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KentuckySocial Studies Corner
★ Inquiry DBQ Series · Grade 6 · #16

Managing Water DBQ

What does it take for a society to manage water well?

What does it take to manage water well? Students compare Babylon's canals, Hammurabi's laws, Persian qanats, Roman aqueducts, and Louisville's water story.

Grade 6Development of Civilizations 3500 BCE–600 CEGoogle Slides3 class periods

License: one teacher and their own students.

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What's included

  • Student DBQ packet: hook, background reading, Documents A–F with analysis questions, evidence organizer, bucketing and outline pages, C-E-R essay and 4-point rubric
  • Scaffolded version with shorter excerpts, plain-words versions and sentence starters
  • Teacher presentation with speaker notes, plus a teacher guide with standards, pacing, answer key and a sample essay

The documents

  • Document A: Herodotus: the canals of Babylon
  • Document B: Hammurabi: fix your canal bank
  • Document C: Polybius: Persia's hidden tunnels
  • Document D: Frontinus: Rome's aqueducts and water thieves
  • Document E: Vitruvius: clay or lead pipes?
  • Document F: Louisville's water story (timeline)

Document A: Herodotus, Histories, trans. G. C. Macaulay (1890), public domain. Document B: Code of Hammurabi, trans. C. H. W. Johns (1903), public domain. Document C: Polybius, Histories, trans. W. R. Paton (Loeb, 1925), public domain. Document D: Frontinus, The Aqueducts of Rome, trans. Charles E. Bennett (Loeb, 1925), public domain. Document E: Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture, trans. Morris Hicky Morgan (1914), public domain. Document F: teacher-made timeline from Louisville Water Company's published history and the Kentucky Historical Society.

Good to know

Class time
3 class periods
Format
Editable Google Slides
Answer key
Included

Standards: KAS Grade 6: 6.G.HE.1, 6.G.HE.2, 6.E.ST.2, 6.C.PR.1, 6.I.UE.1, 6.I.CC.1