Two double lessons, two homework activities.

Contents:

Part A – What is a River Basin and what are its features?

Part B – What is the Water Cycle?

Part C – What Happens To Water Inside the Drainage Basin?

Part D – The Drainage Basin is a System

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PART A – What is a River Basin and what are its features?

Research [5 minutes] Find out the meaning of the following Geography key words:

Drainage Basin / Watershed / Source / Mouth / Channel / Tributary / Confluence

You can search for their meanings, or use our glossary, or you can use the following interactive (click on the picture to see what these features look like).

Your teacher will check your understanding after five minutes.

Get creative (20 minutes) Make a Drainage Basin, by following the instructions below.

Check your understanding (5 minutes)

 

Teacher PowerPoint version of the above can be downloaded here. (Source: Radical Geography)

Discuss [5 mins] – Think carefully about the above question. Be prepared to share your answer – with reasons – with others in the class.

PART B – What is the Water Cycle?

   

 1) Discuss [5 mins] – What do you think is the connection between a dinosaur that lived 65 million years ago and a glass of water you might drink tonight?

2) Listen and sketch [5 minutes] Check what you already know about the water cycle – listen to the first few verses of the following song. Stop the song when it starts singing about different types of cloud. Can you sketch the water cycle, in rough?

Click here to listen to the Water Cycle

3) Become more knowledgeable of the water cycle. [10 minutes] Double check your understanding of how the water cycle works – you are going to sketch a neat version after you have explored some of the sites below.

Easy:

Water Cycle Easy 1 [southeastwater.com.au]

Water Cycle Easy 2 [bbc.co.uk] – you might want to find out what convection means

Water Cycle Easy 3 [livingandlearningwithwater.com]

Water Cycle Easy 4 [science-resources.co.uk]

Medium:

Brainpop Water Cycle [brainpop.com]

Earth Guide Water Cycle [eathguide.ucsd.edu] – you might want to find out what evapotranspiration is

Waterquest [waterquest.ca] – introduces some other words such as aquifer

This quiz will help you learn some more advanced words. [eathguide.ucsd.edu]

Difficult:

This interactive gives a more detailed version of the water cycle. [www.harcourtschool.com]

Some bonus (difficult words) to look out for in these animations:

Capillary Action / Transpiration / Evapotranspiration / Convection

4) Now draw [10 minutes] as detailed a diagram as you can to show the water cycle and how it works. Add as many key words as you can, including the bonus ones above if you understand them.

Part C – What Happens To Water Inside the Drainage Basin?

 

 

 

Recap time [5 minutes]: Try one or both of these quizzes to recap some of the key words of a drainage basin.

Source: www.sharegeography.co.uk	Source: http://cgz.e2bn.net

 

Study this animation [10 minutes] carefully and carefully note down the different things that you can see happening to the water. After, you can share what you see with the whole class. You might want to watch it several times over. Look closely – it has a lot of useful things going on for understanding how water moves inside the Drainage Basin.

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.

Want some music to inspire you?

 

Research [20 minutes] Find out and record the meaning of the following Geography key words. You should use the animations underneath to help you.

You could do this activity in pairs, dividing up the words between you. You should already know the first three.

1) Precipitation	2) Condensation	3) Evaporation
4) Surface Runoff (also known as Overland Flow, or just Runoff)	5) Interception	6) Transpiration
7) Surface Storage	8) Infiltration	9) Soil moisture (also known as ‘Soil Storage’)
10) Throughflow	11) Percolation	12) Groundwater
13) Groundwater flow	14) Bonus word: Saturated	15) Bonus word: Impermeable

 Easy:

A quiz to get you to match up some of the right words to their meanings (from canarygeog.canaryzoo.com)

A powerpoint that introduces some of the key words. (Source: Radical Geography)

Medium:

This interactive diagram is very good for showing most of the key words in action.

An animation to show some of the words in action, from teachers.guardian.co.uk

This animation has some of the key words in action (from istudy.co.uk)

Picture Quiz – Once you have found most of the words above, you can test your understanding quickly here. (From bbc.co.uk)

Difficult:

This animation is fast moving and includes some more advanced words too.

 

Part D – The Drainage Basin is a System

Recall [5 minutes] some of the words we have learned so far using this (little bit violent) pirate game:

Discuss the word System [5 minutes]

Where have you heard the word ‘system’ before?

A system can have four things: Inputs, Outputs, Flows and Stores. For any examples you have given what are the inputs, processes, flows, and stores?

How can a bath be seen as a system? What are the inputs, processes, flows, and stores?

Transfer the words to a diagram [10 minutes]

You should receive a copy of the diagram below.

Step 1) Fill in the words using the list of words below. Use a pencil in case you make a mistake.

Step 2) Choose different colours and shade the boxes according to whether they are a store, flow, input or output. Use the same colours for the key. 

 

Copy of Word version of the above can be downloaded here and a pdf version (two per page) is here.

Use these words and phrases: River Channel / Condensation / Precipitation / Evaporation / Interception/ Surface Storage / Surface Run-off / Infiltration / Soil Moisture / Throughflow / Groundwater / Groundwater flow / Percolation

Need a hint? Hint (from schoolsnet.com)

Difficult: Want to see a tricky version – this is much more difficult! (from http://ysgol-rhyngrwyd-igcse.wikispaces.com)

Resources:

http://www.slideshare.net/TonyCassidy/pop-river-basin

Thanks to Radical Geography for several of these resources.

Answers to the river basin diagram in Part D are here.