Lesson plan Grade 7 English Language Arts
Where Does Beckworth's Water Come From? A Short Research Lesson
A grade 7 ELA short-research lesson in which students read source cards about a town's water supply and the water cycle, then generate focused follow-up questions.
Objectives
- Students will answer a research question about a town's water source using details from several sources.
- Students will generate two focused follow-up questions that their first research raised.
Vocabulary
- Watershed
- A watershed is all the land where rain that falls will drain to the same stream, river, or lake. Everyone lives in a watershed, no matter how far from the water they live.
- Reservoir
- A human-made lake, usually created by a dam, that stores water for later. Reservoirs supply cities and farms and help control floods.
- Water cycle
- The water cycle is the continuous movement of water between the oceans, the air, and the land. The same water evaporates, forms clouds, falls as rain or snow, and flows back to the ocean before the process repeats.
Also: source, evidence
Teacher overview
Tap water arrives through pipes, but the question of where those pipes fill up is easy to overlook. This short-research lesson uses the fictional town of Beckworth to make the question concrete: students read a small set of source cards about Beckworth's reservoir, its watershed, and the water cycle that refills it, then write a short evidence-based answer and, just as important, generate new questions their research raised. The lesson models a core research habit, using sources to answer one question and to surface the next questions worth investigating.
Procedure
Hook (5 min): Ask students to write a one-sentence guess answering, "Where does the water in Beckworth's faucets come from before it reaches the pipes?" Collect a few guesses and post them without judging.
Frame the research question (5 min): Introduce the guiding question for the day: "Where does Beckworth's drinking water come from, and how does that source refill?" Explain that students will answer it using only the source cards, the way a researcher works from gathered sources rather than memory.
Model reading a source (12 min): Display Source Card A and think aloud as you read it, highlighting two details that help answer the question and writing a short note in your own words. Show how a note paraphrases rather than copies, and how you jot the card letter next to each note so you can cite where it came from.
Read and take notes (20 min): Students read the four source cards on the handout and fill the research organizer, recording at least one useful detail from each card and marking which card it came from. Circulate and prompt students to paraphrase rather than copy full sentences.
Draft the answer (10 min): Students write a short paragraph answering the guiding question, citing details from at least two different cards. Remind them to name the source ("Source C explains that...") the way the model did.
Generate follow-up questions and share (8 min): Each student writes two new questions their reading raised, such as what could pollute the watershed or how a dry year changes the reservoir. As a formative check, collect the organizers and confirm each student cited at least two cards; call on three students to read one follow-up question aloud, and note any student whose questions simply restate the guiding question so you can coach them next class.
Student Handout
Guiding question: Where does Beckworth's drinking water come from, and how does that source refill?
Source Card A (Beckworth Water Department overview): Beckworth draws its drinking water from Beckworth Reservoir, a lake held back by a small dam on the north edge of town. The reservoir is the town's only water source.
Source Card B (regional watershed guide): The land that drains into Beckworth Reservoir is called its watershed. Rain and snow that fall on the surrounding hills flow downhill through creeks into the reservoir. What happens on that land, including farming and paving, affects the water that collects below.
Source Card C (water cycle explainer): Reservoirs refill through the water cycle. The sun evaporates water from oceans, lakes, and soil; that water vapor rises, cools, and condenses into clouds; and it returns as rain or snow. Most of Earth's water sits in the oceans, and less than 1 percent is fresh water people can readily use, so the small share that falls on a watershed matters.
Source Card D (drought note for Beckworth): In a dry year, less rain and snow fall on Beckworth's watershed, so the creeks carry less water and the reservoir drops. The town asks residents to use less water when the reservoir is low.
Research organizer: For each card, write one detail in your own words and the card letter. Then answer the guiding question in a short paragraph citing at least two cards. Finish by writing two new questions your reading raised.
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Differentiation
Support
Reduce the load to three cards (A, B, and C) and provide a two-column note organizer with the card letters already filled in, so students only supply the detail. Offer a sentence starter for the answer: "Beckworth's water comes from ___, and it refills when ___."
Extension
Ask students to combine Cards B and D into a claim about why protecting the watershed matters most during a drought, and to write a follow-up question that a town planner would actually need answered before the next dry season.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "watershed," "reservoir," and "water cycle" with a simple labeled diagram before reading. Allow students to record notes as short phrases or labeled sketches, and pair them with a partner for the note-taking step before they draft independently.