Teacher Preparation

Make some time for your students to read the section on ‘Water’ (Years 3 and 4) in the student toolbox(coolaustralia.org/catopic/water).

Activity

Students use a bubble map thinking tool activity sheet in small groups to show links with four questions. Each group has four activity sheets.

Each question can be firsts explored by the small groups. After each question, the class can contribute their ideas to a larger bubble map on a whiteboard or smartboard.

Question 1.

Where does water come from?

The answers can include all sources including the sea, ground water, rain, taps and bottled water.

Question 2.

How do people use water?

This can include agriculture, garden, cleaning, cooking, drinking, industry and even transport by ships.

Question 3.

What are some properties of water?

Come back to this question after students have had a chance to explore their properties.

Question 4.

How is water wasted?

Explain to students that they will find out more about how we can reduce our waste of water during this unit of work.

Exploring the properties of water

Set up an area outside on benches where there is easy water access and it doesn’t matter if the area gets wet. Alternatively, this could be done as a demonstration from the front of the class using students to explore each of the words. The equipment that is needed for each group of students is:

Small tub, ice cream container or plastic library tub with water
One drinking straw per student
A wiping cloth
Small plastic cups or other plastic containers
An old towel (for wiping hands).

Once the students are setup around their tubs

1. Introduce the word.

2. Ask them to demonstrate the property of water that the word describes using the equipment in front of them.

3. Discuss the property. Ask for examples how people use the property.

- Drip

- Pour

- Volume

- Wet

- Wipe

- Wash

- Flow

- Wave

- Floating

- Sinking

- Bubble

- Dry

Back in class review the third question and add more properties to the thinking tool.

Question 5.

What are some properties of water?

Cool Questions and Activities About Water

Summary

Lesson Guides and Printables

Lesson Details

Curriculum Mapping

Resources Required