Global Citizenship Education Lesson Plan (Kinder-3rd Grade)

Objective: Students will explore their everyday use of water and learn how their water usage can
impact the lives of others around the world.
Required Materials:
 Lesson handout
 Whiteboard and marker
 Link to video: “How Does Water Get to Your House?”
 Slideshow of pictures of people from around the world collecting water
 Visual (graph or map) of the drought in the San Francisco Bay Area or California
Lesson Opening:
 Charades: At the top of the handout, have students brainstorm ways that they use water in
their everyday life. Give about 30 seconds to 1 minute for them to write down as many as
they can think of. Then, ask for volunteers to come up and act out one of the activities they
wrote down. As students guess correctly, make a list of the activities on the whiteboard for
later reference.
Note: For younger students (K-1st) or students who have difficulty with writing, you may want
to assign an activity for them to act out (e.g. washing your hands, brushing your teeth,
watering flowers, drinking water).
 Discussion: Discuss with students which of the activities in the list uses the most water and
why.
Lesson Body:
 Activate Prior Knowledge: Ask students if they know where the water we use for these
activities comes from. Students are likely to know that they can get water from turning on a
faucet or pressing a button on a water dispenser, or that they can buy bottled water from the
store.
 Informational Video: Watch “How Does Water Get to Your House?” by SciShow Kids at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGi4PugN4qY. While students are watching, they should
fill in the blanks on the next part of the handout. Review the answers with students after
watching the video. Make sure that students understand that the water in wells is clean, even
though it comes from the ground.
 Discussion: Discuss with students about the importance of having clean, fresh water. Why is it
important for people to use wells instead of just scooping water out of a puddle on the
ground?
 Discussion: Discuss with students the difference between water on the ground and
groundwater (mentioned in the video). Ask whether there will always be groundwater
available. According to the video (and question #4 on the handout), groundwater exists only
when it rains. Thus, the availability of water depends on the amount of rain. When there is
not enough rain, such as during a time of drought, there may not be enough water available
for people to use.
 Slideshow Reflection: Show a slideshow of pictures of people from around the world
collecting water. Allow students to discuss what they see in the pictures.
 Discussion: Review with students about what happens to water availability when there is not
enough rain. Then discuss what might happen if we used up all our water – would we have to
borrow water from other countries’ wells? What if they used up all their water and needed to
borrow from us? Would we have enough water to give to them?
 Visual Analysis: Show students a visual (can be a graph or a map) of the San Francisco Bay
 Area or of California showing the recent status of our drought. Have students make
observations and analyze the visual. Students should eventually conclude that we are at risk
of not having enough groundwater due to the lack of rain.
 Discussion: Discuss with students that we have identified a problem that needs a solution. Ask
students what sort of solution would be beneficial. Guide students into concluding that saving
water is one way to ensure we have enough water.
Lesson Closing:
 Application: Have students work in small groups (2 or 3 students) to verbally brainstorm ways
they can save water in their everyday lives. Then, have them fill out the last part of the
handout by drawing and writing one way they plan to help save water.
Note: For younger students (K-1st) or students who have difficulty with writing, you may want
to list water conservation strategies for them to pick from. They can also just draw a picture
instead of filling in the sentence, or they can copy words from the whiteboard.
 Sharing: Allow volunteers to share their drawing and sentence with the class.
Assessment Methods:
 Handout: I can formatively assess the students by checking their answers on the handout.
 Discussions: I can formatively assess the students by monitoring what they say during class
and small group discussions.

Note: There is no summative assessment built into this particular lesson, but this can be built into a
bigger unit about global citizenship education.

Adapted from GlobalEducation.edu.au: https://www.globaleducation.edu.au/teaching-activity/water-

for-life-f-2.html