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Key Questions

Teaching Resources

Where does water come from?

Show photos of places where water is found and ask children to name them and explain where the water comes from and goes to. Click here for a page of photos that could be used. Alternatively find photos using the Google image search.

Try using this animated diagram of the water cycle to illustrate the stages of the cycle. A more sophisticated animated diagram including an activity (probably best suited to year 6) is available here.

Access instructions on how to create a model of the water cycle in the classroom.

Download worksheets on the water cycle (worksheet 1)(worksheet 2). Try a crossword that checks understanding of water cycle vocabulary.

Where does water go to?

Access a lesson plan for this question from the Educate the Children website.

To save this image onto your hard drive, right click on the image (if you're using a PC) or click and hold (if you're using a Mac) for options.

Click here (and follow the People and Rivers link) to access discussion ideas related to this picture.

Where is this river? Where does it go?

MultiMap website. Use this to find out where the nearest river is. You can zoom right in, look at aerial photographs, and even overlay a square of the street map on the arial photograph. Follow the course of the river down to the Thames, then out to sea. You will need a fast web connection to use the site in real time.

Thames Tour Take a virtual trip along part of the Thames.

Children could draw and label a diagram showing the route of the river and the buildings and features they would pass as they travelled down it. If you have access to a computer suite children could find photographs of these using the Google image search facility and create a multimedia presentation describing the journey.

Gallery of aerial photographs tracing the route of the Thames from source to river mouth.

Over 1000 photographs showing features of the Thames between the Thames Barrier and Oxford. To access the photographs click on the Stages button then scroll down.

Subterranean rivers in London section from the useful Wikipedia website.

Why are settlements built on rivers? worksheet.

Rivers in Haringey page: A page with links to resources on the River Lea and New River.

How is it changing?

Try showing children the National Geographical animated diagram of a river

Rivers photographs page contains a set of photos showing rivers at different stages along their course. Ask pupils to identify which features from the river diagram they illustrate then draw arrows onto the diagram. Click here for a ready to use Powerpoint presentation for this activity.

There are a number of nice animations on the BBC Rivers and Coasts webpages. Click for animations on: erosion; creation of a V shaped valley; how a meander is formed and flood plains.

Download a discussion activity to go with a photo of a meander.

Download worksheets: meanders features of a river system, identifying features using grid references

Historic photos of: an early tunnel under the Thames, steamships on the Thames, the Thames barge, the docks and industry, laying the first transatlantic telegraph cable, Thames in the 17th Century.

Panorama of the Thames near Tower Bridge in 1911. A facinating glimpse of how the river used to be.

What do I think and feel about the river?

Ray Davies' Waterloo Sunset lyrics Ralph Mctell's Dear River Thames lyrics

Three Men and a Boat. Complete text available to download. Needs to be used with caution, but if suitably edited is great fun and offers a comic insight into the Thames at the turn of the 20th Century.

Winning poems from an open poetry competition for verse inspired by the Thames.

Monet paintings of the Houses of Parliament , Thames below Westminster and Waterloo bridge.

A collection of paintings of the Thames as a working river.

Complete text of The Wind in the Willows.

What is this river like? How does it affect the landscape? How is it changing and why?

Excellent case studies of Bangladesh and the Amazon

Excellent collection of photos showing aspects of living with rivers. Could form the basis for many interesting discussions.

General Resources

Rivers internet treasure hunt

World rivers. Scroll down the page for a table of the longest rivers in the world.

Download worksheet that involves creating a simple bar chart of the longest rivers in the world.

Anglia Campus excellent site on rivers.

Another excellent rivers site

Yet another water cycle page

Excellent case studies of Bangladesh and the Amazon

Wonderful multimedia newspaper about the 1989 flooding of Wildboarclough in Cheshire.

Excellent collection of photos showing aspects of living with rivers. Could form the basis for many interesting discussions.

Thames 21 website -an organisation that helps to keep the Thames clean

Environment Agency webpages showing river flows compared with preceding month. Children could investigate the data to identify trends etc.

Environment Agency webpage with tips on saving water in the home and in your garden

Environment Agency page that enables you to view the results of river water quality testing online. There are samples for the Lee.

River pollution pi

General Resources

Link to QCA unit of work