LibGuides: Wave of Action: Team Week Five

Weekly Theme

This week's theme is investigating our water usage and decreasing our water footprint.

Week Five Team Meeting Presentation
This slide presentation is available for you to use during your weekly synchronous team meeting. Clicking this link will prompt you to make a copy of the Google Slides for your own Google Drive. Once you make a copy, share the slides with your students directly from your Google Drive.

Learning Resources

Water Footprint Calculator
An easy way to calculate how much tap water you use, as well as your virtual water footprint. After answering a series of questions, you can compare your water use to other households and get tips about how to reduce your water footprint.
Use Water Wisely
This interactive web page from ProjectWET supports students learning about best management practices to conserve water in their community and daily lives.
So you want to save water?
This infographic an help students understand their daily impact, and to make choices that will decrease their water footprint.
Ways for Kids to Conserve Water
Kids can explore this grid of water-saving ideas and commit to a few of them to try at home.
Student and Family Pledge
An EPA-created pledge for students to review and complete with their families to help fix poor water use habits.

Pre- or Post-Activity

Figure out how much water you use every day! Work with your family to complete this survey of how much tap water you use over one week, then calculate your daily average. Even though the population of our city has increased (gone up) since 1980, our city's water use has gone down (decreased). That is because in 1980 the average New Yorker used 213 gallons of water each day, while last year the average New Yorker used only 118 gallons. How does your use compare?

Water Use Calculation
Students can use this worksheet from NYC DEP to survey how much tap water they use over the course of one week and calculate their daily average

Important Vocabulary

conserve— To keep safe from loss, waste, or destruction.

direct water use— Water that is used for bathing, drinking and cooking.

freshwater— Water that does not contain salt, such as water found in ponds or streams.

indirect water use— The water that is used to manufacture, produce or grow goods that we use daily. It is also referred to as "virtual water".

water footprint— The amount of water one consumes in their daily life. Your footprint includes the water you use directly as well as the water used to grow your food and make your clothes.

Empire State Information Fluency Continuum

We would suggest students use this graphic organizer to organize the main ideas and supporting details of the learning resources they explore this week.

The Empire State Information Fluency Continuum (ESIFC) provides a K-12 framework for teaching information literacy skills in any content area. This framework is based on three Common Core standards that form the basis for the skills and strategies that are essential for students to become independent readers and learners.

The assessments within the framework are all editable to ensure teachers can modify to fit their students' needs. Access the ESIFC and the entire library of assessments here.