Lesson plan Grade 6 Social Studies & Civics
Mapping the Dunbrook River Watershed: Land Use Upstream
A grade 6 geography lesson where students map the fictional Dunbrook River watershed and calculate what percent of the land upstream is farmland, forest, and urban area.
Objectives
- Students will construct a labeled map showing a watershed's ridgeline, tributaries, and downstream town.
- Students will calculate the percent of a watershed's area occupied by each land-use type.
- Students will explain why land use outside a town's borders can still affect that town's 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.
- Tributary
- A tributary is a smaller stream or river that flows into a bigger one. Many small tributaries join together to build a large river.
Also: ridgeline, land use
Teacher overview
A watershed is all the land that drains into a single river, and its boundary follows ridgelines rather than the lines on a town or county map. This lesson uses a fictional river, the Dunbrook River, and its downstream town, Dunbrook, to help students build a watershed map and calculate how the land within that watershed is used. A common misconception is that a town only needs to manage the water within its own borders; this lesson is built to correct that directly by showing students that farmland and development miles upstream, outside Dunbrook's town limits, still drain straight into the water Dunbrook depends on.
Procedure
Hook (5 min): Ask students to guess where the water in their own school's faucets comes from before it reaches the tap, and whether that source is inside or outside their town's borders. Record guesses on the board without correcting them yet.
Direct instruction (10 min): Define "watershed" as all the land that drains toward one river or lake, and explain that a watershed's true boundary is the ridgeline, the highest ground that separates one drainage area from the next, which rarely lines up with a town or county border. Introduce the fictional Dunbrook River: suppose its watershed covers 40 square miles of land, all of which eventually drains into the river and flows through the town of Dunbrook.
Guided practice (15 min): In groups of three or four, students use a blank watershed outline handout to build a labeled map of the Dunbrook River watershed. Each group draws and labels the ridgeline forming the watershed's outer boundary, at least two tributary streams feeding the main river, and the town of Dunbrook at the downstream (lowest) point. Groups then shade three land-use zones upstream of the town using this data: 22 square miles of forest, 14 square miles of farmland, and 4 square miles of urban development (together making the full 40 square miles).
Independent practice (10 min): Each student answers two questions using the land-use figures from the guided practice map.
- What percent of the Dunbrook River watershed is farmland?
- What percent of the watershed is forest?
Closure / exit ticket (5 min): Students answer one question in writing: "Farmland in the Dunbrook watershed sits well outside Dunbrook's town limits. Explain why fertilizer or soil washing off that farmland could still affect the water quality inside the town." Collect responses and scan for the key idea that water flows downhill across the whole watershed regardless of town borders before dismissal.
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Answer Key
- Answer: 35 percent.
14 square miles of farmland ÷ 40 total square miles × 100 = 35 percent. - Answer: 55 percent.
22 square miles of forest ÷ 40 total square miles × 100 = 55 percent. - Exit ticket answer: Answers will vary. A strong response explains that because the entire 40-square-mile watershed drains toward the same river, anything that washes off the land anywhere within it, including farmland far from Dunbrook's town limits, eventually reaches the water flowing through the town.
Differentiation
Support
Provide the watershed outline handout with the ridgeline and tributaries already drawn in, so groups only need to add labels and shade the three land-use zones. Give the land-use percentages directly (35 percent farmland, 55 percent forest, 10 percent urban) for students who need the independent practice to check their own division instead of computing it from scratch.
Extension
Ask students to work out, using only the lesson's figures, what would happen to the farmland percentage if 6 square miles of forest were cleared and converted to new farmland, and have them recalculate both percentages under that new scenario.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "watershed," "ridgeline," and "tributary" with a simple three-dimensional gesture: cupped hands forming a bowl-shaped ridgeline, with fingers as tributaries draining toward the palm as the river. Provide the land-use figures in both numeric and simple color-coded form (green for forest, brown for farmland, gray for urban) so students can complete the map with color matching before writing any percentages.