Lesson plan Grade 7 English Language Arts
Why Do Water Mains Break? A Short Research Project at Pryor's Landing
A 50-minute grade 7 lesson where students synthesize three short original sources to answer a research question about aging pipes, then generate follow-up questions.
Objectives
- Students will draw on multiple short sources to answer a focused research question.
- Students will cite which source supports each fact used in their answer.
- Students will generate new, more focused research questions from what they read.
Vocabulary
Key words: infrastructure, source, synthesize, cost-share
Teacher overview
This lesson treats the fictional town of Pryor's Landing as the setting for a short research project built entirely from three original sources the teacher provides, so students practice combining evidence from multiple texts without needing outside research. The research question, why water mains break and why fixing them costs so much, has a real, well-documented answer, which makes it a strong first experience with synthesizing sources toward a focused answer.
Procedure
Hook (5 min): Post the research question on the board: "Why do water mains break, and why does fixing them cost so much?" Ask students to jot a one-sentence guess before reading anything, then set the guesses aside to revisit at the end of class.
Direct instruction (10 min): Explain that a short research project means reading more than one source, pulling out only the facts that answer the question, and combining them into your own explanation rather than copying any one source. Model this by reading Source A aloud and marking the one fact in it that answers the research question.
Guided source reading (15 min): In pairs, students read all three sources and highlight one fact in each that helps answer the research question, then write a short note beside each source explaining how that fact helps.
Source A (City Public Works fact sheet): "A water main breaks somewhere in the United States roughly every two minutes. Most of these breaks happen in pipes installed decades ago that are simply reaching the end of their useful life."
Source B (Letter from Pryor's Landing's public works director): "Replacing old pipe is expensive. Nationwide, EPA's needs assessment estimates that $625 billion in drinking-water infrastructure investment is needed over the next 20 years, and distribution pipes account for about two-thirds of that need. Water bills are the main way cities like ours pay for this work."
Source C (Pryor's Landing water bill insert): "Combined water and sewer bills nationwide rose about 24 percent from 2019 to 2024, a rise many utilities explain by pointing to the cost of replacing old pipes."
Synthesis writing (10 min): Students write a four-to-six sentence paragraph answering the research question, drawing on at least two of the three sources and naming which source each fact came from (for example, "According to Source A...").
Generating new questions (5 min): Students write two new, more focused research questions that came up while reading the sources, such as "How does a city decide which pipes to replace first?" or "Where does the money from a water bill actually go?" Students share one new question with a partner.
Closure / exit ticket (5 min): Cold-call three students to share their strongest source-based fact. Check that each answer names a source by letter; briefly model source-naming again for any student who cannot.
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Answer Key
Model synthesis paragraph: Water mains break so often, roughly every two minutes somewhere in the United States according to Source A, mainly because so many pipes are old and reaching the end of their useful life. Fixing that problem is expensive: Source B explains that the country needs about $625 billion in drinking-water infrastructure investment over the next 20 years, with pipes making up about two-thirds of that cost. Because water bills are the main way cities pay for pipe replacement, as Source B and Source C both suggest, bills have been rising nationwide as utilities try to keep up with aging infrastructure.
Example new research questions: "How does a city decide which pipes to replace first?" and "Are there other ways besides raising bills that cities pay for pipe replacement?" Both questions grow directly out of gaps the three sources leave unanswered, which is what a genuine follow-up research question should do.
Differentiation
Support (below grade level)
Provide a simple three-row chart with one row per source and column headers "Fact" and "How it answers the question," so students record their thinking in short phrases before attempting the full synthesis paragraph.
Extension (above grade level)
Ask students to identify one place where Source B and Source C's facts connect to each other (rising bills funding infrastructure investment) and explain that connection in a sentence that neither source states directly.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "infrastructure," "source," and "synthesize" with simple definitions and a visual showing an old pipe being replaced with a new one. Allow the synthesis paragraph to be written as three separate sentences, one per source, rather than a single flowing paragraph.