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Lesson plan Grade 8 Social Studies & Civics

Mapping Dry Wells in Durnley County: Who Gets Help First?

A grade 8 geography lesson in which students map a rural county's failing wells from a data table and advise the county board on where to spend a limited grant.

Objectives

  1. Students will construct a map that shows well failures and distance to the existing water main.
  2. Students will describe the spatial pattern in the mapped data and connect it to well depth.
  3. Students will recommend a spending option and support the recommendation with evidence from their map.

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.
Water main
A big underground pipe that carries drinking water beneath the streets to a neighborhood. Smaller service lines branch off it to reach each building.

Also: static water level, unincorporated, spatial pattern

Teacher overview

Rural households that draw water from private wells are usually invisible in a utility's records, because no one bills them and no one tests their water for them. This lesson gives students a table of twelve households in a fictional county and asks them to turn it into a map, which is where the pattern becomes visible. A misconception this lesson corrects directly is the idea that a dry well means the aquifer has run out everywhere. In the data, the failing wells are the shallower ones, mostly in the southwest, while the deeper wells keep producing, so the map shows a pattern tied to well depth rather than a county-wide shortage. Students then advise a county board that cannot afford to help every household in the same year.

Procedure

Setting the scene (7 min): Explain that in the fictional Durnley County, most households outside the two villages draw water from private wells. The county has received a grant that is large enough to extend the water main in one direction or to replace a handful of wells, but not to do both. Distribute the handout and the blank grid map.

Modeling the mapping method (8 min): Using household 6 as an example, model plotting a point at its grid square, coloring it green because the well still produces, and writing its distance to the main beside the point. Establish the color key with the class: green for a well that still produces, red for a well that went dry in the past year, and a black circle around any household whose bacteria test failed.

Mapping (15 min): Students plot all twelve households. Circulate and check that students are writing the distance figures on the map rather than leaving them in the table, since the recommendation later depends on seeing distance and failure together.

Analysis (12 min): Students answer handout items 1 through 5 in pairs. As a formative check, ask for a show of hands on which corner of the map holds the most red points before students write item 4, and confirm that the class agrees on the southwest before they build a recommendation on it.

Closure (8 min): Students write item 6 individually and turn in the map with the handout. Ask two volunteers to read their recommendation, then point out that the county board hears exactly this kind of disagreement at its meetings.

Mapping Dry Wells in Durnley County: Who Gets Help First? — Grade 8 Social Studies & Civics
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Handout

Durnley County is a fictional rural county. Its existing water main runs east and west along County Road 9, which crosses row 3 of the map grid. On the grid map, north is at the top; columns A through G run west to east, and rows 1 through 6 run north to south. Households outside the villages use private wells. County staff collected the table below last spring.

Household Grid square Well depth (feet) Well went dry last year Bacteria test failed Miles to the existing main
1 B5 90 Yes No 1.2
2 C5 85 Yes No 1.3
3 B6 95 Yes Yes 1.8
4 C6 80 Yes No 1.9
5 D6 100 Yes No 2.0
6 E2 150 No No 0.4
7 F2 160 No No 0.5
8 G2 155 No Yes 0.6
9 A6 88 Yes No 2.4
10 D4 120 No No 0.7
11 G6 105 Yes Yes 2.6
12 F5 110 No Yes 1.4

Plot every household on the grid map using the class color key, and write each household's distance to the main beside its point. Then answer the items below.

  1. Which corner of the map holds the most wells that went dry last year?
  2. Compare the depth of the wells that went dry with the depth of the wells that still produce. What do you notice?
  3. Which two households sit farthest from the existing water main?
  4. The county can extend the main in one direction this year. Extending south along Route 12 to grid square C6 would pass close to households 1, 2, 3, and 4. Extending east to grid square G6 would reach only household 11. Which extension serves more households?
  5. Household 12 has a well that still produces but failed its bacteria test. Explain why a pipe extension might not be the county's best answer for that household.
  6. Write a two-sentence recommendation to the Durnley County board. Name the option you would fund first and one piece of evidence from your map that supports it.

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: The southwest corner.
    Households 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 9 all went dry, and all of them sit in columns A through D on rows 5 and 6.
  2. Answer: The wells that went dry are the shallower ones.
    Every well that went dry is between 80 and 105 feet deep, while the wells that still produce are 110 feet or deeper. Accept any answer that states the shallow wells failed and the deeper wells did not.
  3. Answer: Households 11 and 9.
    Household 11 is 2.6 miles from the main and household 9 is 2.4 miles, the two largest distances in the table.
  4. Answer: The southern extension.
    The southern route passes close to four households, while the eastern route reaches one. The southern route is also shorter: household 4 at C6 is 1.9 miles from the main, while household 11 at G6 is 2.6 miles.
  5. Answer: A bacteria problem is a treatment problem, not a supply problem.
    Household 12's well still produces water, so the household needs disinfection or a well repair rather than a new pipe. A grant for well work would help it sooner and at lower cost than a main extension. Accept any answer that separates water quality from water quantity.
  6. Answer: Accept any recommendation supported by evidence from the student's map.
    A strong response names one option and one mapped fact, such as recommending the southern extension because four of the seven dry wells (households 1 through 4) sit along that route, or recommending well replacement grants because the dry wells are shallow and could be deepened for less than the cost of pipe. Reject responses that give no evidence from the map.

Differentiation

Support

Provide a partly completed map with households 1, 6, and 12 already plotted and labeled, so students begin with the color key modeled three times. Give these students only items 1, 3, and 6, and provide a sentence frame for item 6.

Extension

Ask students to add a second layer to the map showing which households would still be more than one mile from a pipe after the southern extension, and to write a short note to the county board explaining what that remaining group would need.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "well," "main," "went dry," and "grid square" with a simple cross-section drawing showing two wells of different depths reaching the same aquifer. Provide the analysis items as a cloze frame, such as "The dry wells are mostly in the ___ corner. These wells are ___ feet deep or less."

Extensions

Many states publish a map of household well records or of areas served by public water systems. Students can find their own county on such a map and describe, in one paragraph, how much of the county is served by pipes and how much depends on private wells, then compare that pattern with the fictional Durnley County data.