Lesson plan Grade 6 Art & Music
Wayfinding Signs for the Elkhart Bend Water Reclamation Plant
A grade 6 graphic-design lesson where students create a pictogram sign system and short captions for the six stages of a water reclamation plant tour.
Objectives
- Students will design a set of pictograms that read clearly from a distance.
- Students will write a short informative caption for each treatment stage.
- Students will use one consistent color and shape system across all signs.
Vocabulary
Key words: pictogram, wayfinding, icon, caption, reclamation
Teacher overview
The Elkhart Bend Water Reclamation Plant (a fictional facility for this lesson) hosts school tours, and it needs a set of clear signs so visitors can follow the path that water takes as it is cleaned. Reclaimed water is wastewater that has been treated well enough to be reused, and the tour passes through six stages: screening, grit removal, primary settling, aeration, secondary settling, and disinfection. In this lesson students act as graphic designers, creating a pictogram for each stage and writing a short caption that explains what happens there. The design skill at the center of the lesson is building a visual system, meaning the signs share one color scheme and shape so they read as a set rather than six unrelated drawings.
Procedure
Hook (5 min): Show two or three familiar public pictograms without words, such as a stairs symbol or a recycling symbol, and ask students how they know what each means. Draw out that good icons are simple, high-contrast, and readable from far away.
Direct instruction (12 min): Introduce the six treatment stages using the printed list, describing each in one plain sentence. Explain the idea of a visual system: the class will pick one frame shape and one main color so all six signs match. Model a single pictogram for "screening" on the board, thinking aloud about which shapes are simple enough to read quickly.
Guided design (20 min): In pairs, students choose two of the six stages and design a pictogram for each on an index card, using the shared frame shape and color the class agreed on. Below each icon they write one informative caption of a single sentence that explains what that stage does. Circulate and prompt students to simplify any icon that has too much detail to read from across a room.
Independent refine (10 min): Students trade cards with another pair and try to name each other's stages using only the icons, no captions showing. Designers then revise any icon that was hard to identify.
Share and exit check (8 min): Post all cards in tour order. As a formative check, hand each student a slip listing three plain-language stage descriptions and ask them to write the matching stage name for each. Collect the slips and confirm at least four of five students match all three correctly before moving on; reteach the missed stage if not.
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Answer Key
The exit-check slip lists three descriptions, and students write the matching stage name.
- Answer: Screening. "Large objects like rags and sticks are caught on bars at the very start" describes the screening stage, the first step of the tour.
- Answer: Aeration. "Air is bubbled in so tiny helpful microbes can eat the waste" describes the aeration stage, where microbes break down dissolved waste.
- Answer: Disinfection. "Germs are reduced in the last step before the water leaves the plant" describes disinfection, the final stage before the reclaimed water is released.
Differentiation
Support
Provide a partly drawn frame shape on each card so students focus on the icon inside rather than the border, and offer a short word bank of plain verbs (catch, settle, bubble, clean) to start each caption.
Extension
Ask students to design one extra sign that is not a stage, such as a "restrooms" or "this way to the exit" sign, and explain in writing how they kept it inside the same visual system while making its job clearly different.
ELL supports
Pair each stage name with a labeled picture during direct instruction, and allow captions to be written in short phrases rather than full sentences. Let students say their caption aloud to a partner before writing it, and provide the frame "In this step, the water ___."