Week 11: Water
Weeks 10, 11, and 12 make up a three-week cycle about water (Hydrophere). Currently, you are in Week B: Teacher As Scholar.

This week, build your own knowledge of the Hydrosphere. Use the resources listed under Readings, discuss your questions and answers with your teammates, then submit your individual questions and answers to your Portfolio. Work with your team to come up with well-supported answers to the essential questions and submit them to the portfolio for a grade.

Assignments

Submit your individual questions and answers to your Portfolio in the Classroom for a grade.

Submit your team answers to the essential questions with supporting statements and evidence to your Portfolio in the Classroom for a grade.

Essential Questions about Water:

Work with your teammates to answer each other's questions and these essential questions:

• How does water change?
• How does water move?
• How does life depend on water?
• How does water affect the land?

Readings

Can you imagine being high above the Earth and floating free like an astronaut aboard the Space Shuttle orbiting the planet? Looking out from your craft, you view this spectacular blue and white sphere called Earth that serves as home for you and all other life as people know it. It is the only body in the solar system that appears to support life. Although the Earth is largely rock, most of what you see of the Earth's surface is covered by a relatively thin layer of water (some of it frozen).

Water is an important natural resource and is an extremely common substance that covers three-fourths of the Earth's surface. It accounts for 60-70% of the weight of the living world. It is also the physical environment in which many plants and animals live. Water is something most people take for granted, but it is essential for life. A person will die much faster from a lack of water than from a lack of food.

All of this water may seem to be an endless supply; however, 97% of all the Earth's water is the salt water contained in the oceans. Of the remaining 3% of water, two-thirds is contained in glaciers and the polar ice caps. The remaining percentage of all of the Earth's water--in ground and surface water combined--that is available for human consumption is less than 1% of all the water on the planet. As the world population and pollution increase, the fresh water quality lowers. Additionally, as the world population increases, an increase in the demand for fresh water reduces the 1% that is available for human consumption.

Breakdown of the Earth's Fresh Water:

Most of the ice on Earth is found near the poles as giant icecaps in Greenland and Antarctica and as icebergs at sea. Ice is also found as glaciers and snow in the mountains, and maybe in your neighborhood in winter. Did you know that when you hold an ice cube in your hand, you are holding a tiny part of the cryosphere?

The Earth's cryosphere has changed in size many times in the Earth's past. Right now, most of the world's ice is far to the north or south of the planet. But in past times, even as recently as 12,000 years ago, the Earth's climate was much colder, and huge sheets of ice covered much of North America and Europe in a great " Ice Age."

On your own, read about the following topics related to the study of water.  

• Water cycle
• Sedimentation
• Biomes wetland and arctic (Ecosystems/Biomes/Biodiversity)
• How does a plant use water?

The content children are expected to know is described in the National Science Education Standards and Project 2061 Benchmarks:

• Water can be a liquid or a solid and can be made to go back and forth from one form to the other.
  • Solid, liquid, or gas (ice-water-air)
• If water is turned into ice and then the ice is allowed to melt, the amount of water is the same as it was before freezing.
  • Water cycle
• Water left in an open container disappears, but water in a closed container does not disappear.
• When liquid water disappears, it turns into a gas (vapor) in the air and can reappear as a liquid when cooled, or as a solid if cooled below the freezing point of water.
• Clouds and fog are made of tiny droplets of water.
  • Rain, snow, rainbows (develop own explanations)
  • Wet/dry areas and seasons (annual rainfall)
• Waves, water, and ice shape and reshape the Earth's land surface by eroding rock and soil in some areas and depositing them in other areas, sometimes in seasonal layers.
  • Erosion/changes in the Earth (slow and fast)

Web Sites

• The Three Phases of Water USA Today's weather site uses text and graphics to explain the three phases of water.
• Six important processes that make up the Water Cycle are described: evaporation; condensation; precipitation; surface runoff; infiltration; transpiration.
• Cryosphere Shows continental ice and glaciers, and sea ice.

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