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The GPM Water Cycle unit plan includes multimedia content that can help students from many different cultural backgrounds make connections to the content. Being able to use closed captioning or allow students to watch and rewatch the videos at their own pace are also useful tools to help multilingual students build understanding of the content. The culturally specific images used in the videos are primarily Western/dominant culture ones such as a leather hatted fly-fisherman in a stream. It would be great to be able to substitute in videos from ones' own area or have images shown from broader contexts. There should be global options as everyone needs and interacts with water, in all its forms, all year long. It would also be nice to see some options for video or spoken word for the outcome assignments for this Unit instead of nearly all the graded material requiring primarily listening, reading and writing. From the perspective of the Alaska Standards for Culturally Responsive Schools, I suppose that the lack of any real cultural connections represented in the main lesson plan, pre- post- quiz, student worksheets etc could be viewed as a strength in that it would allow any teacher to insert and infuse their local water-cycle based issues, from erosion to snow-pack changes. However, the fact that none of the ideas of place-based knowledge, story-based learning, indigenous knowledge, historical context, or any culturally responsive framework are even mentioned makes that less than likely to be incorporated vs used as is. So, the easiest place I see to provide the opportunity to acknowledge and respond to a variety of cultural perspectives would be in the mini-project section of the unit. By modifying the directions there to "tell a story of how one or more parts of the water cycle in our area affected you, someone in your family or someone in the community" could start to lead the class discussion towards how things we do and think come from our relationship with water and what responsibilities we have towards that part of the broader environment.

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Great Falls, Montana where we live, is directly on the Missouri River. This setting is ideal to discuss the water cycle outside as there are many dams and other man-made structures that control the water. To promote collaboration amongst the community I would schedule a field trip to Giant Springs State Park to talk with one of the state park rangers about the Giant Spring and how the water makes its way from the Highwood Mountains to the aquifer to the spring and how long it has taken for that to happen. I would also collaborate with Northwestern Energy to discuss how the five hydroelectric dams in and around Great Falls affect the water cycle. To further compare the Missouri River, the Giant Spring, and treated tap water, I would have groups of students predict which source of water is the purest by completing water quality tests of river water, spring water, tap water and distilled water (as the baseline) samples. This could lead to discussions of purity for each water sample and conjecture how the water purity was affected and how humans may have impacted the purity.

-III. B. 2. School librarians demonstrate the importance of personal, social, and intellectual networks by: Cultivating networks that allow learners to build on their own prior knowledge and create new knowledge.

-II. A. 3. School librarians direct learners to contribute a balanced perspective when participating in a learning community by: Differentiating instruction to support learners’ understanding of cultural relevancy and placement within the global learning community.

-V. B. 1. School librarians stimulate learners to construct new knowledge by: Teaching problem solving through cycles of design, implementation, and reflection.

-III. D. 3. School librarians implement and model an inquiry-based process by: Enabling learners to seek knowledge, create new knowledge, and make real-world connections for lifelong learning.

-IV. C. 1. The school library facilitates the contribution and exchange of information within and among learning communities by: Providing an environment in which resources that support the school’s curriculum and learning goals can be collaboratively selected and developed.

-V. C. 3. The school library prepares learners to engage with a larger learning community by: Building and advocating for strong relationships with stakeholders who recognize and support an effective school library.

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Your idea to research other perspectives is a really interesting approach. You could assign different groups of students to find the information or allow them to group up by which perspective they want to research. This could evolve into a Montana History project by having students research how water affected the Native Americans migrations and then when they were assigned reservations.

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For more collaboration between students and educators, this lesson could extend into English Language Arts or a creative writing class.  Instead of completing the suggested comic book and/or poster, students could act out the water cycle.  I suggest the class be broken into 2-3 groups.  Each group receives 8 images that represent: condensation, groundwater, infiltration, evaporation, transpiration, precipitation, runoff, and solar radiation.   Group members collaborate to put the images in order.  Then, they receive a little image/puppet of a water droplet to be their “main character”.   They will write a script to explain the water-cycle, and move the water droplet from place to place throughout their play.   Students should include the vocabulary words in their script.  It could be fun to add more characters – the sun, clouds, ocean, etc., and ask students to include dialogue.   Each group can present their plays to the others in the class.  If the school has multiple grades, it’d be fun to present the play to a younger class doing a similar unit.

·       III.A.1 School librarians facilitate collaborative opportunities by challenging learners to work with others to broaden understandings.

·       III.A.3  School librarians facilitate collaborative opportunities by organizing learner groups for decision making and problem solving.

·       III.B.2  School librarians demonstrate the importance of personal, social, and intellectual networks by cultivating networks that allow learners to build on their own prior knowledge and create new knowledge.

·       III.D.2 School librarians foster active participation in learning situations by creating a learning environment in which learners understand that learning is a social responsibility.

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Sierra,

I liked that you tied this unit to the Montana cultural and demographic landscape. This could easily turn into a discussion of the difference between owning bodies of water (can not do) and owning water rights (can do) and why these are put into place.

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The Unit Plan starts out with a great Think-Pair-Share, but then evolves into a teacher directed presentation. I think students could be writing their own inquiry questions about what is happening in the demonstrations. They could then discuss their questions in small groups, deciding which questions are open-ended and which are closed. They could then help those students change their closed questions into open ones. Students could work with partners or individually to research answers to the questions they have come up with. Students could then come back together in their groups to discuss what they had found in their research.

Another option might be to give groups some of the questions to research and come up with answers to present to the class.

It would make the whole Unit longer in the fact that each demonstration could be taught in this fashion.

This would connect to the AASL standards 1.A1 formulating questions about a curricular topic, 3.A.3 Deciding to solve problems informed by group interactions, and 4.A.1 Determining the need to gather information

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Tracey Smith, Information Literacy Advocate

First, in providing the background or key information to start with, the current lesson plan only uses a NASA scientist viewpoint, I would encourage brainstorming about other perspectives they might research: maybe a weatherman’s explanation or the Department of Conservation, a Native American point of view, etc., to compare each group’s perspective on the water cycle and its importance.

I would encourage students to then research the water cycle on their own and identify pertinent resources and information from their chosen group’s perspective.

This is an excellent place for a minilesson about choosing reliable resources and crediting their sources. Explaining that crediting your source also helps you keep your research organized and reliable.

They can then pair-share their findings with the group so that we may discuss the merits of each of the credible resources.

We would use a variety of resources, books, school-subscribed databases, and the web to find our resources, visiting the library for a time.

This would use AASL A.IV.2 & 3 Identifying possible sources of information. Making critical choices about information sources to use.

And B.II.2 Evaluating a variety of perspectives during learning activities.

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I love your idea on tying the conversation to the local water sources or watersheds so the students have a better understanding of how water impacts them in their own community. I would love to discuss the river systems in Montana, and I could tie in the Yellowstone River which flows through Billings. Also at my school, we are lucky to border a city park with a bridge that crosses an irrigation channel that runs through town as well, so the students could investigate things like flood irrigation, how water is transported and managed for agriculture vs. lawns, etc. and why water is a resource that needs to be managed. I think this inquiry would fall under IV.A.1 and 2, Determining the need to gather information and identifying possible sources of information.

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I really like your idea of having the students go observe actual water around them outside the classroom/library. It would be fun to revisit this unit at various points in time throughout the school year, to be able to observe things such as snow, ice, ponder why there may be ice sheets over puddles etc. in winter; and then perhaps experiment with evaporation by pouring water on a hot sidewalk or parking lot on a very hot day another time. I think the more hands-on methods of observation would be way more effective than just having a teacher stand at the front of the class and demonstrate. This would be more of a collaboration competency, allowing the students to work effectively with their peers to develop new understandings through engagement in a learning group. (III.A.2)

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First of all, I would handle this unit differently depending on the grade levels of my learners. For my younger students, I would have them spend some time looking through the library for books about water and the water cycle. For my older students, I might let them use their iPads to individually research resources about the water cycle online that they can share with their classmates and report back in on, or they could even do this in pairs or teams. I would definitely want them to have located some of these books/articles/videos etc. located and on hand in the library before we attempt the demos, to build further understanding and supplement what they are seeing in the experiments. I would have originally thought that I should pull all these materials together for them in advance, but now I am realizing that allowing the students to seek them out themselves would be more of an inquiry mindset than simply looking through the materials I have already pulled together for them.

I would also encourage them to evaluate the quality of their resources, so they become more capable and confident researchers. (For example, showing them how a video from NASA’s website might be a better resource than the first random video they find when googling “water cycle.” When I tried this, I found a kids youtube video by a creator called “Peekaboo Kidz.”)

The AASL learner competencies I am trying to address through these changes to the lesson would be IV.A. 1, 2 and 3; Determining the need to gather information, Identifying possible sources of information and Making critical choices about information sources to use.

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The first thing that caught my attention in this lesson was the fact that there is only one source. While the life cycle of water is not a subject of debate in the details of how it works, it would still be beneficial for more resources to be readily available to the students. NASA is a great resource, but it is by far not the only one. I would expand on this lesson by providing time for the students to do small-group research on non-US scientific entities. This would encourage them to think a little more multicultural, without making the lesson veer off the subject at hand, and it would allow students to see how the rest of the world learns about the same subject. This activity would allow for conversations about the ethical distribution of information, should students come across cultures that don't place the same value on the scientific method (more or less than what we follow in the US), and it would remind them that even good resources are not absolute in their information.

The learner competencies in adding this step would be D 1,2, 3, and 6.

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I think this unit plan does a great job of introducing students to learning about the water cycle in a hands-on way, but I’d love to see more chances for students to ask their own original questions. One idea is to let them wonder out loud things like, “Where does rainwater go in Missoula?” or “What would happen if there was no sun in the water cycle?” or “What would happen if part of the water cycle stopped working?” These kinds of questions help them think deeper and investigate on their own. I’d also suggest giving students a chance to observe water around them, like in puddles, snow, or the river, and then ask questions based on what they see. This would support AASL competencies like Inquire 1.A.1 and Explore 3.B.1, by helping students stay curious through developing and asking their own questions, engaging in authentic research and making sense of information in ways that are developmentally meaningful and personally relevant.

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The lesson plan as written does not include explicit library instruction but there is plenty of space for a librarian to collaborate with the classroom teacher.

First, I would invite the teacher to the library and have students choose questions to research about water from a display. For example, students could answer, “Why can’t we just make water?” Or “Is there Water in Space?” To find the answers to their questions, I would demonstrate to students how to access Explora for School libraries, which provides links to credible articles, and also have a display from the library’s reference collection on water. If my library did not have enough variety in reference books, I would borrow books like “DK Eyewitness series: Water” by John Woodward, or the picture book “Water” by Trevor Day. The DK Eyewitness series books have a lot of information organized in small chunks in an engaging way. The “Water” book by Trevor Day discusses the water cycle as well as other important aspects of water resources. This addresses the IA Standard from AASL standards, “formulating questions about a curricular topic.”

Students can further tie their learning to their own community by answering questions about the Anchorage’s own water source, Eklutna Lake. Students might find the answers to the questions “Where does Anchorage get its water?” or “Where does Anchorage’s water go when we’re done using it?” To find answers to these questions, we can review the Anchorage Wastewater Utility website. This addresses standard IID, “Reflecting on their own place within the global learning community.”

Since the librarian would likely only have a class period or two to help students with this research, I would focus on generating good questions with them and helping the students tie their learning about the water cycle to our greater Anchorage water system.

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This unit plan engages students in the five E's model of teaching about how important water is, even in wintertime. This is valuable lesson. The think-pair-share aspects of this unit ensure that students' voices are heard throughout this lesson. This is a culturally responsive approach. To make this unit plan more culturally responsive, IEFA standard 1 could be incorporated. The demographic and cultural landscape of Montana has rapidly changed in the last two hundred years in connection with the water cycle. When discussing water uses, there can be an emphasis on the relevance to rural and indigenous families. The key concept here would be that water is a communal and spiritual resource, also a respect for living systems. In addition to this, IEFA standard 6, could be incorporated into this unit plan too. A discussion can be facilitated about how water access varies across communities while allowing students to explore local issues. Students (upper grades) could engage in a project to investigate local water issues such as groundwater rights, water quality, and conservation.