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Classroom activity Grade 10 Social Studies & Civics

The Stallworth Boil-Water Drill: A Crisis Communication Exercise

A grade 10 role-play exercise in which agency teams manage a main break and boil-water advisory in fictional Stallworth, from first alert to all-clear.

Objectives

  1. Students will carry out assigned institutional roles through a four-round water emergency scenario.
  2. Students will draft a public boil-water notice that states who is affected, what to do, and why.
  3. Students will explain why advisories are issued on pressure loss before any test results exist.

Vocabulary

Boil water advisory
A public notice telling people to boil tap water before drinking it because germs may have entered the pipes, often after a main break or a loss of pressure.
Backflow
Backflow is water flowing backward through a pipe in the wrong direction, which can pull dirty water into the clean drinking water system. Special devices are installed on pipes to stop it.

Also: main break, pressure, sampling, public information

Teacher overview

This is a whole-class simulation for 20 to 35 students in five teams, each playing an institution in the fictional city of Stallworth: utility operations, the mayor's communications office, the school district, the hospital, and a local newsroom. The teacher advances a main-break emergency through four timed rounds, and each round forces every team to decide and write under time pressure. The structure carries the lesson: an advisory protects public health only when the institutions holding different pieces of the response coordinate what they say and do, so each team's decisions constrain the others in the way that agencies in a real city constrain one another.

Activity Directions

  1. Setup (10 min): Divide the class into the five teams and distribute role cards. Explain the ground rules: the utility team is the only source of technical facts; the newsroom may publish whatever it can confirm; every team writes its decisions down before speaking. Introduce Stallworth: a fictional city whose east side is fed by a single main crossing the river. Explain the one technical rule the game turns on: distribution systems keep water pressurized so that leaks push water out rather than letting anything seep in; most states require systems to stay above 20 psi, and when pressure falls below that, contaminants can be drawn into the pipes, so a precautionary advisory goes out before any test result exists.
  2. Round 1, 6:00 a.m. (12 min): Announce: the river-crossing main has broken and pressure on the east side has fallen below 20 psi. The utility team must decide what it knows versus what it assumes, and brief the communications office. The communications team drafts the boil-water notice, covering the who, what, and why that the Student Handout requires. Schools and the hospital list their three most urgent operational decisions. The newsroom prepares two questions and puts them to the utility team on the record.
  3. Round 2, midday (10 min): Announce: the repair crew has isolated the break, and a social media post is circulating that claims sewage has entered the water supply. The utility confirms there is no evidence of sewage, only a pressure loss. The communications team must answer the rumor without overclaiming safety. The newsroom decides whether to repeat the rumor, attribute it, or hold it.
  4. Round 3, evening (10 min): Announce: the main is repaired and pressure is restored, yet the advisory stays in place because the utility must collect bacteriological samples and wait for laboratory results before lifting it. Teams draft their holding statements; schools decide about the next school day; the hospital reports what it needs from the utility in writing.
  5. Round 4, next day (8 min): Announce: two consecutive rounds of samples have come back clean and the advisory is lifted. The communications team drafts the all-clear, including flushing instructions for taps and ice makers. The newsroom writes a three-sentence recap that must correctly state why the advisory existed and why it ended.
  6. Debrief (10 min): End the game after the recaps are read aloud. Students complete the three debrief questions on the Student Handout individually, then discuss: where did teams contradict each other, and what single change would most improve Stallworth's next emergency?
The Stallworth Boil-Water Drill: A Crisis Communication Exercise — Grade 10 Social Studies & Civics
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Handout

Role cards (summary): Utility operations holds the technical facts and briefs others; the communications office writes every public statement; the school district and hospital protect the people in their buildings; the newsroom informs the public and checks claims. Every public statement must say who is affected, what they should do, and why.

Debrief questions:

  1. Why does a pressure loss below 20 psi trigger a boil-water advisory before any water sample has been tested?
  2. Put these four actions in the order they must occur: lift the advisory; issue the advisory; collect and analyze samples; repair the main.
  3. Why should residents hear what to do from the utility and city first, rather than from a rumor or a repost? Give two reasons based on how the rounds played out.

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: Because low pressure can let contaminants be drawn into the pipes through leaks and connections, the system can no longer guarantee the water's safety, so the advisory is issued as a precaution before any test result exists. Systems normally stay pressurized above 20 psi precisely to keep everything flowing outward.
  2. Answer: Issue the advisory; repair the main; collect and analyze samples; lift the advisory. The advisory comes first because protection cannot wait for repairs, and it lifts only after clean results, not after the repair itself.
  3. Answer: Accept any two grounded reasons, such as: the utility holds the actual technical facts, so its instructions are accurate; official statements give one consistent set of directions instead of conflicting versions; and rumors, like the sewage post in Round 2, can spread faster than corrections and cause harmful decisions.

Differentiation

Support

Give the communications team a fill-in notice template with labeled blanks for who, what, and why, and give the newsroom a two-question script for Round 1. Let teams designate a single speaker so quieter students can contribute in writing.

Extension

Add a sixth role, a state drinking water agency, that must approve the sampling plan and the lifting of the advisory, and ask that team to explain in the debrief how state oversight changed the city's decisions.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "advisory," "pressure," and "sample" with a simple diagram of a pressurized pipe pushing water out through a crack versus a depressurized pipe letting water seep in. Provide sentence frames for every public statement: "If you live in ___, please ___ because ___."