This page features inquiry-based lessons that engage students in exploring real-world issues related to lead prevention and safe drinking water. Designed to be completed within a single class period or a short sequence of lessons, each experience guides students through asking focused questions, examining evidence, and drawing clear conclusions. These lessons spark curiosity, strengthen critical thinking, and help students connect classroom learning to the health and safety of their communities.
Exploring the Health Impacts of Water Quality
This lesson plan contains age-appropriate classroom activities aligned to North Carolina standards in ELA, Science, Mathematics, and Social Studies to engage students in a cross curricular understanding of the societal impacts of clean water as it applies to human health. Each link below goes to a preview template for teachers. Once you are in the file, click on “USE TEMPLATE” in the top right corner to create a copy for use from your Google Drive
The Passivation Barrier: Examining Water Chemistry and Infrastructure Solution
In this fast-paced, phenomenon-driven lesson, students investigate how invisible shifts in water chemistry cause solid lead infrastructure to corrode and contaminate tap water. Students analyze high-resolution pipe cross-sections, interrogate water chemistry datasets, and trace the molecular mechanism of lead oxidation alongside orthophosphate scale passivation. The lesson culminates in a Claim-Evidence-Reasoning (CER) scientific writing task and an engineering trade-off debate comparing immediate chemical intervention with long-term infrastructure replacement.