One double lesson. Timing of this lesson depends on the weather. The main part of this lesson is an outdoor enquiry.

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Groups need to be established – ideally groups of three.

Resources needed:

• One litre measuring jug per group (which could be filled by the hose just outside gate exiting the car park behind the Humanities block)
• One clipboard per group.
• Four copies of this worksheet per group.
• Station numbers.

 

1) View the introduction presentation (10 minutes)

This presentation should be viewed by all students at the start of the lesson before the investigation begins to check they all understand how this will work.

Direct link to MS Powerpoint version is here.

Important question – how will a group work well on this task?

2) Carry out the investigation (30 minutes)

3) Back in the classroom, in your groups, check and discuss that you have completed all the sections for each of the stations. You can look at the slideshow above to remind yourselves what each station looked like. (10 minutes). You might want to remind yourself of the key words that took place in this animation:

Hint, use the button to see each ‘stage’ – your teacher might click this as you take note of the changes which you see. resets it.

4) Share your results as a class for the ranking of each station in order. You might be able to arrive at an average score for each station’s ranking.

Collect the results as a class and create a spreadsheet (10 minutes)

An example of how this might look is below:

You can download a copy of the spreadsheet here and fill in the yellow cells so that the averages and graph will be automatically calculated. (You might need to change the spreadsheet slightly first).

5) Discuss the results on the graph (10 minutes). Why do you think each site got the average score that it did? You might need to look back at the sites on the presentation above or look at the descriptions you checked for each site on the worksheets to remind yourself.

6) Answer these questions: (20 minutes – this could be a homework activity)

a) What sort of surfaces will cause rainwater to arrive at a river quickly? Why?

b) What sort of surfaces will cause rainwater to arrive at a river slowly? Why?

c) What changes might people be making in Thailand to speed up the time it takes rainfall to reach the water?

To answer a and b you could use a worksheet that looks like the one below and you can download it here.