This 5E lesson begins with an Engage activity that assesses prior knowledge of water cycle from elementary school.  It is followed by an Explore activity where students observe a teacher demonstrating the water cycle in a bowl and gather information based on their observations.  It continues with an Explain where students have the opportunity to explain what they understand on the water cycle with an emphasis of phase changes.  In the evaluate stage, students apply their knowledge of solids and liquids to classfiy various forms of precipitation.  .   

Students work to describe the different abiotic cycles (water, carbon, and nitrogen) through a variety of activities from which they get to choose.

Determine the dew point temperature for your classroom through a hands-on experiment. Use humidity and temperature probes to investigate the temperature at which it would rain in your classroom! Learn about water density and the conditions necessary to produce fog or rain.

 Water is the great architect of Earth and a defining factor for the location and movement of life on this planet. Without water, our world would look very different; without the watersheds which capture, coalesce, move, and recycle water throughout a natural system, human and wildlife habitats would not be the same. Freshwater rivers, streams, and lakes are some of the most heavily utilized and pressured natural systems on the planet; these critical habitats have taken the brunt of negative human actions for years. Now, more than ever, we must learn to safeguard our watersheds for the protection of all life that depends on them.For more information and classroom activities, please visit The Wildlife Center of Virginia and VPM UNTAMED websites. 

This resource is a remix of https://goopenva.org/courses/the-water-cycle-game. The water cycle game helps you learn how water molecules move through various places including rivers, the ocean, the earth’s surface, the atmosphere, and clouds. Actions such as evaporation, runoff, condensation, precipitation, soil absorption, and groundwater expansion move water from one zone to another.Modifications: This game can be played in cooperative groups or use as part of a personalized or blended learning playlist. This game has a lot of visuals and would help for those visual learners to better understand the water cycle process. Another modification would be to ask students to write a reflection about the water cycle in their own words and create a vocabulary bank. This encourages literacy in curriculum allowing students to use complete sentences with appropriate grammatical usage. 

An image from NASA that shows the water cycle and includes the vocabulary of the cycle.

Join Joe as he explores the weather! Look to the sky and get a better glimpse of clouds. Tour the major storms such as tornadoes, hurricanes, and thunderstorms. Dive into the water cycle and see how NASA studies the water cycle to help predict future weather patterns. Investigate wet weather by exploring the types of precipitation and the tools we use to measure it.