Graphic organizer Grade 6 Health & Consumer Science

Well Water at Windlemere or City Water at Crowpine

A grade 6 compare and contrast organizer on who treats, tests, pays for, and reports on a private well against a city water supply, with a completed exemplar.

Grade: Grade 6
Subject: Health & Consumer Science
Material: Graphic organizer
Time: 40 min
Prep: No prep
Materials: Printed blank organizer (1 per student), Printed source cards or classroom access to a state health department well page, Colored pencils for marking the rows that differ most

Standards

W.6.2 Common Core ELA

Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas, concepts, and information through the selection, organization, and analysis of relevant content.

How this material aligns: Students select and organize content about two water supplies into parallel categories, the selection and organization step this standard names, which the Extensions task then turns into an explanatory paragraph.

All materials for W.6.2 →

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This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely, without attribution. Updated 2026-09-03.

Objectives

Students will sort responsibilities for testing and treating water into two supply types.
Students will identify which household duties change when a family moves onto a private well.

Vocabulary

Aquifer: An aquifer is an underground layer of rock, sand, or gravel that holds water in the tiny spaces between its grains. Wells reach down into aquifers to bring water up to the surface.

Also: private well, public water system, water quality report

Teacher overview

This is a compare and contrast frame with one question column and two supply columns, so every row lines up the same household question against city water and against a private well. The rows put one practical consumer question in front of students: who is responsible for making the water safe, and who finds out when something goes wrong. The misconception to name before students begin is the assumption that someone tests every household's water. A public water system is tested on a schedule and reports to its customers, while a private well has no outside schedule at all, so testing is usually left entirely to the owner.

Well Water at Windlemere or City Water at Crowpine — Grade 6 Health & Consumer Science

Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Organizer

Fill in every empty cell. Use one short phrase per cell, not a full paragraph. When you finish, circle the two rows where the answers differ the most.

Question a family asks	City water in Crowpine	Private well at Windlemere Ridge
Where does the water come from?
Who treats it before it reaches the tap?
Who tests it, and how often?
Who pays for the testing?
How does the household learn about a problem?
What does the household have to do each year?
Who fixes the pipes and pumps?
What happens to the water bill?

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

Completed Exemplar

Question a family asks	City water in Crowpine	Private well at Windlemere Ridge
Where does the water come from?	A shared source the utility owns, such as a reservoir or a public well field	An aquifer under the property, reached by one well that serves this house
Who treats it before it reaches the tap?	The city treatment plant, before the water enters the mains	Nobody, unless the family installs and maintains its own treatment
Who tests it, and how often?	The utility, on a schedule set by state and federal drinking water rules	The owner, whenever the owner decides to; health departments generally advise a yearly test for bacteria and nitrate
Who pays for the testing?	Every customer, through the water bill	The household, per test, out of pocket
How does the household learn about a problem?	A notice from the utility and the annual water quality report it must send customers	Only from a test the family ordered, or from a change in taste, smell, or color
What does the household have to do each year?	Read the annual report and pay the bill	Order the test, keep the results, check the well cap and the area around it
Who fixes the pipes and pumps?	The utility owns the main; the household owns the line from the curb into the house	The household owns the whole system, including the pump and the pressure tank
What happens to the water bill?	A bill arrives every month or every quarter	No water bill arrives; costs show up as electricity for the pump, testing, and repairs

Differentiation

Support

Give these students a word bank of the phrases that belong in the two columns, sorted only by which column they go in, so the task becomes matching each phrase to the right row. Reduce the frame to the first five rows.

Extension

Ask students to add a fourth column for a home on city water that also uses a filter pitcher, then explain in writing which rows change and which stay exactly the same.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "well," "utility," "aquifer," and "report" with a labeled cross-section drawing showing a house over an aquifer beside a house connected to a street main. Provide the sentence frame: "In Crowpine the ___ does this, but at Windlemere Ridge the ___ does it."

Extensions

Have students use the completed frame to draft a short explanatory paragraph advising a family that is moving from Crowpine out to Windlemere Ridge, naming the two habits the family will have to start on its own.