GUEST BLOGGER NANCY CASTALDO
Water is life! All organisms on Earth need it to survive and, yet, many communities around the United States are challenged with water stress. Either they don’t have enough drinking water or its contaminated.
Why not add these three activities to your next water unit? Pair Nancy Castaldo’s nonfiction title When the World Runs Dry with Neil Shusterman’s fiction title Dry. Then, begin a classroom STEM discussion.
Activity 1: Where does your drinking water come from?
Your students turn on the faucet at school and, hopefully, clean, fresh water pours out, but where does it come from? Does it come from groundwater underneath your school or does it come from a nearby river or reservoir? How far does it have to travel to reach you? Be detectives and find out!
Create a poster, a video, or a slide presentation and share with others in your school.
Activity 2: What’s in your drinking water?
Take a sample of the water in your school. Test the pH with a testing kit. Explore what pH means and how it might change. Go further and test it for other ingredients with a water testing kit. Is there lead, copper, nitrates, arsenic, or anything else that might be harmful? Investigate each of these substances. How does their presence affect us? Take a look at When the World Runs Dry to see how some of these substances seep into our drinking water.
Activity 3: Further exploration
Provide students with the following links to explore:
- EPA’s site on drinking water – Ask students to compare their local water department regulations agains the EPA’s regulations. Are they in compliance?
- Celebrate World Water Day with students. Ask them to create a poster or enter the photo contest.
Featured image: “Getting a drink in Haben, Ethiopia” by waterdotorg is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Nancy Castaldo has written award-winning books about our planet for over 20 years including, THE STORY OF SEEDS, which earned the Green Earth Book Award, Junior Library Guild Selection, and other honors. Nancy’s research has taken her all over the world from the Galapagos to Russia. She strives to inform, inspire, and empower her readers. Nancy is a certified National Geographic Educator. Her 2022 releases include, WHEN THE WORLD RUNS DRY (Algonquin Young Readers) and THE WOLVES AND MOOSE OF ISLE ROYALE: RESTORING AN ECOSYSTEM (Scientists in the Field series). Visit her at http://www.nancycastaldo.com or follow at @NCastaldoAuthor.
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