Teacher Resources

Curriculum Unit Guide

The Arizona Water Festival Curriculum Unit is designed to fully teach two of the eleven 4th grade science standards using student-centered, 3-dimensional learning. This focuses on doing science: asking questions and defining problems, developing and using models, planning and carrying out investigations, analyzing and interpreting data and constructing explanations and designing solutions. Emphasis also falls on recognizing relationships that connect all sciences and other fields of study. Specifically, the Arizona Water Festival Curriculum Unit puts students at the center of their own water cycle, observing the phenomena that relate to the environment in which they live. Launching the unit, an interactive demonstration deconstructs the processes driving the water cycle and builds clear relationships between them. This “anchor phenomena” for the unit is accompanied by investigative phenomena for each lesson.

Unit Anchor Question:

How does your local water cycle affect your water availability and impact your life?

Arizona Science Standards:

  • 4.E1U1.6 Plan and carry out an investigation to explore and explain the interactions between Earth’s major systems and the impact on Earth’s surface materials and processes. 
  • 4.E1U3.9 Construct and support an evidence-based argument about the availability of water and its impact on life.

Unit-Wide Teaching Resources:

This guide contains all teaching instructions for each lesson.

Download: AWF Curriculum Unit Guide, 4th Edition PDF

Six of the ten lessons use slides to support the lesson objectives.  Download all of the slides merged into a single document here. You may also download each lesson's slide(s) individually via the pre- and post-festival page.

Download: Pictures_Diagrams to Show Class.pptx

Download this consolidated equipment and resource list showing required items per lesson.  Alternately, you may view each lesson's list separately on the pre- and post-festival lesson pages.

Download: Arizona Water Festival Lesson Equipment.pdf

* If you are unable to download and of the documents, please contact an AWF Team Member and we will assist you.