Water Quality Testing Resources

Testing water quality in a local river or stream is a great way to engage your students in celebrating EE Week. Thanks to the generous support of two EE Week Partners - World Water Monitoring Day™ and the Earth Force GREEN program - we bring you these resources on water quality testing.

Water Quality Testing for Elementary School Students

World Water Monitoring Day™ is an international education and outreach program that builds public awareness and involvement in protecting water resources around the world by engaging citizens to conduct basic monitoring of their local water bodies.

World Water Monitoring Day™ test kits are ideal for Elementary School students, and they include simple tests of four basic water quality indicators: temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, and turbidity. A fact sheet is provided to help educators and students understand the results of these tests.

Visit the World Water Monitoring Day™ website to register your test site, order test kits, and report your data. Each test kit provides enough materials for 10-20 students working in groups and costs around $20 (including shipping). The website also provides resources for educators, activity sheets for students, and more!

Water Quality Testing for Middle and High School Students

The Global Rivers Environmental Education Network (GREEN) program seeks to engage young people as active citizens who improve conditions in their watersheds now and in the future.  As an Earth Force program, GREEN empowers young people to learn more about the watersheds they live in and use their findings to create lasting solutions to pressing water quality issues.

Planning Resources 

You may wish to use The Field Manual for Water Quality Monitoring: An Environmental Education Program for Schools, developed by Earth Force as a teacher- and student-friendly guide to water quality monitoring, the parameters, and how to interpret the data.

Testing Resources

GREEN test kits are available for purchase at Acorn Naturalists.

• The Introductory Water Quality Monitoring Kit introduces students to eight different water quality parameters: biochemical oxygen demand, coliform bacteria, dissolved oxygen, nitrate, pH, phosphate, turbidity, and temperature. The kit costs around $30.
• Using the Comprehensive Water Quality Monitoring Kit, students learn to design and implement a water quality study. A comprehensive guidance manual is included along with a set of nine tests (biochemical oxygen demand, coliform bacteria, dissolved oxygen, nitrate, pH, phosphate, turbidity, temperature, and benthic macro-invertebrate surveys). The kit includes 100 tests for each parameter and costs around $200.

  
  Don't forget: when you register your school or organization for EE Week you will receive a coupon for $10 off your purchase at Acorn Naturalists!

Interpreting Data

Earth Force has produced a fact sheet to help educators and students better understand the testing parameters.

• Water Quality Parameters 

A series of posters are available to enhance students' understanding of the data. Earth Force has generously provided these samples. To purchase full-sized posters for classroom use, send an email to green@earthforce.org.

• Macroinvertebrate Identification Key
• Water Quality Conditions (also available in Spanish)
• Physical Conditions (also available in Spanish)
• Land Use (also available in Spanish)
• Macroinvertebrates (also available in Spanish)