Water for Schools
Menu

Lesson plan Grade 4 Health & Consumer Science

A Boil-Water Notice in Ferndell: What Families Do at Home

A grade 4 lesson built around a fictional town's boil-water notice: students sort six household water uses into safe and not-safe and write a how-to paragraph.

Objectives

  1. Students will use a boil-water notice to decide which household water uses are safe and which are not.
  2. Students will write an informative paragraph that groups water uses into safe and not-safe categories.

Vocabulary

Water main
A big underground pipe that carries drinking water beneath the streets to a neighborhood. Smaller service lines branch off it to reach each building.
Water utility
The organization that treats and delivers drinking water, and often collects and cleans wastewater, for a community. Most people get their water from utilities run by cities, towns, or other public agencies, and some utilities are private companies.

Also: boil-water notice, rolling boil

Teacher overview

When a water main breaks or a test result raises concern, a water utility may issue a boil-water notice, and households need to know which everyday uses of tap water are still safe. This lesson uses a notice from the fictional town of Ferndell so students can practice the consumer skill of reading such a notice closely and acting on it. Teach the sort as a close-reading task: every answer in the handout can be defended by pointing at a line of the notice, and students should be expected to do exactly that.

Procedure

Hook (5 min): Ask students what they would do if a note came home saying the tap water needs to be boiled before drinking. Take three or four responses and list them on the board without judging them; the class will return to this list at the end.

Read the notice (10 min): Read the Ferndell notice on the handout aloud while students follow along. After each rule, pause and ask one student to restate it in their own words. Clarify "rolling boil" with a gesture: big bubbles breaking the surface without stopping. Remind students that boiling and pouring hot water is a job for an adult.

Partner sort (12 min): In pairs, students answer handout situations 1 through 6, writing what the person should do and underlining the line of the notice that supports each answer. Formative check: while circulating, ask at least five pairs to read you the exact sentence of the notice behind one of their answers; if a pair cannot point to a line, re-anchor them in the text rather than giving the answer.

Informative paragraph (13 min): Each student writes a short paragraph for a younger child in the household, grouping water uses into two labeled categories: uses that need boiled or bottled water, and uses where tap water is still allowed. Remind students that informative writing groups related facts together rather than listing them in the order they happen to come to mind.

Debrief (5 min): Return to the hook list. Ask the class which of their first ideas the notice supports and which it corrects, then collect the handouts.

A Boil-Water Notice in Ferndell: What Families Do at Home — Grade 4 Health & Consumer Science
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Handout

Notice from the Ferndell Water Utility. The town of Ferndell found a broken water main this morning. Until repairs are checked, germs could get into the pipes. Follow these rules until we announce the water is safe:

  • Bring tap water to a rolling boil and keep it boiling for one full minute. Let it cool before using it for drinking, brushing teeth, or making food that will not be cooked.
  • Bottled water is also safe for all uses.
  • You may wash your hands with tap water and soap. Dry them well.
  • Cooking with tap water is safe only if the food boils for at least one full minute while it cooks.
  • Give pets boiled and cooled water, or bottled water.
  • Wash dishes in a dishwasher with a hot cycle, or rinse hand-washed dishes with boiled and cooled water.

Read each situation. Write what the person should do, and underline the line of the notice that tells you.

  1. Jonah wants a glass of water from the kitchen tap. What should he drink instead?
  2. Mari is about to brush her teeth at the bathroom sink. What water should she use?
  3. Dad is washing his hands before dinner. Is tap water safe for this?
  4. Grandma is making soup that will boil on the stove for twenty minutes. May she start it with tap water?
  5. The dog's bowl is empty. What water should go in it?
  6. The family needs to wash tonight's dishes. Name one safe way to do it.

After the six situations, write your paragraph for a younger child at home. Give it two labeled groups: water uses that need boiled or bottled water, and water uses where the tap is still allowed.

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: Boiled and cooled water, or bottled water.
    The notice's first rule covers drinking; tap water must be boiled for one full minute and cooled first, and bottled water is also safe.
  2. Answer: Boiled and cooled water, or bottled water.
    The first rule names brushing teeth along with drinking, so plain tap water is not safe for it.
  3. Answer: Yes, tap water with soap is safe for handwashing.
    The notice says hands may be washed with tap water and soap and dried well.
  4. Answer: Yes, because the soup will boil while it cooks.
    The cooking rule allows tap water when the food boils for at least one full minute, and twenty minutes of boiling meets that.
  5. Answer: Boiled and cooled water, or bottled water.
    The notice's pet rule says to give pets boiled and cooled water, or bottled water.
  6. Answer: Use a dishwasher hot cycle, or rinse hand-washed dishes with boiled and cooled water.
    The dish rule gives both options; either one earns full credit.

Differentiation

Support

Give students a two-color highlighting system before the sort: one color for notice lines about boiled or bottled water, another for lines where tap water is allowed. Reduce the writing task to two sentences, one per category, using a provided frame.

Extension

Ask students to add a seventh situation of their own that the notice does not directly name, such as filling an ice cube tray, decide what the family should do, and justify the decision from the closest rule in the notice.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "boil," "rolling boil," "notice," and "utility" with pictures and the boiling gesture from the procedure. Allow the six situations to be answered orally to a partner first, then copied in writing, and provide the paragraph frame with the two category labels already printed.

Extensions

Invite students to interview an adult at home about whether the household has ever received a boil-water notice or a planned water shutoff, and what the family did. Volunteers share one detail the next day, and the class compares the real experiences with the Ferndell rules.