Georgia SS7G2.a
The Standard
Explain how water pollution and unequal access to water impacts irrigation, trade, industry, and drinking water.
Georgia Standards of Excellence for Social Studies · Explain environmental issues across the continent of Africa.
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students explain how dirty water and uneven water supplies affect daily life and economic activity across Africa. They connect water conditions to farming, shipping, manufacturing, and safe drinking water.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Students can trace a clear cause-and-effect chain, such as polluted river water reducing crop yields or raising treatment costs for factories. They support the explanation with a specific place, map, data point, or short source.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may assume all parts of Africa have the same water problems or that water scarcity only means low rainfall. They may also overlook how pollution limits usable water and disrupts farming, trade, and industry.
How to Assess It
- Give students a map showing one polluted river and two regions with different water access. Ask them to write four cause-and-effect statements, one each for irrigation, trade, industry, and drinking water.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give groups water tokens and region cards, then have them allocate limited clean water among homes, farms, factories, and river transport.
Ask students to write which water user should receive priority during a shortage and defend the choice with two likely effects.
Play a cause-and-effect card match using water problems, affected activities, and outcomes, then require groups to explain each completed chain.
Have students examine a bottled-water label and local water bill, then compare household water access with a short case study from an African community.
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Related Standards
- SS7G10.a
Explain the causes and effects of pollution on the Chang Jiang (Yangtze) and Ganges Rivers.
- SS7G10.b
Explain the causes and effects of air pollution and flooding in India and China.
- SS7G11.a
Describe how the mountain, desert, and water features of Southern and Eastern Asia impact trade and affect where people live.
- SS7G6.a
Explain how water pollution and the unequal access to water impacts irrigation and drinking water.
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