Lesson plan Kindergarten Careers & CTE
The Water Saver Visits Plumtree School: A Careers Lesson
A 30-minute kindergarten careers lesson about the utility worker whose whole job is helping people use less water, with a classroom tap check and drawing.
Objectives
- Students will name three things a water saver does during a workday.
- Students will use a timer and a cup to see how much water a running tap sends away.
- Students will draw the water saver at work and tell one fact about her job.
Vocabulary
Key words: save, waste, timer
Teacher overview
Many water utilities employ someone whose entire job is helping customers use less water: she visits homes and schools, checks fixtures, hands out timers and stickers, and answers questions at community events. The role is worth showing to young students because it presents saving water as paid work with its own tools, route, and set of questions. This lesson invents such a worker, Sana, and an invited visit to the invented Plumtree School, and it puts the class through the same tap check she would run.
Teaching note: the tap check works best at a real sink with a bowl underneath so nothing is wasted, and the water that collects during one minute should be poured into the class watering can afterward. Say that out loud while you do it. The point of the tap check is the water that leaves the sink unused, so pouring the collected water onto a plant gives the lesson a visible ending.
Procedure
Hook (5 min): Hold up the one-minute timer and the empty cup. Ask, "How much water do you think comes out of our sink in one minute?" Let students show with their hands. Write two or three guesses on chart paper. Tell the class that a visitor from the water department asks people that question for a living.
Read-aloud (8 min): Read this aloud, pausing where marked. "Sana works for the water department. Her job is to help people save water. In the morning she visits a house. She looks at the sinks. She looks at the toilets. She listens for drips. If she finds a drip, she tells the family how to fix it. In the afternoon she visits a school. She brings timers for the sinks. She gives out stickers that say, turn it off. She answers questions from the classes. When a family fixes a drip she found, that water stops going down the drain." Pause after the sentence about listening for drips and ask, "Why would a drip matter if it is so small?" Take two answers before you finish.
Tap check (9 min): Set the bowl in the sink and run the tap gently for one minute while the class counts along with the timer. Turn it off and pour the collected water into the clear cup, or into two or three cups if there is more than one cupful. Hold the cups up and ask what would have happened to that water if nobody had put a bowl there. Then walk the class through Sana's three questions at the sink: is the tap dripping, is the tap all the way off, and does anyone leave it running while washing hands. Post a sticky note beside the sink with the class's answer to the third question.
Draw and dictate (6 min): Students complete the Student Handout page. They draw Sana at work and dictate or write one sentence that tells something true about her job. Circulate and scribe exact words for students who dictate.
Closure and formative check (2 min): Ask every student to show a thumbs-up if they can name one thing Sana does at work. Call on three to say it aloud. If more than a third of the class cannot name anything, reread the middle of the passage tomorrow before adding new content.
Student Handout
Fold the paper in half. On the top half, draw Sana at work. Show the sink she is checking and one thing she brought with her.
On the bottom half, finish one of these sentences. Your teacher can write your words for you.
- Sana looks for ___.
- Sana brings ___ to the school.
- I can save water at our sink by ___.
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Differentiation
Support (below grade level)
Run the tap check with a group of four at the sink so each child holds the bowl and the cup. Offer a pre-drawn sink outline so the student adds only Sana and the cup. Accept one dictated word rather than a full sentence frame, and write it on the page in front of the child so the connection between speech and print stays visible.
Extension (above grade level)
Ask these students to write a second sentence naming one place in the school besides the classroom sink where Sana should check for drips, and to say why they picked it. Then have them draft one question they would ask Sana if she visited, which the class can send in a letter.
ELL supports
Pre-teach save, waste, and drip with objects rather than definitions: the full cup for save, the bowl of water poured out for waste, and a slow drip from the tap for drip. Use the same gesture each time. Accept a caption in the home language and add one English word to it together during scribing.
Extensions
Give the class a standing job for the month, the sink watchers, with two students each week checking the classroom tap before dismissal and reporting whether it is fully off. Many utilities send a conservation worker to classrooms on request or mail free timers and stickers to schools, so a short letter written together as a class is often enough to bring the real version of Sana through the door.