Classroom activity Grade 2 Health & Consumer Science
Fountain Finders: Mapping Drinking Water at Fernbank School
Grade 2 teams walk Fernbank School with clipboards, tally every place a student can get a drink, build a picture graph, and name a spot that needs one.
Objectives
- Students will record, by tally, every place in the school where a person can get a drink.
- Students will build a picture graph of four drinking-water categories and compare the counts.
- Students will state one simple problem about drinking-water access in their school.
Vocabulary
Key words: bottle filler, tally, picture graph, pipes
Teacher overview
Fountain Finders is a walking survey for teams of three, followed by a class picture graph. The counting task carries the concept directly: town water arrives at Fernbank School through one pipe, then branches to every fountain, bottle filler, and sink in the building, so walking the halls and counting those spots is a way of tracing the branches. Along the way students notice which parts of the school have no place to get a drink, which is the health question underneath the counting. The activity ends with a class picture graph and one problem statement per team.
Walk the route yourself the day before and note anything out of service so teams are not stumped by a fountain wrapped in a plastic bag. Tell the office that small groups will be in the halls.
Activity Directions
Set up (5 min). Divide the class into teams of three and assign each team one job: the spotter finds the drinking spots, the marker makes the tally mark, and the mapper writes the room number or hallway name. Hand out clipboards and tally sheets.
Model one spot (5 min). Walk the class to the nearest fountain together. Ask which of the four categories on the tally sheet it belongs to, make one tally mark on a tally sheet as a model, and write the location beside it. Explain the rule the teams will follow: one mark for one spot, and no mark for a fountain that is out of service.
Assign routes (3 min). Give each team one area of the school, such as the main hallway, the wing with the gym, the cafeteria and office area, or the wing with the younger grades. Every team walks only its own area so no spot is counted twice. Split a large area in two if there are more teams than areas.
Walk and tally (12 min). Teams walk their route and tally what they find in the four categories. Adults accompany teams as your school requires. Teams return to the classroom when their area is finished or when the twelve minutes are up, whichever comes first.
Build the class graph (8 min). Draw the picture graph on chart paper with four labeled rows, one for each category, and a key stating that one drawn cup stands for one spot. Call teams up in order and have each add its cups to the rows.
Name a problem (5 min). Each team writes one sentence on a sticky note that begins "In our area, ___ has no place to get a drink," fills in the blank from what they saw, and posts the note beside the graph. Teams that found a drinking spot everywhere write instead about the spot that was hardest to reach.
Debrief (7 min). Ask the two graph questions aloud and take answers from the whole class: which category has the most spots, and how many more spots that category has than the category with the fewest. Then ask the health question the walk was really about: at what times of the school day is it hardest to get a drink, and what would fix that? Close by explaining that all of these spots are fed by the same pipe from the street, which is why every one of them gives the same town water.
Student Handout
Fountain Finders Tally Sheet
Team members: three names. Our area: one hallway, wing, or room group.
Make one tally mark each time you find a drinking spot. Write where it is.
| Kind of spot | Tally marks | Where we found them |
|---|---|---|
| Hallway fountain | ||
| Bottle filler | ||
| Classroom or cafeteria sink for drinking | ||
| Outdoor fountain |
Our problem sentence: In our area, ___ has no place to get a drink.
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Differentiation
Support (below grade level)
Pair these students with a partner who reads the four category names aloud at each stop, and give them a tally sheet with a small picture beside each category. Assign the shortest route so the walk finishes with time to spare. During the graph step, let them place pre-cut paper cups on the chart rather than drawing each one.
Extension (above grade level)
Ask these students to add a fifth category of their own choosing, defend why it belongs on the graph, and explain what the graph would look like without it. A second challenge is to sketch where they would put one new bottle filler and give two reasons drawn from the graph and from the times of day the class discussed.
ELL supports
Pre-teach fountain, filler, sink, and tally by pointing at each object during the model stop in step 2 and having the class repeat the word. Provide the tally sheet with photographs rather than words in the first column. Accept the problem sentence dictated to a teammate, and allow students to point to their area on a school map instead of naming it.
Extensions
Send the class picture graph and the sticky-note problems to the principal with a short cover letter the class writes together. Some schools follow up by inviting the person who maintains the building to explain what it takes to add a bottle filler, which turns the students' problem statement into a conversation with the adult who would have to solve it.