Project Grade 5 Art & Music
A Sign Trail for the Riverside Water Reclamation Plant
A four-session grade 5 art project where teams design a trail of tour signs for a fictional wastewater plant, working within a fixed token budget.
Objectives
- Students will design a trail of four signs that explain the stages of a wastewater plant.
- Students will keep their materials within a fixed token budget.
- Students will explain how the plant protects the river by cleaning used water.
Vocabulary
- Wastewater
- Wastewater is used water from sinks, showers, toilets, and businesses that goes down the drain. It travels through sewer pipes to a treatment plant to be cleaned before returning to nature.
Also: reclamation, trail sign, budget
Teacher overview
The Riverside Water Reclamation Plant is a fictional plant used for this project. It cleans the used water from homes and sends it back to the river clean. The plant is planning an open house, and it wants a trail of signs so visitors can follow the water through each cleaning stage. Over four sessions, teams design that sign trail, work within a fixed token budget, and present their trail to the plant's open-house team. The project ties art to a real idea: a community uses science to clean its water and protect the river, and the signs must make that clear to a visitor walking by.
Project Brief
Driving question: How can we design a trail of four clear signs that walks a visitor through how the plant cleans used water, using 20 tokens or fewer?
Scenario: The Riverside Water Reclamation Plant is a made-up plant. Its open-house team has asked student teams to design a sign trail. Each sign explains one cleaning stage. The trail helps visitors see how dirty water becomes clean river water.
The four stages, in order:
- Screening: bars catch trash and large bits.
- Settling: heavy solids sink to the bottom of a tank.
- Aeration: air helps tiny, helpful microbes eat the waste.
- Clean return: the cleaned water flows back to the river.
Constraints:
- Budget: 20 tokens total. This is a made-up currency for the project. Each color costs 3 tokens. Each icon stamp costs 2 tokens. Each sign board costs 1 token. Teams get a token price sheet.
- Size: each sign must fit a space 3 feet wide by 2 feet tall. Teams show this at a smaller scale on poster board.
- Message: each sign must name its stage and add a caption of no more than 10 words.
- Order: the four signs must be numbered so a visitor follows them in the right order.
Final deliverable: A poster-board mock-up of the four-sign trail. A budget sheet that lists every item and its token cost. A short written note to the open-house team that explains how the trail meets the size, budget, and order rules.
Milestones
Session 1 (Learn and plan): Teams read the stage description sheet. They talk about how each stage helps clean the water. Each team sketches one rough idea for each of the four signs and lists the words each sign will use. Output: four rough sketches and a word list.
Session 2 (Set the budget): Teams choose their colors, icon stamps, and sign boards. They add up the token cost and check that it is 20 tokens or fewer. If it is over, they trade an item for a cheaper choice. Output: a finished budget sheet at or under 20 tokens.
Session 3 (Build the trail): Teams build the full poster-board mock-up of all four signs. Each sign is numbered, fits the scaled space, and has its icon and short caption. Output: a finished four-sign mock-up.
Session 4 (Present to the open-house team): Teams present their trail, budget sheet, and written note to the class. One student plays the plant's open-house lead. Teams explain how the trail meets the size, budget, and order rules. Output: a short presentation and the written note.
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Rubric
| Criterion | Emerging | Developing | Proficient | Advanced |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Explains the cleaning stages | Signs do not show the four stages or leave the point unclear | Signs name the stages but the captions do not explain how each cleans the water | Signs name all four stages and each caption clearly explains that stage | Signs explain all four stages clearly and show how the plant protects the river at the end |
| Trail order and design | Signs are unnumbered or hard to follow | Signs are numbered but the layout makes the order hard to see | Signs are numbered and a visitor can follow the trail in the right order | Signs are numbered, easy to follow, and use design choices the team can give a reason for |
| Budget constraint | Total cost is over 20 tokens with no fix | Total is near 20 tokens but not shown with an itemized list | Total is 20 tokens or fewer with an itemized list of every item | Total is 20 tokens or fewer, itemized, with a note on one trade the team made to stay in budget |
| Presentation and note | The note or talk is incomplete or hard to follow | The talk covers the trail but not the reasoning behind it | The talk and note explain how the trail meets size, budget, and order rules | The talk and note explain all three rules and answer a likely question from the open-house team |
Differentiation
Support
Give teams a worked budget example, such as two colors, two stamps, and four boards, with its token total already added, so teams can check their own math against a model. Provide the four stage words already printed for each sign.
Extension
Ask a team to add a small welcome sign at the start of the trail that sums up the whole plant in one sentence, and to fit it into the same 20-token budget by trading one item elsewhere.
ELL supports
Provide the stage description sheet with a labeled picture for each stage, in the student's home language alongside English where possible. Let the written note use labeled sketches and short phrases rather than full paragraphs.
Extensions
Ask your local wastewater or water reclamation utility whether it offers tours or an open house, and compare any real signs it uses with the class trail designs.