Lesson plan Grade 5 Art & Music
From Cloud to Kitchen Tap: A Grade 5 Water Cycle Infographic
A grade 5 art lesson where students design an infographic that traces water from cloud to tap and shows two Earth systems working together.
Objectives
- Students will design an infographic that shows the path of water from cloud to household tap.
- Students will use arrows, icons, and captions to show how the atmosphere and the water on land affect each other.
- Students will write a short caption for each stage that explains what happens to the water.
Vocabulary
Key words: infographic, icon, caption, visual hierarchy
Teacher overview
An infographic is a picture that explains an idea using simple icons, arrows, and a few words rather than long paragraphs. In this lesson, students design an infographic that follows one drop of water from a cloud, into a reservoir, through a treatment plant, and out of a kitchen tap. The design work carries the science: to place the arrows correctly, students have to decide how the air and the water on land affect each other, which is exactly the systems thinking the standard asks for. A useful teaching note is that fifth graders tend to draw every stage the same size, so the finished piece reads as a list instead of a path; the lesson gives them one clear rule for showing order and importance, called visual hierarchy, so a viewer's eye knows where to start and which way to travel.
Procedure
Hook (5 min): Show one printed example of a plain labeled diagram and one messy sketch with no order. Ask students which one they could understand from across the room, and why. Collect two or three reasons on the board, such as clear arrows, big first step, and short labels.
Direct instruction (10 min): Name the five stages the class will show: cloud, rain over the hills, reservoir, treatment plant, and kitchen tap. Explain visual hierarchy in one sentence: the most important stage is drawn largest or boldest, and arrows lead the eye from one stage to the next in order. Model drawing the first two stages on the board, adding an arrow from the cloud to the hills, and writing a short caption under each: "Clouds hold water" and "Rain falls on the hills."
Guided practice (10 min): As a class, plan the middle stage together. Ask where the arrow from the rain should point and why the reservoir sits lower than the hills. Draw the reservoir and its caption with student input, pointing out that the rain in the sky and the water on the land are two parts of one system that meet here.
Independent design (20 min): Each student designs their own infographic with all five stages, one arrow between each pair of stages, an icon for each stage, and a short caption of no more than eight words per stage. Remind them to make the cloud or the tap the boldest element so a viewer knows where the path begins or ends.
Closure and exit ticket (10 min): Students trade infographics with a partner and trace the water path with a finger while reading the captions aloud. On an index card, each student answers one check question: "Name one place in your design where the air and the water on land affect each other, and say how." Collect the cards; a class is ready to move on when at least four out of five cards name a real interaction, such as rain from clouds filling the reservoir.
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Answer Key
Exit ticket look-fors: A complete answer names a specific spot in the design where two systems meet and states the effect. Strong examples include: clouds in the air drop rain that lands on the hills and runs into the reservoir; or water on the surface of the reservoir evaporates and returns to the air as vapor. A weak answer only labels a stage ("the cloud") without saying how the air and the land water change each other. Accept any correct pairing of the atmosphere with the water on land, since the standard limits the model to two systems at a time.
Differentiation
Support
Give students a strip with the five stage words already printed in order so they can focus on the icons, arrows, and captions rather than remembering the sequence. Provide two sample captions they can copy or adapt.
Extension
Ask students to add a small side arrow that shows water leaving the path and returning to the sky as vapor, then write one caption explaining that this arrow closes the loop and makes the drawing a cycle rather than a straight line.
ELL supports
Provide the five stage words with a small picture next to each, in the student's home language alongside English where possible. Allow captions to be drawn as labeled sketches or written as short phrases rather than full sentences.
Extensions
Post the finished infographics along a hallway in stage order so the whole set becomes one long class water path. Invite another class to walk the hallway and follow the arrows from cloud to tap.