Water, Water Everywhere but not Enough to Drink

Our class is currently hard at work on our water PBL for January.  We have been learning all about water in America and comparing and contrasting it to water around the world.  We have researched and made noticings charts of where water is located, how we use water, the water cycle, pollution in our water, and how to have clean water.  We have also read many informational texts and discussed and practiced how to determine importance while researching and how text features can help give us more information.  We are nearing the end of this unit and now students are working in groups to create a magazine modeled after the Time for Kids that we read each Friday.  In these magazines, the students are listing facts they have learned about water as well as facts they have learned about how water is different in Rwanda than in America.

In the pictures below, the students were experiencing what it is like to gather water from the cafeteria restrooms and transport it in buckets back to our classroom.  This was just a tiny glimpse of what children in Rwanda have to do each day; however, their water is not as clean looking as ours.

The first time they carried the buckets by hand back to the classroom, and the whole process took 23 minutes.  Then, we brainstormed ideas of how to make the process go faster.  One student mentioned that in the books he read, he saw the people in Africa carrying jugs while riding their bicycle.  We knew we could not ride bicycles down the hallway, but that lead to another student's idea.  Hunter suggested that we use one of the carts that roll on wheels so we could go faster and the buckets would not be so heavy. Jackson said we needed to add lids to the tops of the buckets so the water would not splash out.

Our new time was only 9 minutes!!  

We visited the Wonder Room to learn about rivers and how they flow.

We created a homemade water filter and found the dirtiest water puddle on the playground to gather water from to test.  If you look closely at the last filter picture, you will notice that our yucky, muddy water filter through and came out amazingly clear.

Stay tuned to see pictures of the magazines in the next few weeks!!