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Classroom activity Grade 4 Social Studies & Civics

Upstream and Downstream: The Sandpiper River Sharing Game

A grade 4 movement game where student towns along a fictional river see how upstream choices reach downstream neighbors, then agree on a rule to keep the water clean.

Objectives

  1. Students will explain how an upstream town's choices affect the water that reaches downstream towns.
  2. Students will write a shared rule that helps every town along the river get cleaner water.

Vocabulary

Watershed
A watershed is all the land where rain that falls will drain to the same stream, river, or lake. Everyone lives in a watershed, no matter how far from the water they live.

Also: upstream, downstream

Teacher overview

This is a whole-class movement game for about 20 to 25 students in five town groups. The five town groups stand in a line to represent five spots along the fictional Sandpiper River, from the town highest upstream to the town lowest downstream. A jar of beads is the river water, and it passes from town to town down the line. Each town's choice changes the water before it moves on, so students see with their own eyes that the last town lives with everyone's choices. The game teaches why the towns need a shared rule, which they then write and test.

Activity Directions

  1. Before class, label five spots in a line across the room with signs A, B, C, D, and E. Sign A is the town highest upstream. Sign E is the town lowest downstream. When class begins, explain that all five towns sit along the Sandpiper River, and that a watershed is all the land where water drains into the same river.

  2. Divide the class into five town groups and send each group to a sign. Give the jar of blue beads to town A. Tell students the beads stand for the river water, and that clean, blue water is what every town wants.

  3. Give each town two face-down choice cards: one "Keep the water clean" card and one "Factory dumps waste" card. In each round, a town secretly picks one card to play.

  4. Start round one. Town A looks at the jar, plays a card, and follows it. A "clean" card adds nothing. A "dumping" card means the town drops two dark beads into the jar. Town A then walks the jar to town B.

  5. Town B does the same: play a card, add dark beads if it dumps, then pass the jar to town C. Continue down the line to town E.

  6. When town E receives the jar, have that group count the dark beads in the water. Write the count on chart paper under "Round 1." Ask town E how it feels to receive whatever the towns upstream sent down.

  7. Gather the class. Explain the problem: the towns upstream can dump waste, but the towns downstream get the dirty water. Ask the class to agree on one shared rule for the whole river, such as "No town may dump waste into the Sandpiper River." Write the rule on chart paper.

  8. Play round two with the shared rule in place, passing a fresh jar of blue beads from A to E. Count the dark beads at town E again and record it under "Round 2." The class should see far fewer dark beads reach the last town.

  9. End the game after round two. Close with the debrief questions below, connecting the bead counts to the shared rule.

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. Debrief question: "Why did town E get the dirtiest water in round one?"
    Answer: Because town E is farthest downstream, it received the waste from every town above it. Each dumping town added dark beads before passing the jar down, so all of that waste collected at the last town.

  2. Debrief question: "How did the shared rule change what reached town E?"
    Answer: The rule told every town not to dump, so fewer or no dark beads were added along the way. Town E received much cleaner water in round two, which shows a shared rule can protect the towns downstream.

  3. Debrief question: "Why does a river shared by many towns need a rule that all of them follow?"
    Answer: Answers will vary but should explain that one town's choice flows downstream to everyone else, so the towns cannot protect the water alone. A rule that every town follows is the only way to keep the shared river clean for all of them.

Differentiation

Support (below grade level)

Assign a helper to walk the jar down the line so those students can focus on the choice their town makes. Post a simple arrow drawing showing water moving from A down to E so the direction of flow stays clear.

Extension (above grade level)

Ask a small group to invent a second rule for towns that break the first rule, such as a fair way to make a dumping town help clean up, and to explain why a rule works better when there is a plan for what happens if someone ignores it.

ELL supports

Pre-teach watershed, upstream, and downstream with a drawing of a river and five towns, using arrows to show the water's direction. Pair the words "upstream" and "downstream" with hand motions the whole class makes together before play begins.