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Source Water for the Federal City: Civic Responsibility for the Public Good

Learning Experience 2

Big Ideas

Philadelphia was the first successful model of a large urban public water system in the United States.

Access to fresh, clean, safe water is a  human right and a collective responsibility. 

We each play a significant role in ensuring our public water supply is clean, safe and accessible for all.

Summary

Students will learn about the motivations related to public health that led Philadelphia to design a new drinking water system to provide fresh, clean water to people.  

Engage

The Guided Imagery Script provides a way to help transport students back to the late 18th century when Philadelphia was motivated to create its first public drinking water system. 

The Slide deck will provide reflection questions using their graphic organizer followed by THINK-PAIR-SHARE and class discussion

Explore and Explain

What led Philadelphia to develop a safe and reliable public water system?

Incorporating the reading of Fever: 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson into this Learning Experience will provide excellent historical context to help answer the question about what motivated Philadelphians to engineer a new drinking water system. 

EXPLORE PRIMARY SOURCE ACTIVITY 

Hand out  Explore Primary Sources document resources provided in the MATERIALS tab for jigsaw activity. 

Use these links below as resources for the TIMELINE Activity 

Philadelphia Water History Time Line 

Fever 1793: Philadelphia Great Experiment”  about Yellow Fever epidemic and the beginning of the Water Supply System with accompanying Teacher and Student guides

FWWIC History (VIMEO)   (This film will be used again in 2.3 to examine the engineering ingenuity. When viewing this time, encourage your student to focus on why the Water Works became necessary.)

If you want to go even deeper, explore The Water and Drainage History of Philadelphia: A 7-Part Course

Elaborate

For fun, ask students to travel through time and write a first person narrative as if they lived during the time the public water system came to be.

The Learning Experience will end with a reflective writing piece to address the guiding questions. 

Extension

CIVIC ENGAGEMENT

Develop a water appreciation plan and/or a celebration plan for home and/or school/community.

Research various methods of civic engagement and discussion focusing on historical examples or modern methods.

Survey classmate opinions on types of civic engagement and create graphs or pie charts to display results.

Research historical tax rates and living costs and compare them to today. Use graphs or charts to display the data.

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Visit or explore online a local American Art Collection (Philadelphia Museum of Art or Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts) from this time period (early 1800’s). Compare and contrast the works of art. Discuss and learn about style, color, form, and presentation.

A sociological connection from the painting to historical newspaper documents about celebrations of the time, public gatherings, or public news could also link students to the world of the painting and help them understand different kinds of historical documents.

SOCIAL STUDIES/HISTORY

Plan a Field trip to Old City and/or the historic section of Philadelphia and explore the neighborhoods from a “historical water” perspective.

SCIENCE

Discuss waterborne diseases. Assign each student one of five waterborne diseases (cholera, giardiasis, shigellosis, amebiasis, and cryptosporidiosis). Students research the assigned disease and create a brief report including transmission, symptoms, prevention, treatment and when the disease was discovered. See Waterborne Disease Chart.

COMPARING CITIES

Find contemporary (1800) water supply/public health challenges in comparable cities like Philadelphia and New York, Chicago or Boston (Carl Smith discusses at length) and compare. This comparison could “flow” nicely into an engineering lesson on 3 different engineering solutions related to the source of water (river, aqueduct, lake).

Teacher Support

Essential Question:

What does it take for us to drink a glass of fresh, clean, delicious water?

Guiding Questions:

Engage:

What do you think led people in Philadelphia more that 200 years ago to the decision to look for a new source of drinking water?

Explore and Explain:

What led people in Philadelphia to create a public water supply system (instead of private)?
What is civic responsibility? How did ideas about civic responsibility play a role in Philadelphia’s first public water supply system?

Elaborate:
Why was there so much public celebrating in Philadelphia related to clean water?

Students will be able to:

  • Explore a variety of materials, some of which come directly from nature (fruits, vegetables, soil, rocks, flowers or plants or leaves, water), and some of which are made by people (plastic water bottles, car, candy wrapper, can, jar, cell phone, eyeglasses, straw).
  • Classify everyday objects into the categories of nature-made and person-made.

Impact (verb)
have a strong effect or influence on someone or something

Harvest (noun)
the process or period of gathering crops

Pesticide (noun)
a substance used for destroying organisms harmful to cultivated plants or to animals

Insecticide (noun)
a substance used for killing insects

Mill (verb)
grind or crush (something) in a mill

Carcinogen (noun)
a substance capable of causing cancer in living tissue

Toxic (adjective)
poisonous

Waste (noun)
material that is not wanted; the unusable remains or byproducts of something

Condition (noun)
the state of something with regard to its appearance, quality, or working order

Wage (noun)
a fixed regular payment, typically paid on a daily or weekly basis, made by an employer to an employee

Income (noun)
money received, especially on a regular basis, for work or through investments

Domestic (adjective)
existing or occurring inside a particular country; not foreign or international

Global (adjective)
relating to the whole world; worldwide

Garment (noun)
an item of clothing

Production (noun)
the action of making or manufacturing from components or raw materials

Consume (verb)
use up (a resource)

Polluter (noun)
a person or thing responsible for contaminating the environment with harmful or poisonous substances

Explore a variety of materials, some of which come directly from nature (fruits, vegetables, soil, rocks, flowers or plants or leaves, water), and some of which are made by people (plastic water bottles, car, candy wrapper, can, jar, cell phone, eyeglasses, straw).

Standards

PA STEEL Standards – N/A

Related Standards

NGSS

4-ESS3-1 Obtain and combine information to describe that energy and fuels are derived from natural resources and their uses affect the environment

Student Materials

Student Worksheet

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