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Precious Drops: The Value of Water
This unit is designed to facilitate students' understandings of the value of water through reading stories from Peace Corps Volunteers who served in Kenya (East African Region) and Ghana (West African Region). As a product of this unit, each student will make a book comparing the value of water in the United States, Kenya and Ghana. An overall goal is to develop students' understanding of the similarities and differences of how the people in Kenyan and Ghanaian communities and their own community value water. Time Frame Curricular Areas Grades Essential Questions Materials Language Arts Standard 1:Demonstrates competence in the general skills and strategies of the writing process.Benchmark—Prewriting: Uses prewriting strategies to plan written work. Benchmark—Drafting and revising: Uses strategies to draft and revise written work. Benchmark—Editing and publishing: Uses strategies to edit and publish written work. Evaluates own and others' writing. Benchmark—Dictates or writes with a logical sequence of events. Benchmark—Dictates or writes detailed descriptions of familiar persons, places, objects, or experiences.
Language Arts Standard 2:Demonstrates competence in the stylistic and rhetorical aspects of writing.Benchmark—Uses general, frequently used words to convey basic ideas.
Language Arts Standard 3:Uses grammatical and mechanical conventions in written compositions.Benchmark—Forms letters in print and spaces words and sentences. Benchmark—Uses complete sentences in written compositions. Benchmark—Uses nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs in written compositions. Benchmark—Uses conventions of spelling, capitalization, and punctuation in written compositions .
Language Arts Standard 4:Gathers and uses information for research purposes.Benchmark—Generates questions about topics of personal interest. Benchmark—Uses books to gather information for research topics.
Language Arts Standard 5:Demonstrates competence in the general skills and strategies of the reading process.Benchmark—Uses picture clues and picture captions to aid comprehension and to make predictions about content. Benchmark—Decodes unknown words using basic elements of phonetic analysis. Benchmark—Uses self-correction strategies. Benchmark—Reads aloud familiar stories and passages with attention to rhythm, flow, and meter, prose and difficulty of the material.
Language Arts Standard 7:Demonstrates competence in the general skills and strategies for reading a variety of informational texts.Benchmark—Applies reading skills and strategies to a variety of informational books. Benchmark—Summarizes information found in texts. Benchmark—Relates new information to prior knowledge .
Language Arts Standard 8:Demonstrates competence in speaking and listening as tools for learning.Benchmark—Makes contributions in class and group discussions. Benchmark— Asks and responds to questions. Benchmark— Follows rules of conversation. (top of page)
Procedure As a product of this unit, each student will make a book comparing how water is valued in America, Kenya and Ghana. Each time they study a new country, they will write a narrative, and draw pictures. The narratives are revised and edited. This process will take place throughout the unit. Before you begin the unit, send a letter home to parents communicating information about the Precious Droplets learning unit, including a summary of goals and activities. Describe the experiments with water that you will be conducting in class during the first week of lessons, and make sure the parents know that on the first day you intend to limit their child's intake of water for several hours. Be sure to ask them to inform you of any health considerations that would prevent their child from participating in the first day's experiment. Also include the Water in Africa Web site.(http://www.peacecorps.gov/wws/water/africa/) Encourage parents to connect to this unit on the Peace Corps web site at home or at the local public library. Communicate with your local public library about creating an educational link to the Water in Africa Web site as a resource for parents and students in the class. 1. Tell the students that as part of a new unit about water they will perform some experiments to show ways that they value water. The first experiment will begin immediately. Make a show of pouring two large glasses or clear plastic cups of water and placing them in a location where all the students can see them. Tell the students that they can look at this water, but they cannot have any more water to drink for the next several hours. Resume your regular class activities until the specified time has passed. Note: Use your discretion about the length of time to conduct this experiment. In some cases the remainder of the day would not be a hardship, but if you live in dry area, are experiencing dry heat, or if your students will be vigorously exercising, do not limit their intake of water for more than a couple of hours. 2. At the end of the specified time, let your students get drinks of water and then ask them how they felt about the water they just drank. Was it any different from the water they drank on any other day? What were they thinking when they saw the full glasses of water that they could not have? Ask them if they would have traded something for a drink. Bring out the concept that people seem to value things that are scarce more than they value what is readily available. 3. Write "The Value Of Water" on a large piece of chart paper and ask the students what they think this means. Talk with the students about why they need water in their community and generate a list of their experiences, including their comments on the experiment of the day. Keep the chart hanging in the classroom as reference for the students. Explain that they will be adding things to this list as they learn more about the value of water. Explain that they will first learn about their own community, and then they will look at some African communities in Kenya and Ghana to see how the people who live there value water. Days 2 and 3 1. Tell students that today they will conduct another experiment to show the value of water. Ask the students what they think will happen if flowers don't get any water. Discuss this question for a few minutes, and then summarize what they say and write their hypothesis on a large piece of chart paper. 2. Take a small bouquet of flowers and divide it into two bunches. Place one bunch in a glass with water, and the other in a glass with no water in it. Tell the students that they will be observing the flowers over the next two days to see what happens to them. 3. At regular intervals (chosen by availability in your schedule) have the students gather around the glasses of flowers and observe them. Discuss their observations, and keep a table with their data, on the chart with the hypothesis. For example:
4. At the end of two days, review the data chart with the students. Have them go back to their hypothesis and ask them if they proved that they were right. Then resume your discussion about the value of water, and ask the students what they have learned from their experiment. Write pertinent comments on the chart that you began on the first day of the unit, “The Value of Water."
Days 4 and 51. Tell the students that today they will begin another experiment that will last for two days. Ask the students to hypothesize what they think will happen if they pour two glasses of milk, drink the milk, rinse one of the glasses with water and leave the other one without rinsing it. After discussion, formulate a hypothesis and write it on a new piece of chart paper.2. Bring out two glasses or clear plastic cups and pour milk into each of them. Have someone drink the milk, or pour it back into the containers. Be sure to leave a very small amount in each glass so the students can tell there was milk in the glasses. Tell the students you are going to rinse one of the glasses with water, and do so, swirling the water around in the glass before pouring it out. Mark the glasses with a permanent marker so you know which one was rinsed. Place the glasses where students can observe them. 3. As in the flower experiment, create a table for the students' observations on the chart with the hypothesis. Guide the students' observations on a regular basis. Note that there will be one day (or more, if you so choose) of overlap, where the students will be observing and collecting data about two experiments.
4. At the end of two days, review the data chart with the students. Have them go back to their hypothesis and ask them if they proved that they were right. Then resume your discussion about the value of water, and ask the students what they have learned from their experiment. Write pertinent comments on the chart that you began on the first day of the unit, “The Value of Water."
Day 6Using “The Value of Water" chart and the data they have collected through observation, have the students start on the product they will be creating, a book about the value of water. Have them write or dictate stories and draw pictures about why water is important, and how they value it. Help students revise and edit their work using the writing process adopted in your district. For primary students, you may choose to work with the groups one at a time for 15 minutes each day or have parent volunteers in the classroom so that each group has a mentor. Have students share their work with the class.
Day 7(Note: If you have already taught “Splish-Splash: Daily Use of Water" unit, there is no need to teach this step. However, you may wish to review the information with the students.)1. Explain to students that they will be learning about ways people in countries of Africa use water in their communities and homes. Tell them that they will be seeing photos and reading real life "Ways with Water" stories from Peace Corps Volunteers in the African country of Ghana and Kenya. Write the words “Peace Corps Volunteers" on the board and ask the students what those words mean. Help students define each of the words individually and their meaning together. 2. Use the Peace Corps web site, especially the Kids World pages to develop their understandings of Peace Corps Volunteers. Explain that Volunteers share their experiences on the Peace Corps Web site and that the class will be reading some of their stories about water in communities of Africa. Spend more time on Kids World familiarizing students with the concept of Peace Corps.
Day 81. Using a political world map and globe, show the class the location of your own community, country and continent. Have a few students take turns showing the class the location of your community, country and continent. This establishes an understanding of where the place they live is located in the world. Write the name of your community, country and continent on the board for students to re-read.2. Next show the students the location of the continent of Africa. Show them Kenya in the region called East Africa and Ghana in the region called West Africa. Have a few students take turns showing the location of these three countries and naming the regions of Africa in which each is located. Write the names of the two countries and the continent of Africa on the board for students to reread. 3. Using a political map of the continent of Africa, show the class the locations of the two countries of Kenya and Ghana. Have students take turns locating these two countries on the map continent of Africa. 4. Optional: Set up a classroom Globe/Map Center in the classroom with maps, globes and geography books that students can use to locate these countries and look at their relationship to the continent of Africa to their own country and continent.
Day 9Prior to Class: Identify the images from Kenya and Ghana by bookmarking the pages or downloading the images to your computer. See the Help section for suggestions and assistance.
Print the images from Kenya from your browser or print each separately from your saved collection and put them in a three ring binder notebook with the accompanying Photo Narratives for Kenya Value of Water (PDF). Make this available for students to use on their own after the initial introduction on the computer. 1. With the whole class or with small groups gathered around the computer, show the students the set of Kenya images that show the value of water: KE0101, KE0226, KE0229, KE0305, KE0312, and KE0335. 2. Write down and define any words that are not familiar to the students. This can be their vocabulary list for the week. Write the words on chart paper or on the board for students to see throughout the unit. Day 10 Review vocabulary from the unit by having students play games such as memory or concentration, matching up definitions with vocabulary words. For informal assessment repeat the sequence of photos and ask the students to reread the captions and then give an accurate description about each of the images. Help them to verbally describe the content of the images in their own words with accuracy, using descriptive language. Day 11 1. Read aloud the stories of David Frommell, Kendall Rondeau, and Barbara Hinsman from “Precious Droplets: Stories about the Value of Water in Kenya."(PDF) Identify unfamiliar words, define and add them to the vocabulary list. Give each student copies of the stories. You may choose to edit or revise sentences, vocabulary, and story length to accommodate students' reading skills. Depending on your class reading levels, you may choose to select more stories from the stories about the sources of water from Kenya on the Water in Africa Web site. 2. Using your classroom reading instruction process, strategies, and groupings, provide reading instruction to students. Check students' comprehension by having them restate what they have read, relate what they have read to their own experiences, and share their own ideas, reflections and responses about what they have learned from reading. 3. Record the ways David Frommell's community in the Rift Valley, Kendall Roneau's community in Mikarati, and Barbara Hinsman's Vigeze Village community value water, how they protect and manage the water, and water-related problems the community faces.
Day 121. Review the vocabulary learned to date. Have students take turns reading the charts about the value of water that are hanging around the room.2. Have the “Precious Droplets: Stories about the Value of Water in Kenya."(PDF) available in the classroom library for students to read independently and practice reading with one another. 3. Work with the students to write narratives and draw pictures about their understandings of the value of water in the Kenyan communities they learned about though the photos and stories. Point out the charts that are hanging around the room and tell students that they may use these for reference. These narratives will be revised, edited, and published in the book they are creating about the value of water. 4. Have each student share his or her writing with the whole class and then add the writing to his or her book about the value of water. Provide opportunities for questions/comments from classmates.
Days 13 through 161. Review the locations of Kenya and Ghana on a map.2. Explain that students will begin to study the value of water in Ghana. Follow the same procedures that you used previously while learning about the Kenyan communities, but substitute the following images from Ghana GH0106, GH0208, GH0210, GH0304, GH0323, GH0424, GH0609, GH0617, GH0708, 3. Use the “The value of water" stories of Sasha Bennett, Nell Todd, Amy Wiedemann, and Molly Campbell from “Precious Droplets Stories About The Value of Water in Ghana."(PDF)
Day 171. Explain to the students that they will identify similarities and differences of how people value water in their own communities and the ones they have studied in Kenya and in Ghana.2. Draw a three-ring Venn diagram on the chalkboard with each circle labeled for a country. Explain how to use it by beginning a discussion of the water access that they have read about and written about in the past two weeks. When students mention an activity from one country, ask them whether it is similar to or different than what is done in the other two countries. Write the activity in the correct ring. Demonstrate one or two activities in this manner. 3. Break the class into groups of two or three and Distribute copies of the Venn diagram. Give them 15-20 minutes to record as many similarities and differences in water access as possible. Rotate around to mentor the students in their work. For primary students, an option is to have parent volunteers or have older, intermediate students assist each group. Provide copies of “Precious Droplets Stories about the Value of Water in Kenya"(PDF)and “Precious Droplets Stories about the Value of Water in Ghana"(PDF) for each group as a reference. Have printed copies of the country images and their narratives available for reference also. 4. Bring the whole class together in front of a classroom writing board with the three-ring Venn diagram. Have each group share their answers while you record them onto the large Venn diagram on the board. 5. Collect the Venn diagrams for assessment purposes and to be used by the groups when they complete their writing assignment. Assess their Venn diagrams for number of ideas and accuracy of content.
Day 181. Distribute the Venn Diagrams the students completed the previous day. Ask them what they can tell about how and why people value water in these communities by looking at their diagrams.2. Elicit statements and write them down as samples for the students, for example: Some people in our community, in Kenya and in Ghana value water so they can grow crops. People in some communities in our community, in Kenya, and Ghana value water to keep themselves and their homes clean. 3. Have students work with a partner to write more about similarities and differences. If possible, have parent volunteers or intermediate grades students assist the pairs of students. This will be the last part of the book on the value of water. 4. Tell each student to draw a picture to illustrate his/her comparison page.
Day 191. Give the students all the pages they have written about the value of water. Help them put them in order. Tell them to think of a title for their books, and then help them create a cover that includes the title and themselves as author.2. Help each child bind his/her book.
3. Have students read their books aloud to each other. Arrange for them to read them to other audiences in the school, home, and community.
(top of page) Reading AssessmentsUse the reading rubric(PDF) that is provided to assess your students' ability, or alternatively, use the methods that are recommended by your school or district.
Writing AssessmentsUse the writing rubric(PDF) that is provided to assess your students' ability, or alternatively, use the methods that are recommended by your school or district.Follow-up Activities 2. Art Lessons: Using the visual images and descriptive narratives in the reading booklets of the Drip Drop unit, have students use art materials (crayons, watercolors, markers, pencil sketches) to create their own illustrations.
3. Presentations: Have the class present their books, or parts from them, to other classes in the school. Students can choose to show images from the Web site that they think are relevant to their books. Additional Resources About the Author
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