My Explanation Writing

How the Water Cycle Works

By Mia

I am learning to inform my audience through an explanation.

When you take a shower, drink some water or water your plants, have you ever thought about where that water comes from? That water may have come from a cloud, a snowflake or maybe even the ocean. The way that water gets to your tap is because of a process called the water cycle. Did you know that 97% of earth’s water is salt and the other 3% is fresh water but unfortunately only 1% of that water is drinkable as the rest is in ice caps. A cycle is a series of steps that repeat over and over again. There are three main stages of the water cycle is precipitation, evaporation and condensation, starting off with precipitation.

Precipitation is when water droplets fall out of the sky and it can be seen as rain, snow or hail. Rain that falls directly onto rivers is called streamflow. Rain that falls onto land is called surface runoff. Infiltration is when the ground soaks in the water that falls onto it. All the water that has come from mountains will end up in a lake or river. The other water on footpaths or a road for example, will just end up in a puddle. When the sun starts coming out that is when the water will start to add heat causing evaporation, which leads to the next stage in the cycle.

Evaporation is the process where water changes into a gas or vapor by the heat of the sun. Water vapor is actually invisible so if you think it is that thing that comes out of your kettle, it is not, that is steam. The amount of evaporation depends on the temperature and how much water there is to evaporate. That water vapor will start to go high into the sky and then it will all start to condense together and that is when the next stage comes which is condensation.

Condensation is when water vapor gets cool and becomes visible water vapor which results in clouds. Condensation happens when the warm air cools down and the water vapour in the warm air condenses and turns into liquid. This is what happens in clouds. The higher in the sky the water vapor goes the colder it gets. Wind moves clouds into colder air and the water droplets in them merge which means they grow bigger and heavier until they are so heavy that they fall again as snow or hail. So now we are back to the beginning of the cycle.

The water cycle is an interesting process that happens everyday and everywhere. Precipitation is when water falls out of the sky, evaporation is when it turns into a vapor and lastly condensation when the water vapor gets cool and turns back into a cloud. The same amount of water that was on earth millions of years ago is the same now because all this water has been recycled. What a cool adventure this water has been through just to get to your tap. Think about that the next time you take a drink of water.

Watercare

Water, water everywhere! On Friday of week 6, we were lucky to have Sally from Watercare come to teach us more about the water. We did a drama activity and experiments. Firstly we examined the process that water goes through to become drinkable water in our households. Our drama was based on the process that the water goes through to be cleaned. We were the water going through each stage. We had so much fun as we ventured around the school. Once we learnt how water is cleaned we then had to try and clean the dirty water ourselves. We had to create a filter system in partners. We had to do four different tests for our experiments. We experimented with a range of filters to try and test which filter system was the best.

Sunsmart Posters

In class we have been learning about how we can be sunsmart. We have displayed our work as a poster. Here are a few facts on how to be sunsmart: you need to put on about one teaspoon of sunscreen on your arms and your legs and you only need about half a teaspoon on your face.

Martin Luther King

For topic we did research about a famous person. I chose Martin Luther King Jr. Here is some information about him: He was born in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Martin Luther King is famous because of his speech about the difference in opportunities for different people. There are over 730 streets in the U.S named after him. Martin Luther King was the youngest person to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

Crowded House

For topic I did this. It is a poster with 5 facts about a NZ band called Crowded House. I have to show it to the class to get my thirty points. I put lots of effort into this. I hope I get my 200 points for topic.

A-Z Of NZ Artists

For topic we have a passport. It is a piece of paper with all these different activities and for different ones you get a certain amount of points. You have to get at least 200 points. This was one of my activities.

My Habitat App

For topic we made a habitat app. It was where we chose a habitat, did some research about it and then presented it like a book. 

Animal poster

In class we are learning about the different types of animals and we showed our learning on a poster. The types of animals we are mostly learning about are vertebrates, invertebrates, fish, reptiles, birds, amphibians and mammals. Invertebrates are animals that have spines and vertebrates are animals that don't have spines.