1 of 28

Arizona Project WET

Water Festival Unit Lessons

2025-2026

2 of 28

Student Pre and Post Survey

V

AFTER

Please administer the "post-water festival" survey after completing the unit, ideally no more than four weeks after the water festival event.

BEFORE

Please administer the "pre-water festival" survey before students start any of the lessons. This is not a test. Please feel free to facilitate reading the questions as a class.

https://projectwet.arizona.edu/

arizona-water-festival/

teacher-resources/student-survey

3 of 28

AWF Unit of Study�

V

Summary:

4^th grade students explore the Arizona water cycle, map our regional watersheds, unearth the connection between groundwater and surface water, and learn how their behaviors impact water availability in Arizona. Students use this knowledge to develop accessible, community-focused solutions that simultaneously conserve water and promote sustainable decision-making.

4 of 28

WATER FESTIVAL

UNIT

GUIDING QUESTIONS:

Where is Arizona’s water?

What are the connections between people, water, and heat in the Earth's systems?

5 of 28

GROUNDWATER

Model aquifer recharge and extraction connecting water availability to human behavior.

Use a system's model to learn how water moves through a watershed and demonstrate the human impact of changes to that natural system; city surfaces affect the movement of water, and those changes can be observed/measured. Identify the cause-and-effect interactions between matter and energy in the hydrosphere, biosphere, atmosphere, and geosphere.

WATER CYCLE

WATERSHED

SUSTAINABILITY

Act as environmental stewards, conserving water through

both behaviors and available technologies, supporting resilient solutions that benefit the (biodiverse) community. Design a solution for water savings and safety.

Model the movement of water molecules through the Arizona water cycle. Find evidence to support the argument that energy and matter interact in Earth's systems to create the water cycle.

6 of 28

Intro Demonstration Video:

7 of 28

Water Principles

WATER FESTIVAL UNIT:

Water is essential for all life on Earth to exist.
Water connects all Earth systems.
Water is a natural resource.
Water has unique and complex physical and chemical characteristics.
Water resources are managed.

8 of 28

Introduction:�How Water Moves In Earth's Systems

Investigative Questions

How does water move and change form in the earth’s natural system?
What are the forces that drive the water cycle?

9 of 28

Water Movement & Form Changes

10 of 28

Wrap-Up

Energy and Matter

&

Cause and Effect

11 of 28

Water Cycle Vocabulary 1

Term	Definition
Evaporation	When water changes into vapor and goes into the air.
Condensation	When water vapor cools and turns back into liquid.
Runoff	Water that flows over the ground into rivers, lakes, or streams.
Transpiration	When plants let out water through their leaves into the air.
Precipitation	Water that falls from the sky as snow, sleet, or rain.
Infiltration	When water soaks into the ground.
Percolation	When water keeps moving deeper through soil and rocks.�

12 of 28

LESSON 1.1: Where is the water?

�

Investigative Questions

Where is the water in each landscape?
How and why does it change form?

WATER CYCLE: LESSON 1

13 of 28

Where is water found in these different landscapes?

Engage: Give students the desert/forest coloring sheet and ask them to create a color or symbol code to show where the water is. Prompt students to think about where water can be found outside of lakes, rivers and oceans.

Where is the liquid form of water? Where is the gaseous form of water? Where is the solid form of water? What causes water (matter) to change from a solid to a liquid to a gas? - (Energy from the sun). What causes water vapor to precipitate and fall from the sky and percolate into the ground? (Gravity). Ask students to share their ideas and discuss in small groups. Generate a class list on the board/smartboard/poster board.

�Explore: Ask students to commit to a position on the following questions: Is there more water in the desert or in the forest? Why? Ask students to generate a list of evidence to support their answer to the above questions.

Explain: Learn key vocabulary. Play the Gimkit for review.

Elaborate: Ask early finishers to choose an organism in the desert side of the picture and research

and describe how it is able to survive with less water in the desert.

14 of 28

How are desert organisms able to survive with less water in the desert?

15 of 28

16 of 28

How much water do we have in Arizona? Why?

Total land area of Arizona:

113,990 square miles

Total water area of Arizona:

0.3%

Aquifers =

17 of 28

Investigative Questions

How does water move through our local water cycle?

Are you a part of our water cycle?

Does water move in and out of your body?

We live in a desert!

18 of 28

Wrap-Up

Is there more water available for living organisms in a desert or in a forest?

LESSON 1.1

19 of 28

Molecules in Motion

�

Investigative Question

What are the relationships between matter and energy in the movement of water in the water cycle?

WATER CYCLE: LESSON 1.2

20 of 28

Demonstration

WATERCYCLE: Molecules in Motion

Students will observe the motion of water molecules using food coloring so that those motions are visible and will brainstorm driving questions to explore what is happening.

21 of 28

WATERCYCLE: Molecules in Motion

Create a See-Think-Wonder Chart

What did you see/observe in the left jar and the right jar when food coloring was added?

What ideas do you have about why the dye may have behaved the way it did in each jar?

22 of 28

WATERCYCLE: Molecules in Motion

23 of 28

Investigation

WATERCYCLE: Molecules in Motion

Why do you think the hot water rose while the cold water stayed in the vial?

What does this experiment tell you about how hot water behaves versus cold water?

24 of 28

WATERCYCLE: Molecules in Motion

Whole Body Simulation

Students get to become water molecules and participate in a full-body activity to see how heat affects movement of molecules.

You can also do this activity in the classroom and have the students change states according to the speed of music – with the music representing heat energy.

In this activity students become water molecules and start as water in a gas form (students move freely and quickly, waving hands and wiggling fingers). Over time some heat energy is lost and they now become liquid. As a liquid they begin bonding with other molecules and letting go (do this by putting a hand on a neighbor’s shoulder and letting go and then moving on to another). More heat is lost and they become slower and slower as the temperature drops and now they get very close together (like we observed the cold water in the vial did). But when water gets cold enough it does an amazing thing… what happens? It freezes and becomes a solid and expands into ice. As ice water molecules stay bonded making crystal hexagonal structure (have students in groups of 6 put a hand on shoulders and stiffen their arms).

Now that you are ice are you closer together or farther apart, then when you were a cold liquid? Farther apart… so what would happen if we put ice in room temperature water? What does the ice do? It floats! Water molecules turn solid in ice form and spread out creating more space making them float… this is very important to the water cycle that ice floats. If the water at the bottom of lake froze first then all the fish would die…

25 of 28

WATERCYCLE: Molecules in Motion

Water Molecule Simulation

https://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/states-of-matter-basics/latest/states-of-matter-basics_en.html

26 of 28

Water has unique and complex physical and chemical characteristics.

Nature of Water:

Two hydrogens and one oxygen atom
The polar or "sticky" nature of water allows for cohesion and adhesion.

It is these unique characteristics that make water so special and important.

More precisely, the positive and negative charges of the hydrogen and oxygen atoms that make up water molecules makes them attracted to each other. In a water molecule, the two hydrogen atoms align themselves along one side of the oxygen atom, with the result being that the oxygen side has a partial negative charge and the side with the hydrogen atoms has a partial positive charge. Thus when the positive side on one water molecule comes near the negative side of another water molecule, they attract each other and form a bond.

Cohesion is when water molecules stick to other water molecules. This is how water droplets form, and eventual rivers, lakes, streams, and even oceans.

Adhesions is when water molecules stick to other molecules and surfaces. Any easy example of this is water droplets sticking to the side of a glass when enjoying a beverage. Clouds form when water molecules stick to dust and other particles in the air.

Adhesion and cohesion are water properties that affect every water molecule on Earth and also the interaction of water molecules with molecules of other substances. Essentially, cohesion and adhesion are the "stickiness" that water molecules have for each other and for other substances.

27 of 28

Water Cycle Vocabulary 2

Liquid Water	Water that flows and takes the shape of its container.
Solid Water	Water that is frozen and hard.
Gaseous Water (Water as a gas).	Water in the air as vapor.
Water Molecule	The tiniest piece of water, made of hydrogen and oxygen. One hydrogen atom bonded to two oxygen atoms. H20!
Kinetic Energy	Energy of movement.
Heat Energy	Energy from warmth that makes things move faster.
Weather	What the atmosphere is like today (hot, dry, rainy, snowing etc).
Climate	What the weather is usually like over many years.
Gravity	A force that pulls things toward the ground.

28 of 28

Wrap-Up

Cause and Effect

&

Energy and Matter

When we add or subtract heat to water, it changes, and that is important!

What heat source drives the water cycle again?

LESSON 1.2