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Lesson plans

The Water Science School likes to make life easier for teachers. Here we offer teacher guides with lesson plans and students worksheets complete with answers that can aid teachers in helping their students learn about water.

The Edible Aquifer

The Edible Aquifer activity is a hands‑on, food‑based model that helps students visualize how groundwater is stored and moves through different types of aquifers. Using layered ingredients to represent rock, sand, soil, and water, students explore concepts like the water table, recharge, confined vs. unconfined aquifers, and how pollution can spread through groundwater systems. This interactive activity supports NGSS standards and provides an engaging way to understand real-world hydrogeology.

 

All about Streamflow - Web Application 

An interactive app that explains streamflow; what it is, how we measure it and what does this look like in a real world context. The app guides you through activities that explain why streamflow is important and offers multiple opportunities to collect your own data, either outdoors or by using real USGS streamflow data.
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man uses a rope to pull an ADCP in a pontoon across the river. Steep, green forested river bank in distance

 

How Changing Snowmelt affects Water in the Western U.S.

In this activity students will investigate how snowpack acts as a natural water storage system and how changes in snow accumulation and melt timing affect streamflow and water availability in the Western United States. Using a USGS interactive visualization and real monitoring data, students will analyze trends, interpret hydrologic variables, and evaluate downstream impacts on people and ecosystems. This activity aligns with Next Generation Science Standards for high school science education.

 

Understanding Streamflow Drought: Impacts on Water, Land, and Communities

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illustration of stream surround by brown dirt.

 

Water Insights: Short Education Activities to Explore the NWAA Report

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Image of water limitation map with basin overlay


How Do Wildfires Affect Our Water?

In this activity students will learn how wildfires impact watersheds and water quality and think critically about how people and communities can adapt to these changes. 

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Image of a fire in a forest

 

Building the Water Cycle Diagram

This lesson will help activate and assess students' prior knowledge about the water cycle and eventually progress to help build their knowledge. The final portion of this lesson plan includes an online interactive activity that can help keep students engaged throughout the entire lesson.

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Image of the USGS Water Cycle Diagram


Water in Our World: Exploring Storage and Movement in Different Environments

In this lesson plan students will investigate and compare where water is stored and how it moves in six different environments: deserts, forests, urban areas, suburban areas, coastlines, and agricultural regions.

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Condensation illustration demonstrating different condensation processes. Illustrations feature, buildings, volcanoes, planes and wildfires.


Our Water, Our Lives: A Series of Water Units for Intermediate Elementary

The goal of Our Water, Our Lives is to help students realize that they can contribute solutions to water-related challenges with their unique experience and knowledge. As students learn about the science of water, its uses for human and ecological systems, and its role in the development of culture, they begin thinking of themselves as future leaders that will solve these STEM-centered problems. For more information about the Our Water, Our Lives series, visit Our Water, Our Lives: A Series of Water Units for Intermediate Elementary
 

California

California

The Chesapeake Bay Watershed

The Chesapeake Bay Watershed

Floods

Floods


Water Resources Professional's Outreach Notebook - Groundwater (Grades 6-8) 

This notebook provides five lesson plans developed to help educators and Water Resources Professionals discuss the subject of ground water with students in grades 6-8.

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Image of chemistry tubes and sample cups holding various materials
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