The lesson started with a conversation about what we use water for, how much we use each day, and where would we get it. The student in the first photo is circling gallons of water as she predicts how much water her family uses in one day.
Next students discuss what they would do if they turned on the faucet and no water came out of it- where could they find fresh water? Students in the next group of pictures are using a street map of the area around their school with familiar landmarks and nearest river to estimate how long it would take for them to walk to the river. This part of the lesson gave students an opportunity to think about and discuss what is would be like to not have easy access to clean water, one way that we aimed to demonstrate the role that empathy plays in engineering design.