’s students.

As teachers begin classroom inquiries, our team is struck by the multiple points of entry for inspiring students’ imaginations and encouraging their questions about “where does water go?” Many teachers choose to use literature to incite creative questions about water and nature, while other openings involve experimentation and outdoor observation. We notice that teachers pay careful attention to questions about water that seem to catalyze students’ curiosity. For example, Kathie and Renee use video to document their students’ observation of oil slicks on the pavement and their questions about how oil behaves differently than water. We hope to track these student inquiries over the year to learn how their questions and ideas develop.

Our blog will update frequently, showcasing new aspects of water inquiries across schools and putting teachers in dialogue with each other. To engage in this learning community, we encourage you to offer commentary, share what’s going on in your water inquiries, pose questions, and let us know how we can be a resource for you and your students.

We’re eager to hear about how you investigate snow on the school grounds!

In the meantime, happy holidays from the water team.

– Ally, Carol and Hannah