Round And Round The Water Cycle Summary

“Round and Round the Water Cycle” by Barbara A. Bradley is a great read about teaching the water cycle to K-2 elementary school students. She talked about how the water cycle is important to teach student at a young age because it helps them have a more sophisticated understanding later on in their school. In Bradley’s article, she lays out a ten-day unit on the water cycle, including pictures, diagrams, resources, and Ms. Bey’s (the teacher who conducted the lesson) findings when doing the lesson with her students. Ms. Bey went through the four components of the water cycle in those ten days. She had her students keep a science journal and write about their findings when they discussed evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and collection. Throughout the lesson that was taught, the students where asked questions, asked their own questions, and recorded everything in their journals. The students were also introduced to new vocabulary and learned what the new vocabulary meant through books and science experiments

that they conducted with the teacher. At the end of the lesson the students learned and understood the water cycle through books, experiments, songs, and questions that were asked throughout the unit. This lesson had student feel like and look more like scientists by “making predictions and conducting investigations and recording and discussing observations” (Bradley, p.48).
I think the lesson in Bradley’s article would be considered a guided inquiry.

The reason I believe this is because the students are given questions throughout the entirely of the unit discussed in the article, and are in turn supposed to figure out the answer. For example, when the students were learning about evaporation the students did an investigation outside on a sunny day and were asked the question, “What do you think will happen to your puddle?” (Bradley, p.44). The students predicted what was to happen and then discussed with the teacher the correct answer after they saw what happened to their puddle. The students did not know what was going to happen to the puddle, they were asked the one question the teacher posed and then talked about it with the teacher. But, before doing each experiment for evaporation, condensation, and precipitation; the students discussed the definition of the words and read a book about what they were doing that

day.
This lesson could be easily change from guided inquiry into open inquiry. For the lesson on evaporation, precipitation, and condensation; instead of the teacher giving the definitions, the students could make up their own vocabulary for the three words. After making up their own definitions, then the class as a whole should come up with a definition. Then, for each experiment like the evaporation experiment, the teacher could give the students equipment to create their own experiments to learn more about what the word means. They should also make up their own questions to go along with the experiment they choose. The teacher would go around and ask the students how they plan on seeing evaporation, condensation, or precipitation in their experiments. This would allow the students to lead more of the lesson and questions instead of the teacher providing the questions for them.