Carrying water

Year level: Lower primary / Middle primary Learning outcome Students explore a variety of ways water is collected where there is no infrastructure to deliver it to people's homes. Draw a diagram showing how the water you drink gets to you. Examine a one- litre container. List the things you could do with this amount of water. Estimate and time how long it takes to fill a bucket with water using the one- litre container filled from a tap. Try carrying the bucket 100 metres. Calculate how long it would take them to carry the bucket 1 kilometre. Calculate how many buckets of water you would use each day (average consumption for Australian households in 2003-4 was 283 litres per day). Examine these photos of people collecting water. Nyichung collects her water from the ‘back happy tap stand' in Tibet. Peter Davis/ AusAID A girl transports water on her bicycle in Cambodia. Mr Heng Sinith / AusAID Women and children carry water in their village in India. Antony Funnell / AusAID Shiyalini 12, caries water from the well to her family's home in a temporary village in Sri Lanka. Will Salter /AusAID Carrying water in Indonesia on a shoulder pole. AusAID Describe what is happening in a photograph (small groups could take different images). Write some questions to find out more about the photograph. Try carrying a bucket of water around the playground each of these ways. Order the photos showing the easiest to hardest way of obtaining the water. Discuss: Why would people have to carry water? Whose job does it appear to be from these photographs? How would health be affected by carrying water every day? How much time might carrying water take each day? What might spending time carrying water stop a person doing? Design a way of carrying water easily. Assessment task Describe how water is collected and carried in places where it is not piped to people's homes using a short story, role play or map. Include an observation about how carrying water might help you manage water-use better.