Social Studies: Content

In the Social Studies module students investigate water issues in the Tigris-Euphrates watershed, specifically as these issues relate to the countries of Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. Students use their understanding of the water cycle to study issues of water access and availability in the region. By analyzing a variety of data, students will come to understand that not everybody in the region has fair and equitable access to water as proposed by the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses. Student groups will create water profiles for individual countries, and negotiate a water treaty between the three countries that is "reasonable and equitable".

Module Description:
As the global population continues to grow, many areas of the world are experiencing a shortage of water or are close to it. The Middle East is one such region. In the Social Studies module, students learn about the water cycle and issues of water access and availability in the Tigris-Euphrates watershed, a region in the Middle East which has great historical and political importance.


By analyzing a variety of data, students will come to understand that not everybody in the region has fair and equitable access to water as proposed by the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses, and that barriers to access can have serious consequences.

Student groups will create water profiles for Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, to get an in-depth view of what the unique water issues are for each of the three countries. Using the country water profiles, students will then attempt to negotiate a water treaty between the three countries that is "reasonable and equitable" given the information and data provided.

Note that this activity has strong parallels to current events. In early 2008, Turkey, Syria and Iraq initiated talks about how to share the limited water resources they have. Read the full story here.

Module Topics and Length:
The Social Studies module covers 10 days, each day being one 45-minute lesson. Note that some lesson plans cover more than one day of instruction:

  1. Why is Water an Important Issue? (1 day)
  2. Water in the Middle East (1 day)
  3. Data Representations (1 day)
  4. Analyzing and Representing Water Data (3 days)
  5. Water Summit (3 days)
  6. Reflections on the Water Summit (1 day)

For full details for each lesson, please go to the Social Studies Module Teacher Materials.