Classroom activity Grade 5 Art & Music
Fix-a-Leak Poster Design Workshop: A Grade 5 Art Activity
Grade 5 design teams create Fix a Leak Week posters using real leak-waste figures, assigned design roles, thumbnail sketches, and a class gallery-walk vote.
Objectives
- Students will design a persuasive poster that includes a real water-conservation fact and a one-sentence call to action.
- Students will sketch multiple thumbnail design options before choosing one to complete as a final poster.
- Students will explain which design choices made a poster effective at grabbing attention.
Vocabulary
Key words: call to action, thumbnail sketch, layout
Teacher overview
This is a team-based design workshop for groups of four students. Each team acts as a small design studio hired by a fictional local water utility to create a poster for its yearly Fix a Leak Week campaign, a real program many water utilities across the country run to remind households to check for and repair small leaks. The team roles tie directly to the concept: each design role a team assigns, from sketching the image to writing the words, matches one part of building a poster that persuades someone to act.
Teams generate several rough thumbnail sketches before committing to a final design, a real practice among working artists and designers, and the activity ends with a gallery walk where the whole class votes on which posters grab attention most effectively.
Activity Directions
Present the scenario: the (fictional) Willow Bend Water Utility has asked the class to design posters encouraging households to check for and fix small water leaks during its yearly Fix a Leak Week.
Share the fact every poster must include somewhere in its design: household leaks waste an average of about 180 gallons of water a week, adding up to nearly 9,400 gallons in a year.
Divide the class into teams of four and assign each student one role: the Illustrator sketches the poster's main image; the Word-Smith writes a short headline and a one-sentence call to action that gives a reason to fix leaks promptly (for example, "Fix your leaks, because every drip adds up to thousands of gallons a year"); the Color Director chooses two or three colors that will grab attention from across a room; and the Layout Lead decides where the image, headline, and call to action go so the poster reads clearly at a glance.
Give each team 10 minutes to sketch three small, quick thumbnail versions of their poster on scrap paper before choosing which one to develop fully. Remind teams that thumbnails are meant to be fast and rough, not finished art.
Give teams 30 minutes to create their final poster on the provided paper. Every poster must include: the leak-waste fact (either the 180-gallon weekly figure or the 9,400-gallon yearly figure), a one-sentence call to action, and at least one image.
Display every finished poster around the room for a gallery walk. Give each student three sticky dots and 10 minutes to walk past all the posters, placing dots next to the ones they think grab attention most effectively (students may not vote for their own team's poster).
After the gallery walk, gather the class for a 10-minute debrief on the two posters that received the most dots.
Student Handout
Thumbnail sketch box. Before your team begins its final poster, sketch three quick, small versions of your design idea in the boxes below. Circle the one your team chooses to complete as your final poster.
| Thumbnail 1 | Thumbnail 2 | Thumbnail 3 |
|---|---|---|
| (sketch here) | (sketch here) | (sketch here) |
Team roles for today:
| Role | Student name |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | |
| Word-Smith | |
| Color Director | |
| Layout Lead |
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Answer Key
- Debrief question: "Which poster earned the most votes, and what specific design choice, color, image, or wording, do you think made it effective?" Answer: Answers will vary by class, but a strong response names one specific, observable design choice (such as a bold, high-contrast color pairing, a large and simple image, or a short and direct call to action) rather than a general impression like "it looked nice."
- Debrief question: "Why might a water utility care about warning people about small, quiet leaks rather than only big emergencies like a burst pipe?" Answer: A strong response notes that a small leak is easy to ignore because it does not cause an obvious emergency, yet the leak-waste fact shows that the leaks in an average household waste nearly 9,400 gallons in a year, so many small, unnoticed leaks across a whole town add up to a large amount of wasted water and money over time.
Differentiation
Support (below grade level)
Provide two or three example call-to-action sentences on cards for the Word-Smith to choose from or adapt, rather than composing an original sentence from nothing. Reduce the thumbnail-sketch step to two quick sketches instead of three if time is limited.
Extension (above grade level)
Ask advanced teams to design a second, smaller version of their poster meant for a school hallway bulletin board instead of a large wall, and explain in one or two sentences what they changed about the layout or text size to fit the smaller, closer-up format.
ELL supports
Provide the leak-waste fact and a simple sentence-starter card for the call to action ("Fix your leaks because ___.") in the student's home language alongside English where possible. Allow the Illustrator and Color Director roles, which rely less on written English, to be emphasized for students who are newer to English, while still requiring every team member to contribute an idea to the final call-to-action wording.