Year 5 Excursion

The Water Treatment Plant Excursion

From Gemma, Year 5 Teacher

Hi! Recently the Year 5 had an excursion to the Western Treatment Plant, off Geelong Road/Princes Highway, Werribee. You might be wondering what this is. This is a factory that turns poop from the sewers, into clean water that we drink everyday. You might think it’s disgusting; but it’s true.  

As part of our Inquiry Unit focusing on Sustainability. We learned all about the water cycle, how to build more water smart towns and had a first hand (and nose) tour of the sewage lagoons and ponds.

To conclude the visit, the students were asked two important questions; Why is it important to look after water? What will be the water challenges in future? Students responded to these questions by writing a card to themselves.

On our excursion we had three activities and our students are going to tell you  in their own words what happened. 

From Hailey, Evie, Ashna and Nina (5E)

Activity 1 

When we went into the room, we saw a table with fake grass on it, it was in the shape of the land of Melbourne. Our activity was to water the grass and there would be a river that the water got collected in, and the water went into a bucket. This water we put in a measuring cup to see how much water the plants drank, and the rest of the water that was left over that ran into the ocean. The next step was to build a city on this fake grass land. We had LEGO houses, we had LEGO hospitals, LEGO restaurants and more. The step after that was to water the city and see how much water was in the bucket (there wasn’t much) because the buildings collected them all. After this,  we decided to see how we could collect more water to use. So we put sponges around, sponges on the roof top gardens, tea towel strips for the things you can see in the middle of the road and LEGO buckets for plants. Next we watered the city and it has the least amount of water than the other samples we collected so far. 

Activity 2  

This activity is an interesting one because we learnt about the three steps in the cycle of water such as condensation, evaporation and precipitation. After that we looked at a 3D diagram of Melbourne and it’s sewages too. The last activity in Activity 2 was to write a letter to the Water Treatment Plant, we had to write about Melbourne's water pollution and how to fix it. 

Activity 3

This was the last activity that we had to do, for this activity we got in a bus and stopped at an open sewage pipe it had lots of poop (faeces) and wee (urine) in it, it smelled like rotten fish! And it just got worse and worse! We jumped back onto the bus and went to a giant lake of poo and wee, it smelt even worse than the pipes! Then we came across another pool it was mixing carbon dioxide and oxygen with the poo and wee and if you fell in you couldn’t float and you’d drown because it wasn’t like normal water. Then we saw clean fresh water, it was sewage turned into drinkable water.

How amazing is that! 

It was the best first excursion ever to start off Year 5, and we learned so much!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjF8tux0Azg&feature=youtu.be

http://waterstory.melbournewater.com.au/educate