Students recognized that water flowing makes a lot of sense when elevation (the word we learned to replace tilt-angle-steepness) can be identified.  We went back to the ArcGIS maps we used earlier, and changed them to show elevation with a color code.  We focused on the Chicago area, and then moved to see the Great Lakes and eventually the majority of the continental US.  Students began making some predictions and saw a pattern emerge.   

While the colored maps were beautiful, they were hard to really know where the water flowed.  Students then wanted to know if there was a better way...

We noticed Denver on the map, and when asked it's nickname, someone said "THE MILE HIGH CITY!"

While Denver isn't of hug importance to us here in Chicago, it made students think that every city has an elevation value.  With some research, students plotted the elevations of cities throughout the US:  

The vast majority of water around us eventually leads to the Gulf of Mexico, and ultimately the Atlantic ocean.  Now that we know this, this is getting us concerned.  Our treated water leads to the ocean, which contains SALT water! 

And as one student said it, "Why are we working so hard to clean our dirty water only for it to end up in the ocean where there's something else in it that we can't drink?  Why don't we keep the water near us?"

What other new questions will students come up with?  Especially as this relates to us and how we get our clean drinking water! (the other part of our Driving Question!)

The class agreed that the tilt of the container seemed to get the water to flow the most, but the wall of the container and its small size were of concern to us.  We decided to build a better model of where a river would be, and this could hopefully gather more evidence to support the claim that there needs to be an angle in the river in order to get the water flowing in one direction.

​So we built a landscape!  Mrs. Brinza had an old tablecloth lying around, and we raised up part of the "land" by putting stuff under it to show how land isn't flat.  We used orange cones, cups, and some cotton patting to show this.  Then Mrs. Brinza made it rain!

We figured out a lot of information from this physical model.  We gathered more evidence to support the idea that water flows downward, and we saw the water move faster in areas that were steeper.  Water that gathered did so in places that were flat, and it didn't move there at all. Students were asked to explain their thinking by developing a model themselves.

From here, we're trying to figure out how this big idea connects to what we're trying to figure out...where our clean drinking water comes from.  We know how water flows...so how does this all relate back to the concerns we had regarding the Chicago River and Lake Michigan?  How can flow help us better understand this?

We agreed that our next best steps would be to figure out how water flows since our treated water may end up where we get our drinking water. But no one knew if water from the Chicago River flows into Lake Michigan, or if the lake flows into the river.  This will make a BIG difference to us!

From there, a lot of students chimed in that they know that other rivers connect to the Chicago River, and some students even suggested that the Chicago River flows into other rivers.  We even heard talk about water leading to the ocean.

So before we could figure all that stuff out, we agreed to figure out all about flow.  Here's are the summaries between the two fifth grade classes about how we could investigate how water flows.

So both classes agreed to the following investigations:
1.  Use a toy boat (like a wind-up toy) to see if boats make the water flow.
2.  Use a straw/fan to mimic the wind, and see if that's what causes flowing water.
3.  Build a river, and see how it flows.

​Here are some still shots from what we saw today:

We figured out that the toy boat (all we had access to was a toy scuba diver that moved) and the wind didn't really make the water flow, although it slightly influenced the water's direction. We also figured out that there must have been a time where there were no boats on any type of water way, and the water must still have flowed then.  And the same is true for wind...while it influences the water, sometimes there's no wind and the water in the river still flows.

​ Building a riverbed with sand that Mrs. Brinza had didn't really do much either.  So we were kind of stumped.  How could we get the water in the river to move consistently, in one direction, and ultimately flow like the rivers we've all seen?  

So we all agreed that we should build a better model tomorrow to better represent this idea that hills/tilts/angles (or whatever students were calling them) are important in understanding how water flows. 

​We're not quite sure about the following:

1.  What gets water to keep refilling the top (like where Mrs. Brinza poured the bucket of water from the bucket)?

2.  Where does the water go from a river?  Like where does it stop?  Or lead to?

3.  If water moves downwards, how can a river flow even it appears flat?

Knowing what we know now, that the wastewater treatment facility in Chicago (at least the major one) dumps its treated water into the Chicago River, we zoomed in on this part of the Chicago River...

We really looked at this area and came up with some great questions:

We agreed that we really need to know where the water flows, so our next steps involve figuring out that.  IF the Chicago River flows into Lake Michigan, then we've got some problems on our hands...

We used the ArcGIS map found here to see our location compared to our nearest wastewater treatment plants.  The images below are screenshots Mrs. Brinza took, and the green triangles are wastewater treatment plants.  The blue note is where our school is located.   We have a hunch that our treated water goes into the river that runs through our city, the Chicago River. 

But we also noticed that some of the treatment facilities are located near Lake Michigan, and if we zoom out far enough see that the Chicago River connects to other rivers.  This got us thinking...

1.  How do these rivers and Lake Michigan connect, if they do at all?
2.  Which way do the rivers flow, since there are so many of them?
3.  Why don't the rivers keep overflowing if we dump the treated water there?
4.  And if we get our drinking water from Lake Michigan like many students have heard we do, why should we care that the treated water ends up in the river if they don't have anything to do with one another?

We've got some investigating to do!!!

So we realized that some of our ingredients we put into our water are dissolved.  And we've pretty much figured out that they're so small our physical means of getting them out do not work.

So we wondered...is this what really happens at a wastewater treatment facility?  Are they unable to get all the dissolved stuff out, too?

So we went back to the drawing board and figured out our next best steps would be to go to the wastewater treatment facility nearest us.  But Mrs. Brinza found out we have to be at least 12 to go on a field trip there (and most students are only 10 or 11).  She's contacted a guest speaker to come in, but that takes some time to arrange.  We did watch some videos earlier, so we'll go back to those since that's like a virtual field trip.

​Here's the two videos we watched:

We figured out a lot of answers to the questions we asked.  Here's a quick summary of what we figured out:

1.  There's three ways they clean the water--physically, biologically, and chemically.
2.  The wastewater treatment plant removes 85-95% of the dissolved stuff.  
3.  The remaining part, along with the cleaner water is known as treated water.  Chemicals are added to further clean it (and kill any harmful bacteria).
4.  The treated water then enters the two cities' (New York and London) closest rivers.

We organized our findings into two graphic organizers, a data table on the left and a concept map on the right (see below)

After looking at many models from students, we came to an agreement on what our dirty water that we made looks like with all the dissolved solids in it.  Here's what the two classes created:

After thinking about our models, we're still really concerned that the wastewater treatment facility isn't able to remove all the "stuff" in the water, especially since we think it has to get dumped back into our waterways (although we're not certain of this yet).  

We figured our next steps would be to do some research, and from our research online and watching some videos of wastewater treatment plants in action, here's what we figured out and then organized (based on the two cities we had information for)!

Before we finalize our thinking about this dirty water that we tried REALLY hard to clean, we've determined that the water has stuff in it that's too small to see.  Stuff is there...and it's dissolved.  It's making us think about this water that leaves the wastewater treatment facility.

Students were asked to expand their thinking into modeling salt dissolving.  Here's what some students were thinking...

And while we've become more knowledgeable about modeling and everything made of "pieces," we're STILL thinking about that water that's been cleaned ​ at the wastewater treatment facility. What exactly is in it that we can't see?  Where does it go if there is still stuff in it they can't get out!?!?!?!

After we worked through a model together of salt and water, students were to create their own  models for the remaining three ingredients...

We'll be figuring out the strengths and weaknesses to each of their models and come to an agreement about what we figured out!

After discussing all the models for each ingredient before and after it entered the water, here's what we figured out:

1.  Everything is made of pieces--solids and liquids.   The water and vinegar MUST be made of pieces because they fit through a coffee filter, too.
2.  Water pieces and vinegar pieces must be smaller than the pieces of everything else.
3.  When something dissolves, it breaks down into smaller pieces and it spreads out evenly in the liquid it dissolves in.  If it didn't spread out evenly, we'd still see all those tiny little pieces clumped together.  

So we came to an agreement from sharing our models that we could represent the dissolved salt, sugar and citric acid as pieces.  We know that each ingredient got smaller and smaller when it entered the water, and that we could eventually NOT see it anymore, and all our tests yesterday gave us evidence that they were still there.  

But one thing we were stumped on is the vinegar.  We don't really know how to show that it was there because we couldn't see any pieces under the microscope, so we left it as one big blob like the water.

So Mrs. Brinza helped students change their 2D thinking into 3D thinking.  She brought out the base-10 blocks and built something similar to this picture: 

Building water as one big blob makes sense for how we actually see a cup of water, but it doesn't make sense for how water actually behaves and for how an ingredient like salt, reacts with it.  In our model on the left, the salt (represented by orange pieces), sits on top.  This is NOT what it does when it enters the water.  When it enters the water, it's able to move through the water.  Through a thoughtful discussion, we realized that the water must be in pieces in order to let the salt through.  It also made sense to have water be pieces because that's the only explanation for how it fit through a coffee filter when we were trying to get out the other stuff.  

​We tried to represent everything we've learned about this stuff we can't see and how water behaves in a model below.  Here is our work!