Water is of exceptional importance for our lives. Without water, life would be impossible. The water cycle is one of the most important concepts in ecology. However, research shows that students' knowledge about the water cycle is quite deficient and superficial. Teachers and students are unable to integrate the knowledge they have about the topic into a scheme that encompasses all components of the water cycle.
Through our research, we aimed to determine how the water cycle is presented in elementary school textbooks and independent workbooks, and wanted to alert teachers to the shortcomings in the representations they should be aware of. To make teaching these concepts easier for teachers, we also proposed activities that teachers can implement when teaching about the water cycle in nature. The proposed activities were then pilot-tested in the 5th grade in one of the Slovenian elementary schools, evaluating the understanding of the water cycle before and after the natural science day.
Through the conducted analyses, we gained insights into the most common misconceptions students have about the water cycle. We found that the content which is related to the water cycle in textbooks and independent workbooks is consistent with the curriculum and progresses through the elementary school levels. The emphasis on the water cycle system is the greatest in the 5th grade. We discovered that water cycle diagrams in the approved textbooks for the school year 2022/23 and independent workbooks for natural science and technology for the 4th and 5th grades, as well as natural science for the 6th grade, mostly do not include all biospheric components (animals and humans). The content which is related to the water cycle in textbooks is fragmented, and the components are not connected in a unified water cycle scheme. Drawings of the water cycle by students before the implementation of the natural science day are deficient – they do not show the impact of humans, animals, and plants on the water cycle. Some students did not depict groundwater, but almost all demonstrated an understanding of the importance of the sun driving the water cycle. After the natural science day, the drawings of the water cycle by students more closely resembled a complete water cycle scheme. After the implementation of the natural science day, more students reached a higher or advanced level of presenting the water cycle compared to before the implementation, and the number of incorrect representations decreased after the activities were conducted.
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