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EXPLORE: PASS THE BEADS

Summary: In this activity, students will simulate the downhill flow of water in a watershed and gain deeper understandings of watershed “anatomy.” Learning Objectives: After this activity, students will be able to:

- Define the term “watershed” - List and explain the components of a watershed, such as rivers, tributaries, and snowmelt. - Describe the “storm to ocean” path of water. - Summarize the ways in which different weather patterns influence the flow of water.

Materials Needed: - Container of beads, pea stones, uncooked beans, marbles, or other small objects separated by color - Large bucket or container to collect the above objects - Optional: paper signs with pictures of the sun, a light rain, and a heavy rain. Pictures could be

secured to sticks. - Optional: four chairs - An empty bucket, large cup, or pitcher

Procedure: Teacher Narrative: “When we began this unit, we made model watersheds out of crumpled paper. Today, we will explore the different parts of a watershed in greater detail in a fun simulation activity. With our crumpled paper watersheds, we looked at the flow of water during a light rainstorm using our spray bottle. Now, we will investigate how different types of weather influence the flow of water. Who remembers what the term watershed means?”

- Remind students that a watershed is an area of land where all water is drained into the same larger body of water, such as the ocean, via rivers and their tributaries (smaller streams of water that flow into a river). A watershed encompasses everything in that land area, including farmland, cities, animals, plants, people, their cultures and traditions, even you and your students.

- Ask students to recall how water flowed through their crumpled paper watersheds during a light

TEACHERHANDOUTWatershedWisdom

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“rainstorm.” Where did it come from? Where did it go? How did it move? (Hint: water moves from high points to low points—the “ridges” on their papers in the wadded watershed activity, to the “valleys” that they colored).

- Ask students to stand up. Have 4 students stand on chairs, or on an incline, to represent the headwaters that feed different tributaries.

- Have 2-3 students line up fingertip-to-fingertip, close enough to pass beads to one another, leading down the slope (from headwater chairs/incline).

- Starting at the 2-3 student headwater streams noted above, create 4 short lines of students representing tributary streams. These lines should also touch fingertips and flow towards one another, but they should not yet connect.

- Ask all remaining students to form one main line, fingertip-to-fingertip, starting at the headwater streams and connecting to the tributary streams. Explain that this line represents the main river, into which all other tributaries, etc. flow.

- Give a bucket of beads to the headwater stream students standing on an incline. Make sure each of the headwater streams has different colored beads (ex: blue for stream one, red for stream two) or objects.

- Give an empty bucket to the last student in the “main river” line. This bucket represents the ocean. - Ask students at the headwaters to pick up ONE BEAD (any more will ruin the experiment) for a

trial run. One bead per headwater stream will represent a light rain storm. - Guide students through the following simulation scenarios. You may choose to use printed

weather images (see “Materials) to signify each scenario. - Allow 1 minute per simulation, and ask students to stop for thirty seconds between each. Students

holding beads when the 1-minute timer sounds can hold onto those beads and continue passing them at the start of the next scenario. During the thirty second pause time, ask students to observe the contents of the “ocean” bucket.

Light rainstorm: Pass one bead at a time from the headwaters, through all students in the tributaries, to the main river. The final student in the main river drops the beads into the empty bucket upon receiving them. Heavy rainstorm: Pass three or four beads at a time from the headwaters, through the tributaries, to the main river and into the “ocean” bucket. Sunshine: Pass one bead VERY SLOWLY through the tributaries, to the main river, and into the “ocean” bucket. Snowmelt in summer: Pass two to three beads at a time VERY QUICKLY through the bodies of water. Snowmelt in winter: Pass beads slowly through the bodies of water. - After students have demonstrated the 5 seasonal/meteorological scenarios above, invite them to

count how many beads are in the ocean bucket for each weather event. Keep a tally of these statistics on the blackboard.

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Optional Extension Activity: To encourage students’ thinking about pollution in the watershed ecosystem, repeat the above activity, adding trash (candy wrappers, scrap papers, pieces of chalk) into the buckets of beads. Invite students to observe what happens to the trash, using the following questions as provocations for discussion:

- Does the trash pollute the ocean even if it travels through one tributary? - Reenacting, different water scenarios, does more or less trash travel to the river during times of

high flow, such as snowmelt in summer (hint: yes, more trash travels to the ocean at times of high flow)? Why or why not?

- How can we prevent this trash from reaching our oceans? *Note: students will likely advocate for solutions such as recycling, preventing litter, etc. These are great answers. However, you can push students’ problem-solving even more: Knowing that there is already trash in our rivers, how can we prevent it from traveling to the ocean? Where in our watershed might we enact a solution? Aside from trash, what else might rivers carry to the ocean? How can we keep our rivers clean from pollutants that are not trash?

Optional Summative Assessment: Concluding the above simulation activities, invite students to become watershed meteorologists, writing and/or drawing weather reports and corresponding water flow predictions using the worksheet below.