Classroom activity Grade 7 English Language Arts
Who's Polluting Hensley Ford Creek? A Watershed Evidence-Hunt Activity
A grade 7 station-rotation activity where small groups collect and cite evidence from four field reports to decide which source most pollutes a fictional watershed.
Objectives
- Students will cite specific textual evidence from multiple short texts to support a conclusion.
- Students will identify distinct sources of pollution entering a shared watershed.
- Students will evaluate why citing more than one piece of evidence strengthens a conclusion.
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.
- Storm drain
- A storm drain is the grate at the edge of a street that swallows rainwater and sends it through pipes to the nearest creek or river. That water is usually not treated, so only rain belongs down the drain.
Also: runoff, sediment
Teacher overview
This is a four-station rotation activity for a class of 16 to 24 students, working in groups of four to six. Each station represents a different, genuine source of pollution entering the fictional Hensley Ford Creek watershed, and groups physically move between stations collecting evidence before deciding, as a group, which source seems to matter most. The activity turns RI.7.1's demand for citing several pieces of textual evidence into a physical, collaborative task rather than a silent, individual one.
Activity Directions
- Before class, post the four station cards from the Student Handout around the room or on four separate tables, each labeled with its station number and location name: Station 1, Elm Street Lawns; Station 2, Riverside Plaza Parking Lot; Station 3, Bark Park Sidewalk; Station 4, Hensley Ford Construction Site.
- Divide the class into four groups of four to six students. Give each group a recording sheet with four rows, one per station, and explain how the activity works: each station's field report describes one real category of watershed pollution, and no group can decide which source matters most until it has visited and recorded evidence from all four.
- Assign each group to a starting station. Set a timer for 5 minutes. At each station, the group reads its field report aloud together and records the station's pollution source and one exact phrase from the report as evidence on their recording sheet.
- When the timer ends, rotate every group to the next station in numerical order. Repeat the 5-minute read-and-record step until every group has visited all four stations, roughly 20 minutes total.
- Once every group has visited all four stations, give groups 10 minutes to review their recording sheets and decide, as a group, which source they believe contributes the most pollution to Hensley Ford Creek. Their decision must cite at least two pieces of evidence from two different stations.
- The activity ends when every group has written its decision and supporting evidence at the bottom of its recording sheet.
- Bring the class together for the debrief. Ask two or three groups to share their decision and the evidence they cited, then ask the whole class whether any two groups cited similar evidence but reached different conclusions, and why that might happen. Close by asking the two debrief questions in the Answer Key.
Student Handout
Recording sheet: a table with one row per station and columns for "Station," "Pollution source," and "Evidence phrase from the field report."
Station 1: Elm Street Lawns
Field report: Every few weeks, especially after lawn-care crews visit Elm Street, storm drain samples near this corner show a spike in nitrogen and phosphorus. Lawn fertilizer applied before a rainstorm washes off grass and driveways directly into the storm drain, which empties into Hensley Ford Creek less than half a mile downstream.
Station 2: Riverside Plaza Parking Lot
Field report: This parking lot drains through a single storm grate at its lowest corner. Water samples collected after rain consistently show traces of motor oil and metal particles, most likely worn from the brakes and leaked from the engines of cars parked here every day.
Station 3: Bark Park Sidewalk
Field report: Bark Park's sidewalk storm drain shows elevated bacteria levels after busy weekends. Pet waste left on the sidewalk, rather than picked up and disposed of properly, washes into the drain the next time it rains.
Station 4: Hensley Ford Construction Site
Field report: The apartment construction site next to the creek has no silt fence installed along its downhill edge. After even a light rain, monitors have measured cloudy, sediment-heavy runoff entering the creek directly at this site, without passing through a storm drain at all.
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Answer Key
There is no single correct choice for which station contributes the most pollution; the point of the activity is that each group supports its decision with cited evidence rather than a guess. All four field reports describe genuine categories of watershed pollution: nutrient runoff from lawn fertilizer (Station 1), oil and metal residue from a parking lot (Station 2), bacteria from uncollected pet waste (Station 3), and sediment from an unprotected construction site (Station 4).
Debrief question: "Which station's evidence would you expect to change fastest if the town passed a new rule, and why?" Answer: Answers will vary; a well-reasoned answer might point to Station 4, since installing a silt fence is a single, quick fix compared to changing many individual habits, such as fertilizer timing or pet waste pickup.
Debrief question: "Why does citing two pieces of evidence, not just one, make a group's decision stronger?" Answer: A single piece of evidence could be a coincidence or an unusual day, but two pieces of evidence, especially from different stations, show a pattern that is harder to dismiss.
Differentiation
Support (below grade level)
Provide a partially filled recording sheet with the pollution source already named for two of the four stations, so students only need to find and record the evidence phrase for those stations, along with the source and evidence for the remaining two.
Extension (above grade level)
Ask groups to write one sentence proposing a specific fix for the source they identified as the biggest concern, then explain in a second sentence why that fix addresses the evidence they cited rather than just the general problem of pollution.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "watershed," "runoff," "sediment," and "storm drain" with a simple diagram showing rain landing on a lawn, a parking lot, and a construction site, all draining toward the same creek. Allow students to record evidence as short phrases rather than full sentences on the recording sheet.