Water in the news - Cool Australia

Activity Introduction

Quick summary: Students examine various sources of news and find out what water issues are currently topical. They create categories for the different type of news items.

Learning goals:

Students use an appropriate search engine and keywords to locate information.
Students identify the major relevant news outlets for their regions.
Students will select the most important water articles and sort articles into their own designated categories.

Australian Curriculum Mapping

Content descriptions:

Year 7 Science

Water is an important resource that cycles through the environment (ACSSU116)
Identify questions and problems that can be investigated scientifically and make predictions based on scientific knowledge (ACSIS124)

Year 7 English

Use comprehension strategies to interpret, analyse and synthesise ideas and information, critiquing ideas and issues from a variety of textual sources (ACELY1723)

Year 8 science

Identify questions and problems that can be investigated scientifically and make predictions based on scientific knowledge (ACSIS139)
Science and technology contribute to finding solutions to a range of contemporary issues; these solutions may impact on other areas of society and involve ethical considerations (ACSHE135)

Year 8 English

Analyse and evaluate the ways that text structures and language features vary according to the purpose of the text and the ways that referenced sources add authority to a text (ACELY1732)

Syllabus Outcomes: EN4-2A, EN4-3B, SC4-11PW, SC4-4WS, SC4-12ES.

Topic: Water

Year levels: 7 and 8

Indoor or outdoor activity: Indoor.

Time required: 45 mins

Learning areas addressed: Geography, Health and Physical Education, ICT.

Level of teacher scaffolding: Keep activity open ended, bring students’ ideas together at the end of the activity.

Resources required: Internet.

Keywords: Water, Articles, News, Media, Research.

Cool Australia’s curriculum team continually reviews and refines our resources to be in line with changes to the Australian Curriculum.

Worksheets

Teacher Worksheet

Teacher preparation

Water issues are constantly changing, in part due to changing weather patterns, people's water needs and the subsequent impact on water catchments.

Activity

Students use the internet to find reliable sources of current news about freshwater. Current news could be any article posted within the past six months.

The activity can be given greater depth if the class is divided into groups to research different regions:

Students local water catchments
Australia's freshwater sources
The world's freshwater access, in particular developing countries.

Students will need to:

Step 1. Allocate students to groups or allow them to decide on which region they will be researching.

Step 2. Identify useful search engines and news media outlets (e.g. ABC, National Geographic, State Water Authorities) to do internal searches. In their groups, students may come up with a list of keywords that they can use to help them search for news articles.

Step 3. Students use the

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Student Worksheet

Your task is to use the internet to find reliable sources of current news about freshwater. Current news could be any article posted within the past six months.

You will need to work as part of a group to find news articles related to one of the following regions:

Your local water catchments
Australia's freshwater sources
The world's freshwater access, in particular developing countries.

Identify the region that you are finding news articles about.

Task 1: Make a list of the key words that you will use to help search for news articles.

Task 2: Record the name of five news articles and each URL in the table below.

Article	Name of News Article	URL where Article is found
1
2
3
4
5

Task 3: Write a short summary of each of the five articles that you previously listed in the table above.

Article	Summary of News Article
1
2
3
4

...

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Activity: Water in the news