Add to List

Grade 5. During the module's 15 lessons, students design and test devices to protect Earth's water resources from human-caused pollution and to clean polluted water. This module includes a teacher guide, 10 student activity guides, 16 Smithsonian Science Stories student readers, and enough materials for 32 students to use 1 time.

Grade 5. Module Highlights: During the module's 15 lessons, students design and test devices to protect Earth's water resources from human-caused pollution and to clean polluted water. This module includes a teacher guide, 10 student activity guides, 16 Smithsonian Science Stories student readers, and enough materials for 32 students to use 1 time.

Student Readers Available HERE

Alignment to the Next Generation Science Standards*
Performance Expectations

• 3-5 ETS1-1: Define a simple design problem reflecting a need or want that includes specified criteria for success and constraints on materials, time, or cost.
• 3-5 ETS1-2: Generate and compare multiple possible solutions to a problem based on how well each is likely to meet the criteria and constraints of the problem.
• 3-5 ETS1-3: Plan and carry out fair tests in which variables are controlled and failure points are considered to identify aspects of a model or prototype that can be improved.
• 5-ESS2-1: Develop a model using an example to describe ways the geosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and/or atmosphere interact.
• 5-ESS2-2: Describe and graph the amounts of salt water and fresh water in various reservoirs to provide evidence about the distribution of water on Earth.
• 5-ESS3-1: Obtain and combine information about ways individual communities use science ideas to protect the Earth's resources and environment.

Disciplinary Core Ideas
ETS1.A: Defining and Delimiting Engineering Problems

• Possible solutions to a problem are limited by available materials and resources (constraints). The success of a designed solution is determined by considering the desired features of a solution (criteria). Different proposals for solutions can be compared on the basis of how well each one meets the specified criteria for success or how well each takes the constraints into account.

• Research on a problem should be carried out before beginning to design a solution. Testing a solution involves investigating how well it performs under a range of likely conditions.
• Tests are often designed to identify failure points or difficulties, which suggest the elements of the design that need to be improved.
• At whatever stage, communicating with peers about proposed solutions is an important part of the design process, and shared ideas can lead to improved designs.

• Different solutions need to be tested in order to determine which of them best solves the problem, given the criteria and the constraints.

• Earth's major systems are the geosphere (solid and molten rock, soil, and sediments), the hydrosphere (water and ice), the atmosphere (air), and the biosphere (living things, including humans). These systems interact in multiple ways to affect Earth's surface materials and processes. The ocean supports a variety of ecosystems and organisms, shapes landforms, and influences climate. Winds and clouds in the atmosphere interact with the landforms to determine patterns of weather.

• Nearly all of Earth's available water is in the ocean. Most fresh water is in glaciers or underground; only a tiny fraction is in streams, lakes, wetlands, and the atmosphere.

• Human activities in agriculture, industry, and everyday life have had major effects on the land, vegetation, streams, ocean, air, and even outer space. But individuals and communities are doing things to help protect Earth's resources and environments.

Focal Science and Engineering Practices

• Developing and using models
• Constructing explanations
• Designing solutions

Focal Crosscutting Concepts

• Systems and system models

Phenomena and Problems Storyline
Lesson Summaries
Lesson 1: A Plastic Problem
Students create a model explaining the macroplastic pollution problem and record initial solution ideas. They discuss topics to research to help them better understand the problem and design solutions.
Lesson 2: An Ocean Full of Plastic
Students obtain information from a text about specific ocean ecosystems and how each ecosystem is impacted by microplastic pollution. They analyze a graph showing the increase in macroplastic pollution over time. Students combine information to further develop their explanatory model of the problem.
Lesson 3: Macroplastics on the Move
Students make observations to gather evidence about wind and moving water as ways their local area is connected to the problem. They revise their model-based explanation of the problem.
Lesson 4: Earth System Components
Students research the Earth system using a text. They identify interactions between two Earth system components represented in their models.
Lesson 5: Protecting Ocean Ecosystems
Student groups use evidence collected through research to build a model of a solution to keep macroplastics from moving out of their location via flowing water.
Lesson 6: A Local-Global Solution
Teams test their solution under two water-flow conditions. They record observations as data. They add their solution to their system model and explain how it would work within the system to reduce pollution reaching the ocean.
Lesson 7: Water for Tulare
Students create an initial problem statement and record ideas of where water for farming could come from.
Lesson 8: Rain in the Basin?
Students research precipitation as a source of agricultural water. They graph precipitation data and use a simulation to observe how Earth system components interact to cause different patterns of weather. They use evidence to explain if precipitation is a possible water source for agriculture.
Lesson 9: All the Water in the World
Students obtain information from graphs representing the distribution of water on Earth and from a text. They use evidence to suggest sources of freshwater for the Tulare Basin. The class revises the problem statement and criteria for success.
Lesson 10: Water for All?
Students obtain information from a text and a simulation as evidence for how water-access solutions can impact the environment. They revise the goals for solutions to the problem.
Lesson 11: Solution Component Testing
Student groups test materials to see how they could be used as part of a system to move water. They identify materials that work and potential failure points to avoid when designing solution models.
Lesson 12: Irrigating Tulare's Fields
Students build and test a solution model, considering the model criteria and constraints. They identify failure points. Two groups share information about their models and test results. Individual students explain which of the two solutions was better based on how well they met criteria and constraints for the model solution.
Lesson 13: Cool Clear Water, Part 1
Students obtain information about the problem and explain how the water became polluted, focusing on the interactions between two Earth system components. They suggest criteria for a solution.
Science Challenge
Lesson 14: Cool Clear Water, Part 2
Students explore materials to determine how well they could interact as part of a system to improve water clarity under two waterflow conditions. Groups use evidence from their research to decide what materials they will use to build a model of a system that could solve the problem.
Lesson 15: Cool Clear Water, Part 3
Students build models of their solution systems. They test their models under two conditions, recording failure points and test data. They use their test data and their model to share their solution with another team. The teams compare the two solutions. They explain how one solution works within the Earth system to help protect drinking water.

*Next Generation Science Standards® is a registered trademark of WestEd. Neither WestEd nor the lead states and partners that developed the Next Generation Science Standards were involved in the production of this product, and do not endorse it.