Classroom activity Grade 7 Social Studies & Civics
The Sandhill Aquifer Table: A Shared Groundwater Role-Play
A grade 7 role-play where students act as stakeholders sharing one fictional aquifer and negotiate pumping limits before the groundwater runs too low.
Objectives
- Students will represent a stakeholder's interests while negotiating shared use of an aquifer.
- Students will explain how a shared resource can be drained when each user acts alone.
- Students will compare negotiation with other ways communities decide who gets water.
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.
- Recharge
- Recharge is water soaking down through the ground to refill an aquifer, the way rain refills an underground sponge. Aquifers stay healthy only if recharge keeps up with pumping.
Also: stakeholder, commons, negotiation
Teacher overview
This is a small-group role-play for groups of five or six students, run in one class period. Each group shares one fictional groundwater aquifer, the Sandhill Aquifer, and each student plays a stakeholder who wants to pump water from it: the town water board, a farm cooperative, a bottling company, and a conservation group, with one student as facilitator. The activity teaches a core civics idea directly: the aquifer only refills, or recharges, by a set amount each year, so if the stakeholders together pump more than that, the shared water level drops for everyone. Students must negotiate pumping limits across three "years" and watch what their choices do to the aquifer.
Activity Directions
Set up (5 min): Divide the class into groups of five or six. Give each student a role card (town water board, farm cooperative, bottling company, conservation group, facilitator; add a recorder in groups of six). Give each group one aquifer tracker sheet. Explain the starting numbers written on the tracker: the Sandhill Aquifer holds 10,000 acre-feet of water, and it recharges by 600 acre-feet each year from rain soaking into the ground.
Explain the rule (5 min): Each year, the town, the farm cooperative, and the bottling company each request an amount of water to pump. Add the three requests together. If the total pumped is more than the 600 acre-feet of recharge, the aquifer level drops by the difference. If the total is 600 or less, the level stays the same or rises. Tell students that if the aquifer ever falls below 8,000 acre-feet, wells start to run dry and every stakeholder is harmed.
Year 1 negotiation (8 min): Each pumping stakeholder states what it wants and why, using its role card. The conservation group speaks for the aquifer and argues for staying within the recharge. The facilitator runs the discussion and helps the group agree on how much each user may pump this year. The recorder (or facilitator) writes the amounts on the tracker and updates the aquifer level.
Year 2 negotiation (8 min): Repeat the process. Groups may keep their Year 1 limits or change them. Remind students to check the tracker: if the level fell in Year 1, they must decide whether to pump less now to protect the shared supply.
Year 3 negotiation (8 min): Run the final round the same way. Then have each group read its final aquifer level aloud and note whether it stayed above the 8,000 acre-foot danger line.
Debrief (6 min): Bring the class together and use the debrief questions in the Answer Key. Focus on why a resource that everyone shares can be drained even when no single user is acting unfairly, and on how the groups reached agreement.
Student Handout
Role cards (one per student):
- Town water board: You supply drinking water to homes and schools. You need a steady, reliable amount every year, and you cannot simply stop serving people.
- Farm cooperative: You irrigate crops that feed the region and employ many families. You need the most water in dry years, exactly when the aquifer is most stressed.
- Bottling company: You pump water to sell, which brings jobs and tax money to the area. You want to pump as much as you are allowed, but you can survive with less.
- Conservation group: You do not pump water. You speak for the aquifer and for future users, and you argue for staying within the yearly recharge so the supply lasts.
- Facilitator: You do not take a side. You run the discussion, make sure every stakeholder is heard, and help the group reach an agreement each year.
Aquifer tracker (one per group): Record each year's requests, the total pumped, the recharge of 600 acre-feet, and the new aquifer level, starting from 10,000 acre-feet.
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Answer Key
Debrief questions.
- Why can a shared aquifer be drained even when no single user means to cause harm?
- What did groups that stayed above the 8,000 acre-foot danger line have to agree to do?
- How does negotiation compare with other ways a community could decide who gets water, such as a government agency setting a limit or a court dividing water rights?
Answers.
- Answer: The aquifer can be drained because each user pumps for its own good reasons, but the water they share only recharges by 600 acre-feet a year. When the town, the farms, and the company each take what they need, the total can pass the recharge, and the level drops for everyone even though no single user meant to cause harm.
- Answer: Groups that stayed above the 8,000 acre-foot danger line usually agreed to keep the total pumping at or near the 600 acre-feet of recharge, which meant at least one stakeholder accepted less than it first asked for. Accept any answer that connects staying safe to limiting the total to the recharge amount.
- Answer: Negotiation lets the stakeholders hear each other and trade, but it can be slow and may fail if one side refuses to give ground. Other methods, such as a government agency setting a firm limit or a court dividing water rights, decide faster but give the users less say. Accept reasoned comparisons.
Differentiation
Support (below grade level)
Provide each pumping stakeholder with a suggested starting request already written on the role card, so students begin the negotiation with a number rather than inventing one. Give the facilitator a short script of prompts ("How much do you need, and why?") to keep the discussion moving.
Extension (above grade level)
Add a drought year in which recharge falls from 600 to 300 acre-feet, and have groups renegotiate. Ask students to write a short rule the stakeholders could adopt in advance so they do not have to argue from scratch every dry year.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "aquifer," "recharge," "stakeholder," "commons," and "negotiation" with a simple cross-section drawing of an underground water layer with wells drawing from it. Provide sentence starters on each role card ("Our team needs ___ acre-feet because ___."), and pair each student with a partner who shares their home language where possible.