Graphic organizer Grade 6 Careers & CTE
Ingleforth's Two Plants: Comparing Two Operator Jobs
A grade 6 careers organizer comparing a drinking water operator and a wastewater operator on sources, daily tests, licenses, and who is harmed by a mistake.
Objectives
- Students will compare a drinking water operator and a wastewater operator across seven features.
- Students will name the state license each job requires and one route into each job.
- Students will identify who is harmed first when each plant makes a mistake.
Vocabulary
- Influent
- Influent is the incoming dirty water that arrives at a treatment plant, ready to be cleaned. Operators test it to see how much work the plant has to do.
- Effluent
- Effluent is the cleaned water that leaves a treatment plant at the end of the process. It is tested carefully before being released to a river, lake, or the ocean.
- Turbidity
- Turbidity is a measure of how cloudy or murky water looks because of tiny particles floating in it. Clear water has low turbidity, and muddy water has high turbidity.
Also: operator license, reclamation
Teacher overview
This organizer is a two-column compare and contrast frame. Seven questions run down the left side, and students answer each one for the drinking water plant and again for the wastewater plant in the fictional town of Ingleforth. One misconception is worth naming before students start. Many students believe that a single plant cleans a town's water and that wastewater is treated and sent straight back to the tap. Most towns run two separate plants, with separate permits and separate state licenses, and the two operators rarely do the same work on the same day.
Organizer
Ingleforth is a fictional town with a drinking water plant upstream of town and a water reclamation plant downstream on the river. Answer each question in both columns.
| Question | Drinking water plant operator | Water reclamation plant operator |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Where does the water come from? | ||
| 2. Where does the water go when it leaves the plant? | ||
| 3. What is one test run every day, and what number must it meet? | ||
| 4. What license does the state require? | ||
| 5. What goes wrong on a hard day? | ||
| 6. Who is harmed first by a mistake? | ||
| 7. What is one way to enter this job after high school? |
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Completed Exemplar
| Question | Drinking water plant operator | Water reclamation plant operator |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Where does the water come from? | The reservoir above the fictional town of Ingleforth, carried in by a raw water line | The sewers, which collect used water from every home, school, and business in town |
| 2. Where does the water go when it leaves the plant? | Into the storage tank and the distribution pipes, and then to customers' taps | Back into the river below town, after treatment, under a discharge permit |
| 3. What is one test run every day, and what number must it meet? | Turbidity of the filtered water, held at or below 0.3 NTU in 95 percent of monthly samples | BOD and suspended solids in the treated water, held to a monthly average of 30 mg/L or less |
| 4. What license does the state require? | A state drinking water treatment operator license, earned by exam and issued in classes tied to plant size | A separate state wastewater operator license, also earned by exam and issued in classes |
| 5. What goes wrong on a hard day? | A storm stirs the reservoir, turbidity climbs, and the coagulant dose must be changed quickly | Heavy rain leaks into the sewers, and far more flow arrives than the tanks were sized for |
| 6. Who is harmed first by a mistake? | The customers drinking the water, including infants and people who are already ill | The fish, and the people who swim or fish downstream in the river |
| 7. What is one way to enter this job after high school? | A high school diploma, on-the-job training, and the state exam; a two-year water technology degree is another route | The same two routes, and many operators later earn both licenses to widen their options |
Differentiation
Support
Give these students the completed drinking water column and ask them to fill only the reclamation column for the fictional Ingleforth plants. Provide a word bank holding "sewers," "river," "license," "permit," and "turbidity," and allow short phrases instead of sentences.
Extension
Ask students to add an eighth row asking which job they would rather hold and why, then write a short paragraph that names two rows of the fictional Ingleforth frame as reasons. Students should avoid ranking one job as harder or more valuable than the other and argue from the duties instead.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "influent," "effluent," "reclamation," and "license" with a labeled arrow drawing showing water entering and leaving each plant. Provide the sentence frame "At the ____ plant, the water comes from ____ and goes to ____." Allow students to complete one column with a partner.
Extensions
Have students find out whether their own town's drinking water and wastewater plants share a single operations staff, then compare that answer with the fictional Ingleforth arrangement in two sentences. Students can also write three interview questions they would ask an operator who holds both licenses.