The Water Cycle: Label the Diagram

A single water-cycle diagram occupies the middle of this 3rd grade page: a sun at the left, a wide sea, a hillside at the right and a large cloud above, with vapour rising on a curved arrow, dashes falling from the cloud and run-off returning to the sea. Four numbered markers sit on the four stages. A word bank across the top carries condensation, evaporation, collection and precipitation, and four numbered ruled lanes wait below the picture.

Numbering the diagram and the lanes separates two jobs that are usually tangled: finding the stage on the picture, and spelling a four-syllable word. The child does the first by following the arrows and the second by copying from the bank, so a wrong answer is a reading of the diagram rather than a slip of the pen. Marker one sits on the rising arrow and marker three among the falling dashes, which is the pair most often swapped when the words are learned before the picture.

One sheet, four stages, four words. This is the only 3rd grade face in the weather family and the only one with subject vocabulary on it, so it belongs at the end of a unit rather than the start. The bank order is deliberately not the cycle order. Read the diagram round once as a class before anyone writes.