Year 5 Discover How Clean Water Reaches Our Homes

Year 5 had a fabulous day at Bough Beech Water Reservoir on Tuesday. They have already had visiting speakers from Bough Beech in their Geography classes talking them through the importance and processes of cleaning water. This trip consolidated that theory as the children were able to see each of the eight processes in detail.

In their respective classes the children were walked and talked through each process and then had a wonderful opportunity to see the reservoir, where the water is collected and stored, as well as seeing the valve tower where a lot of amazing engineering feats take place. The best part of the day was getting to walk along a tunnel that runs under the actual reservoir until we reached the bottom of the valve tower and were able to look upwards to see where we had been standing about half an hour previously.

Apart from being a bit mind-boggling to grasp that we were actually walking under the water, it was a great opportunity for all the Year 5 children to see the design and engineering that takes place in order for us to have clean water coming out of our taps each and every day. Another concept that is incredibly hard to understand is that this does not happen in many countries and if they lived in a poorer part of the world they might be the member of the family who would have to walk a long way to get water each day before school.

Year 5 students were taught a number of water saving techniques and were actively encouraged to teach these to their families. Apparently, in Surrey we use 160 litres of water per person per day and this needs to be reduced. To end the day, each student was given a shower timer to remind them to limit the amount of time they spend taking a shower.