Teaching

Javier Ortega TYB

16/05/17

Science for
Fun:
Teaching about Water Cycle
th
and Water Treatment to 4
class students

By: Javier Ortega

Introduction
Javier Ortega TYB
16/05/17

Our group we did a presentation about water cycle and water treatment.

My Group was composed by Gerard, Shawn, Joseph, Filip, Marcin and Javier.

Gerard was in charge of doing the PowerPoint and he also was the project
manager, Shawn and Joseph did the presentation, Filip was in charge of doing the
quiz, Marcin was working on the experiment and Javier was planning the lesson.

The lesson we chose to do was water cycle and water treatment. The reason we
chose that subject was because we found it really important for the kids to know.

We thought water cycle would help the kids to understand a little bit about
clouds and their formation, and, by doing that, the young students would be
more interested in the world that surrounds them, and will also understand some
of the wonderful miracles of nature that happen in our everyday life.

By teaching water treatment to the kids we hopped that kids would understand
were the water they drink comes from and all the hard work that goes behind it.
Also we hopped that some of the National School students would somehow feel
interested to water treatment or water cycle and open a new interest for the
future.

Another reason we decided to work on water cycle was that we found some
really cool experiments to do like the experiment of the cloud and the water filter
made with objects that we can find in our surroundings.

The last reason to do water cycle and water treatment was that we found it in a
book and between all the lessons in that book was the one our biology teacher
recommended to us.

Execution
Javier Ortega TYB
16/05/17

The first thing we did after choosing our lesson was to assign our role in the
project, the decision was difficult but in the end we came up with the following
reasons that explained why everyone in the group fit the role they were given.

Because the people in charge of doing the presentation need to explain the
lesson in front of all the kids we thought that the best idea was to have some of
the Irish students doing it, the reason was that the Irish students have the best
accent and that the kids will understand the lesson better if it was done by
someone with the same accent that them, also the students in charge if the
presentation needed to be more extrovert and also able to speak up so the kids
could understand them. And by following that idea we came up with Shawn and
Joseph being the ones in charge of the presentation.

The person in charge of doing the PowerPoint needed to be someone who

understood about computers, also he needed to be used to use the PowerPoint,
so he could know some tricks others didnt, like putting cool transitions or cool
effects. And because this person didnt need to speak someone more introverted
would fit perfectly the role. And by following those standards Gerard was the
chosen to do the PowerPoint presentation.

The one in charge of the final assessment should be someone that knew about
the topic we were doing and also knew how to work with little kids and what
questions would be right to make them answer in the quiz. Filip was the one in
charge of that.

For doing the experiment speaking wasnt required, but the person in this role
needed to do a bit of research to discover some cool experiments related with
the topic. The person that was assigned to this role was Marcin.

The project manager was another role Gerard had, in the following role Gerard
was able to give orders to the other people in the group and to put the roles to
the others in the group

The last role was planning the lesson the person in charge of the following task
needed to make sure that everything was in order and that the lesson was
carried out smoothly, also he needed to write down some really useful tips given
by the teacher, and to take notes of everything so any piece of information was
lost. Javier was in charge of that task.
The things we were teaching the students were: Basic information about water,
the explanation of water cycle, the way the depurators work to clean the water
and basics about filtration.
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16/05/17

In the PowerPoint there were around 6 slides in the first one there was the title
and the names of the members of the team, in the second one there was a list of
the things that we will learn during the explanation, in the third one there were
all the safety measures, in the fourth one there was an explanation of the water
cycle in ,the fifth one there was an explanation of water filtration, in number six
there was a video about how to do a filter, in last one we wrote thanks for
listening and we asked for any question.

The presentation, Gerard started by presenting the topic briefly and explaining
what water was, after explaining the topic and telling the safety measures Shawn
started explaining the water cycle, during the explanation Shawn asked
questions such as who knows what water cycle is? or does someone know
how its called when the water goes from liquid to gas?. After explaining the
water cycle Javier did a little experiment of creating a cloud. Joseph started
explaining what water filtration was and what it was done in the depurators after
that, he asked questions such as who know how goes the water from not
potable to potable? or who knows what filtration is? to the kids.

After learning about filtration Gerard put a small video were an experiment about
filtration was explained, this is the experiment that we did afterwards. Once the
filtration was finished and the questions were answered we did a little
experiment about filtration, the experiment was a natural filter inside a bottle,
and the point was to make dirty water clear after going through the filter. When
we were finished with the experiment Marcin and Filip handed some papers with
a quiz Filip had previously prepared, Javier gave the pens. After that the
presentation was finished.

We did two experiments one were the National school students had the chance
of doing it themselves and one experiment that because we needed to operate
with boiling water it was better to not letting the kids do it. The first experiment
we did we did it during the presentation and it helped to explain the water cycle,
the name of the experiment was Make a cloud, and this is how you do it:
1. You take a recipient and you fill it till the half of it with boiling water.
2. You take a plate with ice on top and you cover the top of the recipient with
it
3. You remove the plate and you gas some aerosol or deodorant to the
boiling water
4. You place the plate again on top of the recipient
5. You wait till the cloud is formed

The second experiment we did was a natural filter, the steps you need to follow
to do this are:
1. You cut the bottom of a bottle of water and you put it upside down
 Javier Ortega TYB
16/05/17

2. On the thinnest part of the bottle were the tap should be you put some
paper filter
3. After that you purr thin sand inside the bottle
4. Next you put thicker sand or grabble on top of it
5. Next you put some dirty water
6. Wait and see how the dirty water after going through the filter changes
into clean water

Cloud experiment Water Filter experiment

Ic
1.
Dirty
Recipie water
Plat Bottl
Boiling
Water
2
. Aeros
ol

Thick

Thin Sand

3
Clean
.
Paper

Filip made the assessment, it was a written quiz about water. The quiz had nine
questions like Precipitation includes rain and snow? A. True, B. False or The
water cycle is? A. The continuous movement of water, B. How water goes
through a house, C. The stuff in water. The kids did the quiz really well and in
my opinion, they did enjoyed the quiz given. In the case a student had a question
they could ask to any member of the group that will provide them some extra
help.
Javier Ortega TYB
16/05/17

Evaluation

If I was to do this again I would have changed some things.

First, the presentation wasnt to interactive so maybe some kids could feel a bit
bored, If I was to this again I would have asked more questions to the kids, such
as who knows what water treatment is? or which are the steps of the water
cycle?, by asking this simple questions kids would feel more interested and
would listen better to the presentation.

Second I would have tried the experiment we were trying before doing it whit the
kids, because it was an easy experiment everything went quite well, but, for
following occasions it will be better if the experiment is tried before doing it in
the lesson

Third I would have changed some of the points in the PowerPoint presentation,
maybe I would have written down some more information in the slides, so kids
could read the basics.

Next I would have covered more topics about water. Water treatment and water
cycle are nice topics to cover, but maybe in the end the presentation was a little
bit shorter that what it would be ideal to be, if I needed to do this again I would
have added some more topics, like, what is in water or different topics about
oceans or rivers, like the life in them or the different part of them.

Finally for the group evaluation I would have prepared some pens and other type
of materials before doing the final assessment because it ended up being a
disaster when it came the time of handing the pens to do the quiz.

As a personal evaluation I think I should have asked for more parts of the
projects to present and not only the experiment of the cloud, this would have be
ideal because in the end I felt as if I didnt spoke as much as I wanted or filled to
do. I should have also focused more in the preparation of the lesson so
Javier Ortega TYB
16/05/17

everything would be much more organized, also I would have checked more in
the PowerPoint so I could have improved it a little bit before the presentation and
I should have tried to do some of the experiments at home so it wasnt a
surprise the day of the presentation. Also I should have talked to the people in
the group so I could talk to them about some tips that I wrote down during the
presentation that the teacher gave to the class.