Lesson plan Grade 1 Careers & CTE

The Smell Panel at Sassafras Water Plant: A Grade 1 Lesson

A 45-minute grade 1 careers lesson on the workers who smell the water before it leaves the plant, with scent cups and a three-category smell log.

Grade: Grade 1
Subject: Careers & CTE
Material: Lesson plan
Time: 45 min
Prep: Moderate prep
Materials: an orange or another mildly scented item for the hook, nine paper cups with lids or foil covers, cotton balls, a drop of lemon juice, a few blades of cut grass, plain water, chart paper divided into three labeled columns

Standards

1.MD.C.4 Common Core Math

Organize, represent, and interpret data with up to three categories; ask and answer questions about the total number of data points, how many in each category, and how many more or less are in one category than in another.

How this material aligns: Students read a three-category smell log of 17 cups and answer handout items about the total and about how many more one category holds than another.

All materials for 1.MD.C.4 →

W.1.2 Common Core ELA

Write informative/explanatory texts in which they name a topic, supply some facts about the topic, and provide some sense of closure.

How this material aligns: Handout item 6 asks students to name the smell panel worker's job, supply one fact about what she does before the water leaves the plant, and close with a sentence about the plant.

All materials for W.1.2 →

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This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely, without attribution. Updated 2026-07-23.

Objectives

Students will describe what a smell panel worker does before water leaves the plant.
Students will sort three covered cups by what they smell like and defend one choice.
Students will answer how many in all and how many more questions about a three-category log.

Vocabulary

Key words: panel, smell, log, plant

Teacher overview

Instruments at a treatment plant measure many properties of finished water, while the check for odor is still made by people, because a trained nose picks up smells that the instruments do not report. At the plant in the fictional town of Sassafras, a small panel of trained workers smells a cup of finished water every morning and writes down one word for it. This lesson gives first graders that task with covered scent cups, then hands them the panel's log from last week as data to count and compare within 20. Set the rules for the demonstration clearly at the start, so that students smell but never taste, and so that the cups go in the trash at the end. One misconception to head off is that a smell always means the water is unsafe; the panel's word is a signal for the operators to look into something further.

Procedure

Hook (5 min): Ask students to close their eyes while you open a container of something familiar and mild, such as an orange or a jar of paste, somewhere in the room. Ask who can name it without looking. Say that people can identify some things by smell alone, without seeing them at all.

Meet the smell panel (8 min): Describe the job plainly. Every morning at the Sassafras plant, three workers each take a cup of the finished water into a quiet room. They warm the cup in one hand, take one short sniff, and write one word: nothing, grass, or dirt. The three workers do not talk until all three have written. Then they compare. If two of them wrote the same word and it was not nothing, an operator goes and checks the tanks. Say that one panel member began as a plant helper straight out of high school and another came in after a two-year program, and that the plant trained both of them to use their noses the same way.

Set up the scent cups (7 min): Prepare nine cups out of sight: three with a plain damp cotton ball, three with a cotton ball touched with lemon juice, three with a cotton ball and a few blades of cut grass. Cover them all. Explain the rule: lift the cover, wave the air toward your nose, put the cover back, and never taste. Check for grass and citrus allergies before the lesson, and let any student with an allergy skip those cups.

Be the panel (12 min): Groups of three take one cup at a time and each member writes or draws a word before anyone speaks. Then the group compares. Rotate the cups so each group meets all three kinds. Record on the class chart how many groups agreed on each cup.

Read the panel's log (10 min): Show handout data. Students complete the six items with a partner while you read each aloud. Ask two students to show how they found the total.

Closing check (3 min): Ask every student to hold up fingers for the number of cups that smelled like dirt in the log. If more than five students hold up a number other than three, count that row again together.

The Smell Panel at Sassafras Water Plant: A Grade 1 Lesson — Grade 1 Careers & CTE

Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Handout

Last week the Sassafras smell panel wrote one word for each cup of finished water. Here is the log.

Smelled like nothing: 9 cups
Smelled like grass: 5 cups
Smelled like dirt: 3 cups

The teacher reads each question aloud.

The panel wrote nothing for 9 cups, grass for 5 cups, and dirt for 3 cups. How many cups did the panel smell in all?
There were 9 cups that smelled like nothing and 5 cups that smelled like grass. How many more cups smelled like nothing?
There were 5 cups that smelled like grass and 3 cups that smelled like dirt. How many cups had a smell of some kind?
The three rows show 9 cups, 5 cups, and 3 cups. How many cups are in the smallest row?
There were 9 cups that smelled like nothing and 3 cups that smelled like dirt. How many fewer cups smelled like dirt?
Name the job of a worker on the smell panel. Write or dictate one fact about what she does. End with one sentence about the plant.

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Answer Key

Answer: 17 cups. 9 + 5 = 14, and 14 + 3 = 17.
Answer: 4 cups. 9 − 5 = 4, a compare problem with the difference unknown.
Answer: 8 cups. 5 + 3 = 8, the two rows that are not nothing.
Answer: 3 cups. The dirt row is the smallest of 9, 5, and 3.
Answer: 6 cups. 9 − 3 = 6.
Answer: Answers vary. Accept "smell panel worker" or "the person who smells the water," one fact such as "she takes one sniff and writes one word," and a closing sentence such as "The plant needs her nose every morning."

Differentiation

Support (below grade level)

Give these students counters to build 9, 5, and 3 before adding or comparing, and pre-fill the three row totals on their handout so the counting is done and the comparison is the only new work. During the scent-cup round, let them choose from three picture cards instead of writing a word.

Extension (above grade level)

Ask these students what the log would show if the panel added four more cups that smelled like grass the following week, and have them write the new grass total and the new comparison against the nothing row.

ELL supports

Pre-teach smell, sniff, nothing, and log with the three prepared cups as permanent references on the table. Provide the frames "The panel smelled ____ cups in all" and "____ more cups smelled like nothing" for items 1 and 2, and accept a labeled drawing for item 6.

Extensions

Run the same three-word panel on tap water and on water left uncovered in a jar overnight, and compare what the class writes. The difference gives students a reason to ask a local utility whether anyone there smells the finished water each morning, and how the plant records what they find.