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Hi Friends,
This has been another very wet spring! From snow and ice to rain and flooding, water seems to be everywhere alright! I am wondering how others are incorporating various resources into their units about water. I have a favorite lesson that is downloadable and free from the Water Education For Teachers(WET) website. It is called, 'The Incredible Journey'. The script is a pdf file, and it is written for 4th graders. However, I have used it with eighth graders and college science methods students effectively. Students become water droplet and travel in, on, and around the Earth. They then share their experiences by writing stories about their journeys. It has the added bonus of being an excellent activity for integrating writing with science content. Students can be so creative at telling stories!
I would love to hear what you do in your classroom!
Carolyn

Greetings Ms. Mohr Very interesting activity, however I use the concept of water when studying diffusion and osmosis. The students can act by moving around the class depicting the various processes of osmosis and diffusion and concentration gradient. They loved this activity. Many Thanks MOGHRABI

Thank you for sharing that activity, Karim. My students loved acting like diffusing molecules, too. There are so many concepts that can be covered with the element of water. The water droplet story mentioned earlier was used to help students understand the water cycle. It will be exciting to hear even more ideas about how water is the vehicle to help students learn important science concepts.

As I have been looking through the Collection by Users (go to Subjects- Earth and Space Science- then Collections Created by Users), I have found lots of great collections that focus on water and cover all grade levels. Take a look at some of these if you get a chance!

Thank you, Tina, for the pdfs. Thank you, Dorian, for the idea to check out the user collections. Earlier today I did an advanced search using the term water. Then I sorted the 422 resources that were listed by publication date. I discovered that the March 2011 issue of Science Scope magazine had a couple of pertinent articles about water:
Flooded! An Investigation of Sea-Level Rise in a Changing Climate
and
A Watery Whodunit: The Case of the Missing Zooxanthellae
Both articles provide excellent, engaging water-related lessons. In Flooded!, there are two activities dealing with the water cycle and displacement snd they focus on differences in sea and land ice.
The Whodunit article is offered for teachers wanting to educate middle school students about coral biology and coral bleaching problems. It uses DNA evidence to help solve a 'mock' mystery (script included).

It really is unbelievable what we have access to in this day and age! I was looking at many of the websites and other items that people had shared in this forum and the Wild Weather forum, and thought we need never, ever become stale and uninformed as we plod our way through inspiring and educating the next generation!

I agree, Dorian. I just read a one-page editorial about water; the author called it the new Liquid Gold.
It is an excellent resource for showing many possible ways to incorporate water into our science curricula.