The water cycle (KS2)
The water cycle is one of those topics that explains something children see every day and have never questioned. Where does rain come from, and where does it go? From evaporation and condensation to rivers and the sea, here’s what the curriculum expects and where to find lessons and resources to teach it.
What children learn about the water cycle at KS2
What the national curriculum expects
The water cycle appears in two places. The KS2 geography curriculum names it directly, asking pupils to describe and understand key aspects of physical geography including rivers, mountains and the water cycle. The Year 4 science curriculum approaches it from the other direction, asking pupils to identify the part played by evaporation and condensation in the water cycle, and to associate the rate of evaporation with temperature. Taught together, the two give children both the mechanism and the wider picture.
Key knowledge and concepts
Within this topic, children build knowledge across how water moves around the planet:
What is the water cycle
How water moves between the ground, the air and back again
Evaporation
How water becomes vapour, and what speeds it up
Condensation
How vapour becomes liquid again, and how clouds form
Precipitation
Rain, snow, sleet and hail, and what decides which falls
Collection and run-off
Where water goes once it lands
Rivers
How rivers form, and the journey from source to mouth
Temperature and rate
Why evaporation happens faster in some conditions
Water and people
Why the water cycle matters for where and how we live
Where this topic sits within KS1 and KS2
The water cycle is taught in Year 4 as part of the science strand on states of matter, and again through KS2 geography as part of physical geography. Many schools teach the science first, then return to it in geography alongside rivers and mountains.
How to access this topic
The water cycle doesn’t sit on its own in the curriculum. The Cornerstones geography curriculum is fully sequenced from EYFS through Year 1 to Year 6, so you can see what comes before, what follows and how the whole picture fits together. We’ve done the thinking, so your planning time goes into teaching, not sequencing.
Full curriculum
Subject curriculum
Quick Teach Individual lessons and resources for supplementing what you already teach.
Ready to bring the wider curriculum to life?
See how the full Cornerstones Geography Curriculum sequences topics like this one across every year group.