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Worksheet Grade 3 Art & Music

Larksfield Reservoir Gauge Design: A Grade 3 Fractions Worksheet

A grade 3 worksheet where students design a reservoir-level gauge in equal bands and name the shaded parts as fractions like one fourth and three fourths.

Objectives

  1. Students will design a reservoir gauge split into equal bands.
  2. Students will name a shaded part of the gauge as a fraction.

Vocabulary

Reservoir
A human-made lake, usually created by a dam, that stores water for later. Reservoirs supply cities and farms and help control floods.

Also: fraction, equal parts, gauge

Teacher overview

A reservoir is a big lake of water held back by a dam. The made-up Larksfield Reservoir has a tall sign near the dam that shows how full the water is. The sign is a gauge split into equal bands, and workers color in the bands to match the water level. This worksheet asks students to design the gauge and to name the colored part as a fraction. The design is the art task, and naming the fraction is the math task. A gauge only works if its parts are equal, so equal parts matter here in both art and math.

Larksfield Reservoir Gauge Design: A Grade 3 Fractions Worksheet — Grade 3 Art & Music
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Worksheet

  1. Draw a tall gauge. Split it into 4 equal bands from bottom to top.
  2. How many equal bands are on your gauge?
  3. Color in 1 band. What fraction of the gauge is colored?
  4. Color in 3 bands. What fraction of the gauge is colored?
  5. On a gauge with 4 equal bands, 2 bands are blue. What fraction is blue?
  6. Which shows more water: a gauge colored to 3/4 or a gauge colored to 1/4?
  7. The gauge is colored to 4/4. What does that tell you about the reservoir?
  8. Draw a second gauge. Split it into 3 equal bands. Color 1 band. What fraction is colored?
  9. On your 3-band gauge, color 2 bands. What fraction is colored now?
  10. Pick a color for a full gauge and a color for a low gauge. Tell in one sentence why color helps a worker read the gauge fast.

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Answer Key
  1. Answer: A tall gauge split into 4 equal bands. Accept any drawing with four bands of about the same size.
  2. Answer: 4 bands. The gauge is split into four equal parts.
  3. Answer: 1/4. One band out of four equal bands is one fourth.
  4. Answer: 3/4. Three bands of size one fourth make three fourths.
  5. Answer: 2/4. Two blue bands out of four equal bands is two fourths. Accept 1/2 (one half), which is the same amount as two fourths.
  6. Answer: 3/4. Three fourths is more of the gauge than one fourth, so it shows more water.
  7. Answer: The reservoir is full. All 4 bands out of 4 are colored, so the water is at the top.
  8. Answer: 1/3. One band out of three equal bands is one third.
  9. Answer: 2/3. Two bands of size one third make two thirds.
  10. Answer: A full-gauge color and a low-gauge color, with a sentence such as "Color lets a worker see the water level at a glance." Accept any clear reason.

Differentiation

Support

Give students gauge outlines with the equal bands already drawn, so they can focus on coloring and naming the fraction. Have them say the unit fraction aloud for one band before naming the larger fraction.

Extension

Ask students to design a gauge with 6 equal bands, color it to show one half, and write the fraction that matches, explaining how they knew which bands to color.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "equal parts" by folding a paper strip into equal sections students can see and touch. Provide the fraction words (one fourth, three fourths, one third, two thirds) on cards next to matching pictures.

Extensions

Show a photo of a real reservoir or a rain-gauge marker and ask students to point to about where one half full and three fourths full would be on the gauge they designed.