Lesson plan Grade 2 Art & Music
Painting Tumbleford's Water Tank: Shape and Height by Ruler
A 50-minute grade 2 art lesson where students draw the town water tank, measure their drawing with a ruler, and explain how its tall shape moves water downhill.
Objectives
- Students will draw a water tank with legs, a tank body, and a pipe running down to a house.
- Students will choose a ruler or a measuring tape for a measuring job and explain the choice.
- Students will measure two parts of their own drawing in centimeters and label them.
Vocabulary
Key words: water tank, legs, pipe, height, ruler
Teacher overview
Tumbleford is a made-up town whose water tank stands on four legs at the edge of the ball field, and this lesson has second graders draw it as a designer would: tall on the page, with the legs, the tank body, and the pipe that runs down to a house all in the same picture. The drawing carries the science, because the tank sits up high so that water can run down to the taps without a pump pushing it the rest of the way.
The measuring step is where this becomes a grade 2 lesson rather than a free-draw. Students pick a tool before they measure, and the two jobs are deliberately different: a ruler suits the width of a tank on paper, while the measuring tape suits the height of the classroom door they compare it to. Set the paper vertically before you hand it out, because a sheet turned the wide way leads students to draw a short tank.
Procedure
Looking at the shape (7 min). Post the water tank image. Read aloud: "This is a tank that holds a town's water. What do you notice about where it sits?" Collect answers and steer toward height. Read aloud: "The tank sits up high. Water runs downhill. That is how it gets to the sink in your kitchen." Draw a quick arrow from the tank down to a house on the board.
Tool choice (8 min). Hold up a ruler and a measuring tape. Give two jobs and ask students to vote with fingers, one finger for the ruler and two for the tape: measuring across the top of a drawn tank, and measuring how tall the classroom door is. Ask two students to explain their vote before you confirm. This is the first formative check, and you want most of the class choosing the tape for the door.
Drawing the tank (18 min). Students draw in pencil on the tall sheet: a rounded or barrel tank near the top, four straight legs, a ladder up one leg, and a pipe leaving the bottom of the tank and running down and across to a small house. Trace over the pencil in black marker, then color. Circulate with one question for each student: "Where does the water go after it leaves the tank?"
Measuring and labeling (12 min). Each student measures the height of one leg and the width of the tank on their own drawing in centimeters, then writes both numbers on the drawing with a small line pointing to what was measured. Students record the measurements and their tool choice on the handout. Values will differ from drawing to drawing, and that is expected.
Caption and share (5 min). Students write the caption sentence on the handout, then hold up drawings in a slow circle so everyone sees at least six other tanks. Ask one closing question to the whole group: "Why did nobody draw the tank sitting on the ground?" Listen for height and downhill flow in the answers before dismissal.
Student Handout
Your drawing. Draw the tank near the top of your paper. Draw four legs under it. Add a ladder on one leg. Draw a pipe from the bottom of the tank down to a small house.
Tool choice. Circle the tool you will use to measure your drawing: ruler or measuring tape. Write one reason for your choice on the line beside it.
Measure and label. Measure the height of one leg in centimeters. Write that number on your drawing with a small line pointing to the leg. Measure the width of your tank in centimeters. Write that number on your drawing too.
Caption. Finish this sentence under your drawing: "My tank stands up high so the water can ___."
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Differentiation
Support
Provide a lightly printed outline of the tank and legs so the student spends the drawing time on the pipe, the ladder, and the color rather than on proportion. Pre-mark the ruler's zero end with a colored dot, because starting the measurement at the wrong end is the most common error at this grade. Accept a spoken caption scribed by an adult.
Extension
Ask these students to draw a second, shorter tank beside the first and write one sentence predicting which tank sends water to the house faster. They can also measure a third feature of their choice, such as the pipe run, and add it to the labels with its own pointing line.
ELL supports
Label the projected image with four words before drawing begins: tank, legs, ladder, and pipe. Give each student a small word card with those four words and a tiny sketch beside each, which they can copy directly onto their drawing. Accept the tool-choice reason as a drawn comparison, such as a short line beside a long line, rather than a written sentence.
Extensions
Take the class outside with the measuring tape to find the tallest thing on school grounds that a tape can still reach, such as a fence, a door, or a young tree, and measure it together so the tool choice from the lesson gets used off the page. Bring the drawings back in and arrange them as a single hallway skyline, tallest tank to shortest, which gives the class a display and gives you an informal record of who placed the tank high on the page and who did not.