Grade 6 Lesson plan
Where to Build Post-and-Brush Dams on Sedge Run
Students weigh three stream reaches against a post supply and a one-day work limit, then choose where a fictional crew should build low post-and-brush dams.
NGSS · Middle School (6–8)
Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment.
Clarification statement: Examples of the design process include examining human environmental impacts, assessing the kinds of solutions that are feasible, and designing and evaluating solutions that could reduce that impact. Examples of human impacts can include water usage (such as the withdrawal of water from streams and aquifers or the construction of dams and levees), land usage (such as urban development, agriculture, or the removal of wetlands), and pollution (such as of the air, water, or land).
Why water teaches this standard well
This is the most water-explicit standard in all of NGSS: its clarification names water withdrawal from streams and aquifers, dams and levees, wetland removal, and water pollution as the very impacts to monitor and minimize. A water quality monitoring plan or a conservation design meets it head-on, and it pairs naturally with the engineering ETS1 standards on a filter challenge.
Materials tagged with this code are written to the full standard , including its clarification statement , and each carries a written note explaining the alignment. See how we review materials.
Grade 6 Lesson plan
Students weigh three stream reaches against a post supply and a one-day work limit, then choose where a fictional crew should build low post-and-brush dams.
Grade 7 Lesson plan
A 55-minute grade 7 lesson where students size storm runoff from a fictional road-salt pad, then pick among a full roof, a partial roof, and a catch basin.
Grade 6 Lesson plan
A grade 6 science lesson in which students model the protective layer inside a lead service line and use a fictional tap record to explain why lead results jumped.
Grade 6 Lesson plan
A grade 6 lesson set at a fictional home with no sewer, where students trace how a septic tank and soil drainfield clean wastewater and find percent removal.
Grade 6 Lesson plan
A grade 6 lesson where students summarize a fictional town's winter chloride readings, compare them with a creek guideline, and plan how to monitor and cut salt use.
Grade 7 Lesson plan
A 50-minute grade 7 science lesson using a fictional bench test of lead released at five pH values to show how corrosion control lowers lead without digging up pipes.
Grade 7 Lesson plan
A 50-minute grade 7 science lesson where students convert a river's current to miles per hour, find a spill's travel time, and plan sampling before the intake closes.
Grade 7 Lesson plan
A 55-minute grade 7 science lesson comparing storm flow with plant capacity at a fictional town's combined sewer, then sizing the overflow a green plan prevents.
Grade 8 Lesson plan
A grade 8 science lesson using a fictional coastal town's chloride records to model seawater intrusion and design a monitoring and pumping plan for the aquifer.
Grade 8 Lesson plan
A 50-minute grade 8 careers lesson in which students act as source water protection specialists, mapping five watershed hazards and designing a monitoring plan.
Grade 6 Lesson plan
A 55-minute lesson in which students size a containment curb and a roof for a fictional town's road-salt pile, then budget the monitoring visits that follow construction.
Grade 7 Lesson plan
A grade 7 lesson where students build a proportional sampling plan for a fictional school's drinking taps, infer how many exceed the action level, and size a retrofit.
Grade 7 Lesson plan
Students design a managed aquifer recharge basin for a fictional town, choosing a site and shape that refill a falling aquifer within real constraints.
Grade 7 Lesson plan
Students design a water-quality monitoring plan for a fictional creek, choosing sampling sites and tests to detect three pollution sources within real limits.
Grade 8 Lesson plan
A grade 8 engineering lesson where students size a floating wetland raft to pull nitrogen from a green campus pond, working within a materials budget.
Grade 8 Lesson plan
A 60-minute grade 8 lesson where students score three ways to stop a public works truck wash from draining to a creek, then check the winner against a budget limit.
Grade 6 Lesson plan
A 55-minute grade 6 science lesson where students calculate roof runoff and design green infrastructure to cut stormwater in a fictional downtown.
Grade 6 Lesson plan
A 50-minute grade 6 science lesson where students map a fictional watershed, sort point and nonpoint pollution sources, and argue which one a town should address first.
Grade 6 Lesson plan
A 45-minute grade 6 science lesson where students use a fictional town's records to sort homes by lead-pipe risk and argue which service lines to replace first.
Grade 7 Lesson plan
A 45-minute grade 7 science lesson on a fictional town's PFAS-tainted well, where students compare test results to the federal limit and study a rule still being changed.
Grade 7 Lesson plan
A 50-minute grade 7 science lesson where students read how a treatment plant works and build a flowchart placing the six stages in the correct order.
Grade 7 Lesson plan
Students work a fictional technician's sample log, judge turbidity, chlorine, and pH results against published limits, and learn how operator licensing works.
Grade 7 Lesson plan
A 50-minute grade 7 lesson where students calculate roof runoff and compare pavement to planted ground to design a school rain garden that cuts stormwater.
Grade 7 Lesson plan
A 50-minute grade 7 lesson comparing flood and drip irrigation and crop water footprints to show how farms can withdraw less water from rivers and aquifers.
Grade 8 Lesson plan
A 50-minute grade 8 science lesson where students model flood and drip irrigation as linear functions of acreage and compare the water each method uses.
Grade 8 Lesson plan
A 50-minute grade 8 science lesson in which students build a linear function from storm data for a fictional city and decide how large a sewer storage tunnel must be.
Grade 8 Lesson plan
A 55-minute grade 8 science lesson where students track turbidity through a fictional treatment plant and solve a linear equation for the chlorine dose.
Grade 8 Lesson plan
A 50-minute grade 8 lesson where students model a fictional town's cast-iron water main replacement with linear functions for miles remaining and cumulative cost.
Grade 8 Lesson plan
A 50-minute grade 8 science lesson where students calculate runoff from a fictional school's paved lot and model how a rain garden reduces stormwater.
Grade 6 Lesson plan
Teams model a hillside in a tray, measure sediment reaching a downstream cup, then design and test a barrier that reduces erosion for the fictional town of Cutter Hollow.
Grade 8 Lesson plan
A 50-minute grade 8 lesson calculating peak stormwater runoff for a conventional versus a green-infrastructure parking lot and testing both against a criterion.
Grade 7 Lesson plan
A grade 7 lesson calculating the percent increase in a fictional watershed's impervious surface over 20 years, linked to faster stormwater runoff.
Grade 7 Lesson plan
A grade 7 lesson using a fictional reservoir's oxygen readings across a day to explain how nutrient pollution fuels algal blooms and a dawn oxygen crash.
Grade 8 Worksheet
A grade 8 science worksheet using powers of ten to compare acid strength above and below a fictional limestone treatment bed on a mine drainage stream.
Grade 8 Worksheet
A grade 8 worksheet where students plot chloride against conductivity for a salted river, draw a line of best fit, and use its slope to predict values.
Grade 6 Worksheet
A grade 6 science worksheet where students read a fictional town's yearly water quality table, compare each result to its legal limit, and subtract to find the margin.
Grade 6 Worksheet
A grade 6 worksheet on a fictional reclamation plant, where students find nitrogen removal percent and weigh nitrogen as a river pollutant and a farm resource.
Grade 6 Worksheet
A grade 6 science worksheet where students run a fictional family's home water audit, using real per-day and per-use figures to find savings.
Grade 6 Worksheet
A grade 6 science worksheet where students audit a fictional school's drips and showerheads, then use rates and percent to find the gallons they could save.
Grade 6 Worksheet
A grade 6 worksheet on non-revenue water where students find how many gallons a fictional utility loses to leaks and what percent of pumped water is lost.
Grade 6 Worksheet
A grade 6 worksheet where students use inlet and outlet readings to calculate how well a fictional constructed wetland removes waste and nitrogen from water.
Grade 6 Worksheet
A grade 6 science worksheet on a fictional reverse osmosis unit, where students find recovery percent and how much feed water becomes clean water instead of reject.
Grade 7 Worksheet
A grade 7 science worksheet: students read lead results from 10 homes, find the percent above the action level, and judge if the sample fits the town.
Grade 7 Worksheet
Students sort a fictional town's 6,000 service lines by material, find percents, and build a ten-year lead pipe replacement schedule with costs.
Grade 7 Worksheet
A grade 7 science worksheet: students track cloudiness in NTU through a treatment plant, find the percent removed per stage, and compare finished water to the limit.
Grade 7 Worksheet
A grade 7 science worksheet where students read a town's PFAS results in parts per trillion, find percent removal by a carbon filter, and blend wells to meet the limit.
Grade 7 Worksheet
A grade 7 worksheet in which students track dripping faucets and showerhead flow at a fictional school and use proportions to total yearly water waste.
Grade 7 Worksheet
A grade 7 science worksheet where students compare stormwater runoff from a grass field and a parking lot, using the runoff formula and percent change.
Grade 7 Worksheet
A grade 7 science worksheet on a fictional town's under-sink reverse osmosis unit: students calculate percent of dissolved solids removed and the unit's water recovery.
Grade 8 Worksheet
Grade 8 students use the rational method and runoff coefficients to compare peak stormwater runoff before and after paving a fictional meadow site.
Grade 8 Worksheet
A grade 8 science worksheet on lead in drinking water: students weigh corrosion control, compare tap results to the shifting action level, and use scientific notation.
Grade 8 Worksheet
A grade 8 science worksheet where students build a linear function for roof runoff, predict the most water caught per storm, and connect the model to stormwater control.
Grade 8 Worksheet
A grade 8 science worksheet on PFAS removal at a fictional well, using scientific notation and removal efficiency to compare readings against the 4.0 ppt limit.
Grade 8 Worksheet
Grade 8 students at the fictional Sable River Dam write reservoir capacity, downstream releases, and hydropower figures in scientific notation and compare their sizes.
Grade 8 Worksheet
A grade 8 science worksheet on a fictional plant's anaerobic digester: volatile solids destroyed, biogas produced, and yearly electricity in scientific notation.
Grade 8 Worksheet
A grade 8 science worksheet in which students read five sequential tap samples from a fictional home to locate the lead source and compare results to the action level.
Grade 8 Worksheet
A grade 8 science worksheet where students read a fictional treatment plant's BOD and TSS data, find removal efficiency, and write daily loads in scientific notation.
Grade 6 Worksheet
A grade 6 worksheet where students calculate how efficiently bacteria remove waste at a fictional wastewater plant and compare results to a real federal standard.
Grade 8 Worksheet
A grade 8 worksheet where students read a fictional plant's PFAS lab report, compare it to the real federal limit, and convert ppm, ppb, and ppt.
Grade 7 Math problem set
A grade 7 science problem set in which students use meter tests and a dye test to find a home leak, then trace where indoor and outdoor water goes.
Grade 7 Math problem set
Students size a fictional constructed treatment wetland, compute nutrient removal percentages, and check the design against a budget and a water-quality goal.
Grade 6 Math problem set
A grade 6 problem set on a fictional system's chlorine tests, where students find chlorine demand, the mean and range of residuals, and compare them to the safe range.
Grade 6 Math problem set
Ten grade 6 problems on lead sampling results, a ten-year replacement schedule, and yearly cost per account for the service lines under the town of Ravensgate.
Grade 7 Math problem set
A grade 7 science problem set on a fictional school's rooftop rain capture, finding runoff gallons, cistern percent captured, and how surface type changes runoff.
Grade 7 Math problem set
Ten problems comparing what a fictional city's plant produces with what its meters record, finding the percent lost to leaks and what a repair program recovers.
Grade 7 Math problem set
A grade 7 problem set tracking chloride from winter road salt in a reservoir: percent increase, proportional rates, ppm equivalence, and percent error.
Grade 7 Math problem set
A grade 7 math set using a fictional creek's pH sampling data to practice mean and range, then reasons about how well a small sample represents a waterway.
Grade 7 Lab / experiment
Students cloud water with measured soil, record the depth where a marked disk disappears, and use the data to judge when a lake beach is too murky to guard.
Grade 6 Lab / experiment
A grade 6 science lab where students build a layered bottle filter, run muddy water through it, rate cloudiness on a 0-to-10 scale, and calculate the percent removed.
Grade 7 Lab / experiment
A grade 7 science lab where students track how muddy water clears in two jars of different sediment and connect settling speed to a treatment plant's job.
Grade 7 Lab / experiment
A grade 7 lab where students pour water through gravel, sand, and packed soil, time the drain, and compute infiltration rates for runoff and recharge.
Grade 7 Lab / experiment
Students pour a measured 100 mL through sand, loam, and clay soil samples, calculate the percent each soil holds, and use the results to set an irrigation schedule.
Grade 8 Lab / experiment
A grade 8 science lab where students time how fast water passes through sand, loam, and clay, calculate infiltration rates, and connect them to recharge and runoff.
Grade 6 Lab / experiment
A grade 6 lab testing pH and dissolved oxygen at two sites on a fictional creek to see whether a storm drain outfall is lowering water quality downstream.
Grades 7–8 Lab / experiment
A two-session lab where teams make standardized muddy water, dose one jar with a coagulant, and graph clarity over time as treatment operators do in a daily jar test.
Grade 7 Classroom activity
Grade 7 groups swap crumpled-paper watersheds, place up to three monitoring stations, and use upstream and downstream results to find a hidden leaking site.
Grade 8 Classroom activity
Grade 8 groups compare pipe and runoff pollution on a paper watershed, classify six sources as point or nonpoint, and weigh permits with a phosphorus budget.
Grade 7 Classroom activity
Student teams role-play a fictional water board, scoring three competing supply designs on a shared decision matrix and defending one recommendation.
Grade 6 Classroom activity
A grade 6 station-rotation where teams act as plant operators, rotating through the five stages of drinking-water treatment and making one decision at each.
Grade 6 Classroom activity
A grade 6 science relay game where teams match four real drinking water contaminants to their federal limits and to the treatment that removes each one.
Grade 6 Classroom activity
A grade 6 science station activity where students sort stream-bug cards from three sites and rate each site's water quality using sensitive and tolerant bugs.
Grade 7 Classroom activity
A grade 7 science activity where students draw bead samples from a model reservoir to see why water monitoring needs random, representative samples, not one biased scoop.
Grade 8 Classroom activity
A grade 8 science activity where groups sort stream insect cards by pollution tolerance and calculate a biotic index for three sites on a fictional brook.
Grade 8 Classroom activity
A grade 8 science role-play where students act as microbes, oxygen, and organic matter to model how activated sludge cleans wastewater and why aeration matters.
Grade 8 Classroom activity
A grade 8 science activity where groups build a sand aquifer model, release a dye contaminant, and map how the plume spreads toward a well.
Grade 8 Reading passage
A grade 8 science reading passage following a fictional water quality analyst through sample handling, holding times, and the career paths into water lab work.
Grade 6 Reading passage
A grade 6 science reading passage about a fictional street's flooding, tracing how storm drains, rain gardens, and permeable pavement move and soak up rainwater.
Grade 7 Reading passage
A grade 7 science reading passage on bioremediation, tracing how microbes clean sewage and a fictional fuel-leak site, and why PFAS resist the same living cleanup.
Grade 7 Reading passage
An informational passage about a fictional treatment plant that pulls phosphorus out of wastewater, turns it into fertilizer pellets, and protects a river's oxygen.
Grade 8 Reading passage
A grade 8 science reading passage on how reverse osmosis turns seawater into drinking water, with the energy, brine, and cost trade-offs a fictional town must weigh.
Grade 7 Writing prompt
A grade 7 science writing prompt: explain how a fictional water reclamation plant removes most microplastics, why some still reach the river, and what residents can do.
Grade 6 Debate kit
A grade 6 science debate on how a fictional town should cut PFAS in its well water, with two-sided evidence on blending and on carbon filters.
Grade 6 Debate kit
A grade 6 science debate on whether a fictional town should close its swim beach by a rainfall rule or wait for bacteria test results, with two-sided evidence.
Grade 8 Debate kit
A grade 8 science debate kit on land-applying treated sewage solids, weighing recycled nutrients against PFAS and runoff concerns, with a four-level rubric.
Grade 8 Debate kit
A grade 8 debate kit on removing a fictional aging dam to restore fish migration, weighing real dissolved-oxygen science against hydropower and cost.
Grades 6–7 Project
Teams map their schoolyard's hard and soft surfaces, calculate real stormwater runoff in gallons, trace where it drains, and pitch a fix to a real school decision-maker.
Grade 7 Project
A five-session grade 7 project where teams screen four nitrate-cutting designs against land, budget, and drainage limits, then pitch one to a fictional drainage board.
Grade 7 Project
A five-session grade 7 build-and-test project where teams design bank shade structures on a model reach, run three timed heat trials, and combine the best features.
Grade 8 Project
A three-session grade 8 project in which teams design, pilot, and defend a creek sampling network that can detect whether a street-sweeping program is working.
Grade 8 Project
A four-session grade 8 project in which teams design a staged drought trigger plan from well-level data and defend it to a water board with a one-page notice.
Grade 6 Project
A five-session grade 6 science project testing whether early roof runoff is dirtier than later runoff, ending in a data report to a fictional school grounds committee.
Grade 7 Project
A five-session grade 7 science project on whether parking lot runoff warms a creek, ending in a report and one affordable fix for a fictional public works office.
Grade 6 Quiz & test questions
A 30-point grade 6 science quiz on how microbes treat wastewater, using a fictional plant record to test reasoning about oxygen, settling, and river health.
Grade 7 Quiz & test questions
A grade 7 science assessment on dissolved oxygen, pH, and sampling design, using data from two fictional Willow Creek monitoring sites to test water-quality reasoning.
Grade 6 Graphic organizer
A grade 6 iteration log for a fictional construction site, tracking four silt fence trials against a clarity target and a standing target, with a completed exemplar.
Grade 7 Graphic organizer
A six-link cause-and-effect organizer tracing how germs can move from a fictional pasture into irrigation water and onto school salad, with a control step for each link.