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Classroom activity Grade 1 Engineering & Design

Chicory Creek's Oil Spill Squad: A Grade 1 Cleanup Tool Test

A grade 1 activity where teams test two cleanup tools on a few drops of oil floating in a tub of water and compare which one lifts more oil off the surface.

Objectives

  1. Students will describe where the oil sits in the tub and why that makes it easier to reach.
  2. Students will test two cleanup tools on the same spill and compare the results.
  3. Students will name the tool their team would send to a real spill and give one reason.

Vocabulary

Point source pollution
Point source pollution comes from one specific, identifiable place, like a pipe draining from a factory or a sewage treatment plant. Because the source is a single spot, it is usually easier to monitor and regulate than pollution that comes from many scattered places.
Contaminant
A contaminant is anything in water that should not be there, whether it is a germ, a chemical, or too much of a natural mineral, that could make the water unsafe or unpleasant to use. Treatment plants are built specifically to find and remove contaminants before water reaches the tap.

Teacher overview

Oil that spills into water does not sink or mix; it spreads into a thin film across the top, which is what makes floating cleanup tools work at all. This activity gives teams of three a tub of water with a small oil spill on it and two tools to try, so the comparison happens in the materials rather than in an explanation from the teacher. The setting is the make-believe Chicory Creek, where a truck at the boat ramp leaked a little oil into the water and a crew has to decide what to send. Students judge the results by what they can see, so there is no numeric key, and the evidence is what came up in the cup and what stayed behind in the tub.

Prep runs about fifteen minutes. Half fill the tubs, portion the tools into trays, and cover the work surface. Use only a few drops of vegetable oil per tub, keep the tubs on a low table, and have students wash hands at the end.

Activity Directions

  1. Before class, half fill one tub per team and set out a tray of tools at each table: cotton balls, a strip of paper towel, a plastic spoon, and a length of yarn. Keep the oil bottle with you and dispense it yourself.
  2. Gather the class around one tub. Drop about ten drops of oil onto the water and let students watch without touching. Ask what the oil did and where it went. Establish together that the oil stayed on top and spread out flat.
  3. Write the problem on chart paper in the class's own words, such as: "Oil is floating on the creek and we want to take it out without taking all the water." Post it where teams can see it.
  4. Put students in teams of three and assign roles: one tool holder, one cup holder who catches what comes out, and one watcher who reports. Roles switch between the two rounds.
  5. Give each team a spill by dropping about ten drops of oil into its tub. Every team gets the same number of drops so the two rounds can be compared fairly.
  6. Round one, about eight minutes. Each team picks one tool and tries to lift the oil off the water, squeezing or scraping what it collects into the small cup. Teams stop when their tool stops picking anything up.
  7. Talk for two minutes as a class. Ask each team to name its tool and say one thing it did well and one thing it did poorly. This is the check for understanding: listen for teams describing what the tool did to the oil rather than whether the activity was fun.
  8. Round two, about eight minutes. Give each team a fresh spill of about ten drops and require a different tool than the one used in round one. Teams collect again into a second cup and switch roles.
  9. End when both rounds are done and both cups are lined up beside each team's tub. Gather on the rug and work through the Student Handout questions, then close by asking which tool the class would send to Chicory Creek and why.
Chicory Creek's Oil Spill Squad: A Grade 1 Cleanup Tool Test — Grade 1 Engineering & Design
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Handout

Read aloud with the class, one question at a time, after both rounds are done.

  1. Where did the oil sit in the tub? Write on top or on the bottom.
  2. Which tool did your team try first? Name it.
  3. Which of your two tools picked up more oil? Tell how you know.
  4. Did your tool pick up water too? Write yes or no. Tell what you saw.
  5. Draw the tool you would send to Chicory Creek. Tell one reason you picked it.

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Answer Key
  1. Answer: On top.
    Oil floats on water and spreads into a thin layer across the surface, which is why the cleanup tools only have to reach the top of the tub.
  2. Answer: Answers vary by team.
    Accept the name of any tool from the tray: a cotton ball, a paper towel strip, a spoon, or a piece of yarn.
  3. Answer: Answers vary by team, with a reason drawn from what they saw.
    Cotton balls and paper towel strips usually soak up the most. Look for evidence in the answer, such as the cup holding more oil or the water surface looking clearer afterward.
  4. Answer: Answers vary by team.
    Spoons bring up water along with the oil, and cotton balls and paper towel strips often soak up water too. Accept any observation that names what came up besides oil.
  5. Answer: Answers vary.
    Accept any drawn tool with a reason tied to the test, such as choosing the cotton ball because it soaked up oil.

Differentiation

Support (below grade level)

Give these students only two tools to choose from, a cotton ball and a spoon, so the comparison is sharp and the choice is quick. Model one dip and squeeze at their table before they begin. Let them answer handout questions 1 and 2 by pointing at the tub and the tool while an adult scribes.

Extension (above grade level)

Ask these students to build a floating barrier from yarn to hold the oil in one corner of the tub before they lift it out, and to describe whether the barrier made the cleanup easier. They can also predict which tool would work best on a much larger spill and explain their reasoning.

ELL supports

Pre-teach five words with the materials in view: oil, float, soak, lift, spill. Use a matching gesture for each one that the class performs together. Handout questions 1 and 4 are yes-or-no or two-choice by design, and questions 3 and 5 may be answered with a labeled drawing or spoken in a student's home language while an adult scribes the English word beside it.

Extensions

Show students a photograph of a real floating boom on a river or harbor and ask them to find the part that does the same job as the yarn barrier from the extension. If a local watershed group or fire department has a spill kit, ask whether someone could bring one in and name each tool for the class, which puts a real person and a real bag of equipment behind the activity.