Megan Ebert

Indirect Instruction Lesson Plan Template*

Subject: Science, Water Cycle
Common Core/Essential Standard Objective: 5.P.2 Understand the interactions of matter and energy and the changes that
occur.
5.P.2.1 Explain how the suns energy impacts the processes of the water cycle( including evaporations, transpiration,
condensation, precipitation and runoff).
Daily Lesson Objective (student friendly): Students will be able to understand the process of the water cycle, and know
the forms that water can take.
Activity

Description of Activities and Setting

1. Engage

2. Explore

3. Explain

Ask students, What is a cycle? Invite the students to name some cycles that
are a part of their lives (e.g., morning, afternoon, night; winter, spring, summer,
and fall).
Ask, How many of you have heard about the water cycle? (Most students will
probably raise their hands.) Ask students to draw a picture of the water cycle.
Tell students that the water cycle is a model for thinking about the journey that
water takesexplain that you are going to read a book that will describe more
about The Waters Journey.
Following the reading, ask students to discuss their drawings and ideas, and how
these compared to those shared by the author. Is there anything the author
included in her description of the waters journey that they omitted from their
drawing and vice versa?
Invite students to pair up and share their drawings with each other, suggesting
modifications to make in light of the story that was read.
What would it be like if we were a drop of water? What would that experience
be like? Tell students you are going to play a game of chance, in which they will
get to be a drop of water.
Introduce the seven stations to students (mountain, ocean, cloud, stream,
groundwater, animal, and plant).
Divide students into fairly even groups, and assign them to stations.
Students remove a strip from the envelope at their station. They should read the
strip and record their step in the journey, and their destination. When you give
the signal, students should go to their destination. (Repeat this at least 5 times).
Students should then return to their seats and write a brief story, from a water
drops point of view, which describes the journey they just took during the water
cycle.
Ask students to pair up and share their stories. How are their journeys alike?
How do they differ?
Have students share similarities and differences between their stories and their
classmates.
Write the names of the seven stations on the chalkboard, and provide each
student with 5 post-it notes. Instruct students to create a post-it by each of the
five stations they visited to create a class bar graph. Then, discuss the following
questions:
1) In the game, which stations seem to be visited most? What can we

Megan Ebert

4. Elaborate

5. Evaluate
Assessment Methods of
all objectives/skills

infer from this?

2) Can you think of other parts of the water cycle that were not
included in the game? (Puddles, lakes, etc.) Where might they be
included in the cycle?
3) What do you think would happen if all the Earths water stayed in
the oceans? In the clouds? Why do you think water does not stay in
one place?
4) How do you think the water cycle is important to plants and
animals?
Ask students to revisit their original drawings, considering it in terms of the
pathways they and their classmates took during the game. Students can pair up
and discuss their ideas together or in small groups to decide what they would
change in order to more accurately represent the water cycle.
Have each individual student create a new drawing of the water cycle, and to
write a description of how it differs from their original drawing (What did they
learn?). Collect both the original and revised drawings from all students.
At the end of the lesson students will write a one paragraph summary of what they
learned that day, along with how their first thought/drawing of a water cycle differed
from their last drawing of the water cycle. In order to determine the students mastery of
comprehending what the water cycle is and how it operates.

6. Assessment Results of
all objectives/skills
Materials/Technology: The Waters Journey a childrens book by Eleonore Schmid
Water Wonders stations and chance cards (Actitivty #44 in Project Learning Tree Curriculum Guide)
For each student:
Paper (to draw the water cycle)
Paper (to write about the water cycle)
5 Post-it notes (to record observations from the activity)
*Taken from UNCC / edTPA and modified (simplified) for use in ELED 3111 (djs)