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You can download our PDF World Water Day worksheet at the end of the article.

Are your students aware of the importance of water in their daily lives, or do they simply take it for granted? What better moment to discuss this topic than on World Water Day, celebrated each year since 1993 on March 22nd?

According to the United Nations, there are 2.2. billion people without access to safe water. You can see more details here: https://www.un.org/en/observances/water-day. With the new coronavirus outbreak, those who have already faced a water crisis are exposed to even more dangers.

Here you have some transdisciplinary tasks designed to get your students to actively use their Geography, Biology, Math knowledge, and creative writing while developing their English skills.

Find out about the water footprint.

You are probably aware that everything we use, wear, buy and eat daily needs water to be produced. However, did you know that it takes more than 2000 liters to make a single hamburger and more than 15.000 liters for a steak?

Do you know what a water footprint is? Have you ever heard about it? If you are curious to find out, read the fragment below!

The water footprint measures the amount of water used to produce each of the goods and services we use. It can be measured for a single process, such as growing rice, for a product, such as a pair of jeans, for the fuel we put in our car, or for an entire multi-national company. The water footprint can also tell us how much water is being consumed by a particular country – or globally – in a specific river basin”.

(Source: https://waterfootprint.org/en/water-footprint/what-is-water-footprint/).

Calculate your water footprint.

What is your own water footprint? Use the Water Footprint Calculator to find out how much water you use to have your food, electricity, and other products.

Watch the water cycle video and fill in the diagram.

Watch the video developed by UNESCO WWAP. Read the following text from National Geographic and use the information from these two resources to fill in the diagram:

5 Water language detectives activities.

Pretend you are… a language detective! Your mission is to scan the text and try to identify words from the text to match the explanations and fill in the table. You have one example below:

Complete the following sentence using information from the text.

As water vapour rises up high into the sky, it cools and turns back into______________.

Language detectives always use evidence!

Read the following sentences and circle T (True) or F (false), justifying your choice with pieces of information from the text.

a. The process in which a gas changes into a liquid, usually when it becomes cooler is called evaporation.  T/F

Evidence from the text:______________________________________

______________________________________________________________.

b. The water you’ve just swallowed is the same water that woolly mammoths, King Tutankhamun and the first humans drank.  T/F

Evidence from the text:______________________________________

______________________________________________________________.

Matching task.

Match the water phrases and sayings with their correct meaning. You have one example:

Multisensory sorting task.

Read the following phrases and sort them into the right category.

The sweet smell of freshly baked apples, the booming sound of thunder, the white foamy waves, the warm softness of the sand, the sour taste of lemons, greasy fingerprints on paper, the salty waves, the softness of silk, the white fluffy clouds, the smell of burning rubber, the fresh scent of wild mint.

Creative writing. The story of a water drop

Pretend that you are a … a drop of water. It’s World Water Day, so tell your life story and describe your journey through the water cycle.

You may start your journey in the deep ocean, in a mountain rivulet or a waterfall. For each phase, do not forget to mention the changes you go through using the water cycle vocabulary from the text you read. Describe what you can SEE, SMELL, TASTE, TOUCH, HEAR. Use about 150-180 words. You may give it a catchy title.

Water is life, treat it right! Lights, camera, action! Create a raise-awareness short video.

Find evidence on water pollution from your area and create a short video documentary (2-5 minutes) exposing the major problems, as well as your action plan and solutions to stop pollution!

What interesting teaching resources do you use to raise awareness of the global water crisis? Feel free to share your amazing ideas with us! Happy teaching!

Additional resources.

You can find some interesting free lesson plans to help your students become aware of their water footprint http://www.watercalculator.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/WF_MS_L2-Lesson-Plan.pdf.

Here you can find an interactive game so that students can understand how much water is needed to produce their chosen meal! https://waterfootprint.org/media/downloads/Explanation_Water_Footprint_Game_for_the_instructor.pdf

The following TEDEd lesson will challenge your students to think deeper about water consumption, starting from an intriguing question: Are we running out of clean water? https://ed.ted.com/lessons/are-we-running-out-of-clean-water-balsher-singh-sidhu#watch

You can download our PDF worksheet below.

Further reading on transdisciplinary teaching and learning.