Conserving water and calculating your water footprint

Students will record their own water usage at their house for a week and estimate their daily water consumption. They will then be re-assigned to a different country where their water will be limited to the average usage of people in that location. The students will have to decide what they will use their allocation of water for, and then listen to how much other groups got to use and what they chose to use their water for. At the end, we will brainstorm why some locations have more water to use than others, and how that can lead to conflicts among different groups.

At the conclusion of the lesson, students will be able to:

• Identify wasteful water practices
• Explain differences in water usages in different areas
• Understand the impact that water availability has on society

Resources:

• Lesson plan (.doc)
• Presentation (.pdf)
• Student handout (.doc)