Category: Grade 5

Lesson Summary

Every day, Nya takes a long walk from her village to a remote watering hole, where she can fetch water for her family. Despite her hard work, her little sister Akeer still gets sick from drinking dirty water. Can you create a water filter to clean the water, so Nya’s family won’t get sick anymore?

STE or Math Standards

• 5-ESS3-2. Test a simple system designed to filter particulates out of water and propose one change to the design to improve it.

ELA Standards

• Grade 5 Reading Standards for Informational Text [RI] Key Ideas and Details

Explain the relationships or interactions between two or more individuals, events, ideas, or concepts in a historical, scientific, mathematical, or technical text based on specific information in the text.

Video

Nya’s Long Walk: A Step at a Time

Lesson Summary

Meet Irene, a determined little girl who braves cold and harsh weather to deliver an important, large package. Choose one problem and then use your knowledge of the properties of materials to design a solution to help Irene more easily deliver the package.

1. Design a tool for Irene that will help her to carry a big, but light box easily in a snowstorm the next time she has to deliver a package.
2. Design a wind and cold proof coat using a combination of materials that will help Irene stay warm and dry during her journey to deliver the package

STE or Math Standards

• Matter and Its Interactions:

  5.PSI.3. Make observations and measurements of substances to describe characteristic properties of each, including color, hardness, reflectivity, electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, response to magnetic forces, and solubility.

• Technological Systems:

  5.3.5.ETS3.2(MA). Use sketches or drawings to show how each part of a product or device relates to other parts in the product or device.

ELA Standards

• Comprehension and Collaboration:

  CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.5.1. Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 5 topics and texts, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly

Video

Brave Irene read by Al Gore

Lesson Summary

“One Well” is a CitizenKid book that discusses the interconnectedness of the water of Earth. This nonfiction read leaves students with the enduring understanding that every raindrop, lake, underground river and glacier is part of a single global well. Each page takes the reader through an aspect of water on Earth, through developing background information and reveals some challenges. Background info: water cycle, aquatic habitats, and how plants and animals use water. The challenges: uneven distribution, access to, demands on and the pollution of water. This comprehensive text ends with a call to action towards water conservation.

Using their knowledge of water on Earth and the Engineering Design Process, students will propose a way to decrease water consumption or increase its availability to areas which have little access to water.

STE or Math Standards

• Science Standard: 5-ESS2-2. Describe and graph the relative amounts of salt water in the ocean; fresh water in lakes, rivers, and groundwater; and fresh water frozen in glaciers and polar ice caps to provide evidence about the availability of fresh water in Earth’s biosphere.
  • State Assessment Boundary: Inclusion of the atmosphere is not expected in state assessment.

  Note: This book could also be used for standard 5-ESS2-1 (Water cycle)​

ELA Standards

• Grade 5 Speaking and Listening Standards [SL]

  Comprehension and Collaboration

  Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 5 topics and texts, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly.

Video

One Well: The Story of Water Earth by Rochelle Strauss