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Lesson plan Grade 8 Engineering & Design

Roxby Weir's New Source: A Four-Role Design Review Panel

A 55-minute grade 8 lesson where students take four water-sector roles, judge three new-source options from their own criterion, and negotiate one recommendation.

Objectives

  1. Students will describe what four water-sector roles each contribute to a design decision.
  2. Students will score three water source options from the criterion assigned to their role.
  3. Students will negotiate a single recommendation and state which role's concern it sacrifices.

Vocabulary

Wholesale water
Water that one utility sells in bulk to another utility, which then delivers it to homes and businesses. Many cities buy some or all of their water this way.
Service line
A service line is the small pipe that connects the water main under the street to the plumbing inside one home or building. It is the last leg of the trip water makes to your tap.

Also: source water, peak day demand, licensure, design review

Teacher overview

Infrastructure decisions are rarely made by one person, and much of the design work happens in the disagreements among the people at the table. In this lesson students staff a design review panel for the fictional village of Roxby Weir, which must replace a failing source and has three options on the table. Each student holds one role with one criterion, so no student can see the whole problem alone, and the panel must produce a single recommendation that names what it gave up. The lesson also introduces the education paths behind the four roles, which range from a state operator license earned by examination to a four-year engineering degree, all of them genuine routes into the sector. Bureau of Labor Statistics projections show about 10,000 openings each year, on average, from 2025 to 2035 for water and wastewater treatment plant and system operators specifically, all of them from replacing workers who retire or move into other occupations.

Procedure

Hook (5 min): Tell the class that the fictional village of Roxby Weir has been told its only well is failing and must be replaced within four years. Ask who in a town would need to agree before such a project could start, and list student answers on the board. Introduce the four roles they will hold.

Briefing (12 min): Distribute the option sheet and read the three options aloud. Name the village's constraints and have students restate each one in their own words: the new source must meet a peak day demand of 0.9 million gallons per day, must be in service within four years, and must be affordable to about 2,400 households. Then introduce the four roles and the education path behind each one. The design engineer usually holds a four-year civil or environmental engineering degree. The distribution operator typically starts with a high school diploma, learns on the job, and earns a state license by examination, with licenses issued in classes tied to plant and system size. The finance analyst may come through a certificate program or a business degree. The source-water protection specialist usually studies environmental science. Say plainly that these are four legitimate routes into the same industry rather than a ranking.

Role work (13 min): Students meet in role-alike pairs across the room, read their role card, and score all three options from one to five on their own criterion only. Each pair writes one sentence of evidence for its highest and lowest score.

Panel negotiation (15 min): Students return to mixed groups of four, present their scores in role order, and negotiate a recommendation. The group must complete the panel sheet, which requires a single recommended option, the role whose concern was most sacrificed, and one condition the group would attach to protect that role's interest.

Recommendation and exit ticket (10 min): Two panels report out, and the class notes where the panels disagreed. As an exit ticket, each student writes which role changed their own mind most and why. Collect and check that at least three quarters of the class names a specific criterion rather than a personality; if fewer do, model one exit ticket aloud at the start of the next class.

Roxby Weir's New Source: A Four-Role Design Review Panel — Grade 8 Engineering & Design
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Handout

You are on the design review panel for the fictional village of Roxby Weir. The village's only well is failing. A new source must deliver a peak day demand of 0.9 million gallons per day, be in service within four years, and stay affordable for about 2,400 households.

The three options.

  • Option 1, two new wells in the valley aquifer, about 3 km from the existing plant. Estimated construction cost $4,200,000, estimated time to service three years, and the new wells would draw from the same aquifer as the failing one.
  • Option 2, a wholesale pipeline running 10 km to buy finished water from the city of Tolworth. Estimated construction cost $7,600,000, estimated time to service two years, and the village would pay Tolworth a purchase charge every year afterward.
  • Option 3, a river intake and a small treatment plant on the Tolworth River. Estimated construction cost $9,100,000, estimated time to service four years, and the village would need at least two additional licensed operators on staff.

Your role's criterion. Design engineer, will it reliably meet peak day demand. Distribution operator, can the village run and maintain it every day. Finance analyst, what does it cost to build and to keep running. Source-water protection specialist, how exposed is the source to contamination.

  1. Score all three options from 1 to 5 on your own criterion, then write one sentence of evidence for your highest score and one for your lowest.
  2. Which option does your role favor, and which single fact from the option sheet drove that choice?
  3. After hearing the other three roles, which option does your panel recommend?
  4. Which role's concern did the recommendation sacrifice most, and what condition would you attach to protect that role's interest?
  5. Name the education path for the role you held, and one thing that role knows that the other three do not.

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: Accept any scoring in which the evidence sentence matches the role's criterion. An operator scoring Option 3 lowest should cite the need for two more licensed operators, and a finance analyst scoring Option 1 highest should cite the lowest construction cost.
  2. Answer: Accept any option when the single driving fact belongs to that role's criterion. Engineers commonly favor Option 2 for its finished water and short schedule, operators commonly favor Option 1 or 2 for the lighter staffing, finance analysts commonly favor Option 1, and protection specialists commonly favor Option 2 because the village would no longer own the exposure.
  3. Answer: Accept any of the three when the panel sheet shows the scores it reconciled. Panels most often recommend Option 1 or Option 2; a panel choosing Option 3 should explain how it will staff and pay for it.
  4. Answer: Accept any role paired with a condition that actually protects that role. Examples include recommending Option 1 with a condition that the village fund a wellhead protection area, or recommending Option 2 with a condition that the purchase agreement cap the annual rate increase.
  5. Answer: Accept the correct path for the role held: a four-year engineering degree for the design engineer, a high school diploma with on-the-job training and a state license earned by examination for the operator, a certificate or business degree for the finance analyst, and an environmental science degree for the protection specialist. The second half varies; strong answers name knowledge only that role has, such as the operator knowing how long a repair actually takes.

Differentiation

Support

Give these students a role card with the criterion restated as a single question and two of the three options already scored, so the work begins with comparison rather than with reading. Provide the panel sheet with the negotiation steps numbered and a word bank for the condition students must attach.

Extension

Ask the panel to write the one question it would send back to the engineer before approving the recommendation, and explain what answer would change the decision. Students who finish early can add a fifth role, such as a public health nurse or a member of the village board, and describe the criterion that role would bring.

ELL supports

Provide a simple schematic of each option showing where the water comes from and where it enters the village system, labeled with source, treatment, storage, and distribution. Pair each role title with an image and a home-language gloss. Offer sentence frames such as "As the ___, I score Option ___ a ___ because ___" and "Our panel sacrificed the ___ role's concern, so we added the condition that ___."

Extensions

Invite a water utility employee to describe how a real source decision was made in their system and which roles were at the table. Afterward, ask students to revise one score on their role card and write a sentence explaining what they had underweighted, so the visit adds evidence to their scoring.