Cotterill Storm Drain Audio Explainer: A Grade 6 Project

The client. Cotterill is a fictional town of about eleven thousand people. Its public works department keeps a Storm Season page on the town website, and the page is mostly rules and phone numbers. The department wants something families will actually listen to before the fall rains.

Your job. Write and record a three-minute audio explainer for that page. Your listener is a parent or grandparent with a child in elementary school. That listener is walking the dog or driving, so they will hear your words once and cannot reread them.

The three questions your explainer must answer.

1. Where does the water go after it enters a Cotterill storm drain?
2. What does that water pick up on its way there?
3. What is one thing a family can do about it this week?

Your constraints.

• The script runs 380 to 450 words, which is about three minutes read aloud.
• You use at least three facts from the source packet below, and you say the source out loud for at least two of them.
• You include one quoted line from the interview in the packet or from an adult you interview yourself with your teacher's permission.
• A partner who has never read your script must be able to retell all three answers after one listen.
• No music or sound effects play under the speech.
• You turn in the typed script, a source list, and the audio file.

Source packet, Source 1: Cotterill Public Works fact sheet (fictional). Cotterill has storm drains along every curb downtown. Those drains do not go to the treatment plant. They run through pipes straight to Elverston Brook, which joins the river below the town park. The plant on Mill Road treats what leaves sinks and toilets, and nothing else.

Source packet, Source 2: State environment agency page on street runoff (fictional). Rain that runs off a street is not clean. It carries oil and metal dust from cars, fertilizer and pet waste from lawns, sand and salt left from winter, and any loose trash. In a heavy rain all of that arrives at the stream in a few minutes, which is why fish and insects downstream of a storm drain are often the first to show trouble.

Source packet, Source 3: Interview with Ana Pryor, Cotterill stormwater crew lead (fictional). "People picture a filter down there. There is no filter. There is a pipe, and the pipe goes to the brook. If you would not pour it in the brook, do not let it run down the curb. The cheapest fix any family has is a bag for the dog and a broom for the driveway."

1. Session 1, research question and notes. Read all three sources. Write one research question that your explainer will answer. Fill in a three-column note-catcher with the source, the fact, and why a listener would care. Write one question the packet does not answer. Turn in the note-catcher and the two questions.
2. Session 2, interview and outline. Write five questions you would ask Ana Pryor. Choose the one line from her interview you will quote and write down why that line is worth the seconds it costs. Build a three-part outline that answers the three required questions in order. Turn in the outline with your chosen quotation marked.
3. Session 3, first draft script. Write the full script, 380 to 450 words, and count the words. Mark in the margin where each of your three facts comes from. Read it aloud once with a timer and write the time at the top. Turn in the draft with the word count and the time.
4. Session 4, listener test and revision. Read your script aloud to a partner who has not seen it. Your partner writes down all three answers from memory. Compare what they wrote to what you meant. Revise the script and list at least three changes you made and the reason for each. Turn in the partner's notes and the revised script.
5. Session 5, record and submit. Record the final script in one take if you can. Listen back once and rerecord any sentence you stumbled over. Turn in the audio file, the final script, and the source list naming all three sources plus your interview.