Water

Read One Well: The Story of Water on Earth by Rochelle Strauss. Discuss in what ways water benefits all of us. Pose the question: what would happen if all of the water on the earth dried up. What changes would take place?

Organize students into small groups. Allow students to place their hands in water while they close their eyes. Have them react to the water by describing how it feels, what it reminds them of, texture, temperature, ideas, etc. Have one student take down notes about their comments. From the notes, students work together to write a descriptive piece about water. 

Ask students to write a conversation between a pond, a lake, or the ocean with a living thing who might benefit from that body of water. Have the water tell the living thing what benefits they provide or have the living thing convince the water to stay and help them.

Fill matching clear containers with water of varying amounts. Have students put the containers in order from least to greatest or greatest to least.

Practice measuring volumes of water. 

How would you place a 3 oz. container, a 5 oz., a 10 oz., two containers of 12 oz. each, and two of 15 oz. of water into equal sized containers? How many containers of water would you end up with? Is there more than one answer to this question?

Examples of patterns could include that all living things need water.

Living things need water, air, and resources from the land, and they live in places that have the things they need. Humans use natural resources for everything they do.

Some kinds of severe weather are more likely than others in a given region. Weather scientists forecast severe weather so that the communities can prepare for and respond to these events.

Things that people do can affect the world around them. But they can make choices that reduce their impacts on the land, water, air, and other living things.

Water is found in the ocean, rivers, lakes, and ponds. Water exists as solid ice and in liquid form.

There are many different kinds of living things in any area, and they exist in different places on land and in water. The emphasis is on the diversity of living things in each of a variety of different habitats.

Some events happen very quickly; others occur very slowly, over a time period much longer than one can observe. An example is the erosion of rocks by water, which occurs slowly.

Wind and water can change the shape of the land. Examples of solutions could include different designs of dikes to hold back water, and different designs for using shrubs, grass, and trees to hold back the land. Because there is always more than one possible solution to a problem, it is useful to compare and test designs.

Maps show where things are located. One can map the land and water in any area.

Water is found in the ocean, rivers, lakes, and ponds. Water exists as solid ice and in liquid form.

Scientists record patterns of the weather across different times and areas. Examples of data could include average precipitation. Graphical displays could include pictographs and bar graphs.

Climate describes a range of an area's typical weather conditions.

A variety of natural hazards result from natural processes. Humans cannot eliminate natural hazards but can take steps to reduce their impacts. An example of design solutions to a natural hazard could include barriers to prevent flooding.

Energy can be transferred from place to place by electric currents, which can then be used locally to produce motion, sound, heat, or light. The currents may be produced to begin with by transforming the energy of water motion into electrical energy.

Examples of evidence from patterns could include rock layers with marine shell fossils above rock layers with plant layers and no shells, indicating a change from land to water over time, and a canyon with different rock layers in the walls and a river in the bottom, indicating that over time a river cut through the rock.

Rainfall helps to shape the land and affects the types of living things found in a region. Water, ice, wind, living organisms, and gravity break rocks, soils, and sediments into smaller particles and move them around. Examples of variables to test could include angle of slope in the downhill movement of water, amount of vegetation, relative rate of deposition, cycles of freezing and thawing of water, cycles of heating and cooling, and volume of water flow.

Energy and fuels that humans use are derived from natural sources, and their use affects the environment in multiple ways. Some energy resources are renewable over time, and others are not. Examples of renewable energy resources could include water behind dams. Examples of environmental effects could include loss of habitat due to dams.

A variety of hazards result from natural processes, (e.g. tsunamis) Humans cannot eliminate the hazards but can take steps to reduce their impacts. Testing a solution involves investigating how well it performs under a range of likely conditions.

The energy released from food was once energy from the sun that was captured by plants. Food provides animals with the materials they need for body repair and growth and the energy they need to maintain body warmth and for motion.

Emphasis is on the idea that plant matter comes mostly from air and water, not from the soil.

Populations live in a variety of habitats, and change in those habitats affects the organisms living there. Examples of environmental changes could include changes in water distribution. When the environment changes in ways that affect a place's characteristics, or availability of resources, some organisms survive and reproduce, others move to new locations, yet others move into the transformed environment, and some die.

Earth's major systems are the geosphere (solid and molten rock, soil, and sediments), the hydrosphere (water and ice), the atmosphere (air), and the biosphere (living things.) These systems interact in multiple ways to affect Earth's surface materials and processes. The hydrosphere supports a variety of ecosystems and organisms, shapes landforms, and influences climate.

Nearly all of Earth's available water is in the ocean. Most fresh water is in glaciers or underground; only a tiny fraction is in streams, lakes, wetlands, and the atmosphere.

Human activities in agriculture, industry, and everyday life have effects on the land, vegetation, rivers and oceans. Individuals and communities are doing things to help protect Earth's resources and environment.

Substances are made from different types of atoms, which combine with one another in various ways to form molecules. Examples of pure substances could include water. In a liquid, the molecules are constantly in contact with others; in a gas, they are widely spaced except when they happen to collide; in a solid, atoms are closely spaced and may vibrate in position but do not change relative locations. The changes of state that occur with variations in temperature or pressure can be described and predicted using these models of matter. Emphasis is on qualitative molecular-level models of solids, liquids, and gasses to show that adding or removing thermal energy increases or decreases kinetic energy of the particles until a change of state occurs.

Temperature is a measure of the average kinetic energy of particles of matter. The relationship between the temperature and the total energy of a system depends on the types, states, and amounts of matter present. Examples of experiments could include comparing final water temperatures after different masses of ice melted in the same volume of water with the same initial temperature.

Plants, algae (including phytoplankton), and many microorganisms use the energy from light to make sugars (food) from carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and water through the process of photosynthesis, which also releases oxygen.

Organisms, and populations of organisms, are dependent on their environmental interactions both with other living things and with nonliving factors. In any ecosystem, organisms and populations with similar requirements for food, water, oxygen, or other resources may compete with each other for limited resources, access to which consequently constrains their growth and reproduction. Growth of organisms and population increases are limited by access to resources. Emphasis is on cause and effect relationships between resources and growth of individual organisms and the numbers of organisms in ecosystems during periods of abundant and scarce resources.

Food webs are models that demonstrate how matter and energy is transferred between producers, consumers, and decomposers as the three groups interact within an ecosystem. Transfers of matter into and out of the physical environment occur at every level. Decomposers recycle nutrients from dead plant or animal matter back to the water in aquatic environments.

Ecosystems are dynamic in nature; their characteristics can vary over time. Disruptions to any physical or biological component of an ecosystem can lead to shifts in all its populations. Emphasis is on recognizing patterns in data and making warranted inferences about changes in populations, and on evaluating empirical evidence supporting arguments about changes to ecosystems.

Biodiversity describes the variety of species found in Earth's terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Changes in biodiversity can influence humans' resources, such as food, energy, and medicines, as well as ecosystem services that humans rely on. Examples of ecosystem services could include water purification and nutrient recycling. There are systematic processes for evaluating solutions with respect to how well they meet the criteria and constraints of a problem.

Examples of geoscience processes include surface weathering and deposition by the movements of water, ice, and wind. Water's movements-both on the land and underground-cause weathering and erosion, which change the land's surface features and create underground formations.

Water continually cycles among land, ocean, and atmosphere via transpiration, evaporation, condensation and crystallization, and precipitation, as well as downhill flows on land. Global movements of water and its changes in form are propelled by sunlight and gravity. Emphasis is on the ways water changes its state as it moves through the multiple pathways of the hydrologic cycle.

The complex patterns of the changes and the movement of water in the atmosphere, determined by winds, landforms, and ocean temperatures and currents, are major determinants of local weather patterns. Because these patterns are so complex, weather can only be predicted using probability.

The ocean exerts a major influence on weather and climate by absorbing energy from the sun, releasing it over time, and globally redistributing it through ocean currents. Variations in density due to variations in temperature and salinity drive a global pattern of interconnected ocean currents. Weather and climate are influenced by interactions involving sunlight, the ocean, the atmosphere, ice, landforms, and living things. These interactions vary with latitude, altitude, and local and regional geography, all of which can affect oceanic flow patterns.

Humans depend on Earth's land, ocean, atmosphere, and biosphere for many different resources. Minerals, fresh water, and biosphere resources are limited, and many are not renewable or replaceable over human lifetimes.

Mapping the history of natural hazards in a region, combined with an understanding of related geologic forces, can help forecast the locations and likelihoods of future events. Examples of natural hazards can include severe weather events (such as hurricanes and floods). Examples of data can include the locations, magnitudes, and frequencies of the natural hazards. Examples of technologies can be global (such as satellite systems to monitor hurricanes) or local (such as reservoirs to mitigate droughts).

Human activities can have consequences, sometimes altering natural habitats. Examples of human impacts can include water usage (such as the withdrawal of water from streams and aquifers or the construction of dams and levees), land usage (such as urban development or the removal of wetlands), and pollution (such as of the air, water, or land). Technology and engineering can potentially mitigate impacts on Earth's systems. Examples of the design process include examining human environmental impacts, assessing the kinds of solutions that are feasible, and designing and evaluating solutions that could reduce that impact.

Examples of evidence include grade-appropriate databases on human populations and the rates of consumption of food and natural resources (such as freshwater). Examples of impacts can include changes to the appearance, composition, and structure of Earth's systems as well as the rates at which they change. Technology and engineering can potentially mitigate impacts on Earth's systems as both human populations and per-capita consumption of natural resources increase.