Worksheet Grade 6 Art & Music

Plover Hill Service Line Cutaway: Drawing a Buried Pipe to Scale

A grade 6 technical illustration worksheet: students scale a fictional buried service line to fit a mailer, then choose line weight, color coding, and label placement.

Grade: Grade 6
Subject: Art & Music
Material: Worksheet
Time: 40 min
Prep: No prep
Materials: None

Standards

6.RP.A.3 Common Core Math

Use ratio and rate reasoning to solve real-world and mathematical problems, e.g., by reasoning about tables of equivalent ratios, tape diagrams, double number line diagrams, or equations, including finding a percent of a quantity and converting measurement units.

How this material aligns: Items 1 and 4 through 7 use a drawing scale stated as a rate of feet per inch to find the drawn lengths and depth of the service line, solving the unit-rate problems that 6.RP.A.3 describes.

All materials for 6.RP.A.3 →

6.RP.A.1 Common Core Math

Understand the concept of a ratio and use ratio language to describe a ratio relationship between two quantities. For example, 'The ratio of wings to beaks in the bird house at the zoo was 2:1, because for every 2 wings there was 1 beak.'

How this material aligns: Item 8 asks students to compare a classmate's drawn lengths with the real 12-to-24-foot relationship and to explain the difference using ratio language, as 6.RP.A.1 describes; the worksheet practices this in that one item only.

All materials for 6.RP.A.1 →

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This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely, without attribution. Updated 2026-09-24.

Objectives

Students will use a drawing scale given as feet per inch to find drawn lengths for a technical illustration.
Students will choose a scale that lets a drawing fit a fixed layout with room for its surroundings.
Students will make and justify design decisions about line weight, color coding, and label placement for a public mailer.

Vocabulary

Service line: A service line is the small pipe that connects the water main under the street to the plumbing inside one home or building. It is the last leg of the trip water makes to your tap.

Also: cutaway, scale, curb stop, line weight, legend, leader line, technical illustration

Teacher overview

A service line is the pipe that carries water from the water main under the street to a building, and in older neighborhoods some service lines are made of lead. EPA's Lead and Copper Rule Improvements require water systems to replace nearly all lead service lines within 10 years, so many utilities now ask residents to help identify what their pipes are made of. In this worksheet, the fictional Plover Hill Water Department is designing a cutaway drawing for a mailer, and students work through the decisions a technical illustrator makes: choosing a scale so the drawing fits the page, then using line weight, color, and labels so a homeowner can read it at a glance. A common misconception is that the drawing scale is fixed before the layout is planned; in practice, an illustrator often changes the scale after finding that the first choice leaves no room for the street, the house, or the labels, which items 1 through 4 walk students through.

Plover Hill Service Line Cutaway: Drawing a Buried Pipe to Scale — Grade 6 Art & Music

Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Worksheet

In our scenario, the Plover Hill Water Department is a fictional utility. It is mailing every home a cutaway drawing. A cutaway shows what is under the ground, as if a slice of soil were removed. The drawing shows the service line, which runs from the water main under the street to the house. A shutoff valve called the curb stop sits along the way. In Plover Hill, the utility owns the part from the main to the curb stop. The homeowner owns the part from the curb stop to the house.

The whole service line is 36 feet long. The first drawing uses a scale of 1 inch for every 4 feet. How many inches long is the service line in the drawing?
The mailer panel is 11 inches wide. The designer leaves a margin of 0.75 inch on the left side and on the right side. How many inches of width are left for the drawing?
The drawing space is 9.5 inches wide, and the drawn service line is 9 inches long. How many inches are left over for the street at one end and the house at the other end?
That is not enough room, so the designer changes the scale to 1 inch for every 6 feet. How many inches long is the 36-foot service line at this new scale?
At 1 inch for every 6 feet, how many inches long is the utility's 12-foot part of the line?
At 1 inch for every 6 feet, how many inches long is the homeowner's 24-foot part of the line?
The line is buried 4.5 feet below the ground. At 1 inch for every 6 feet, how many inches below the ground line should the pipe be drawn?
In real life, the utility's part is 12 feet and the homeowner's part is 24 feet, a ratio of 1 to 2. A classmate drew the utility's part 2 inches long and the homeowner's part 3 inches long. Is the classmate's drawing in the same ratio as the real pipe? Explain using ratio language.
The service line is the main subject of the drawing. Should it be drawn with a thicker line or a thinner line than the soil layers and the outline of the house? Explain why.
The legend shows three pipe materials. Copper pipe is the color of a new penny. What color would you choose for copper on the legend, and why?
A draft legend shows lead pipe in red and copper pipe in green. Some readers cannot tell red from green. Describe one change that would help these readers tell the two pipes apart.
The label "curb stop" must point to a small valve under the grass. Should the words go right on top of the pipe, or in open space with a thin leader line that points to the valve? Explain your choice.
Why is a cutaway view better than an ordinary outdoor view for this mailer?

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

Answer Key

Answer: 9 inches.
36 feet divided by 4 feet per inch is 9 inches.
Answer: 9.5 inches.
The two margins total 0.75 + 0.75 = 1.5 inches, and 11 - 1.5 = 9.5 inches.
Answer: 0.5 inch.
9.5 - 9 = 0.5 inch, which must be split between the street and the house, so there is almost no room for either.
Answer: 6 inches.
36 feet divided by 6 feet per inch is 6 inches, which leaves 3.5 inches of the 9.5-inch space for the street and the house.
Answer: 2 inches.
12 feet divided by 6 feet per inch is 2 inches.
Answer: 4 inches.
24 feet divided by 6 feet per inch is 4 inches. Check: 2 + 4 = 6 inches, the length of the whole line from item 4.
Answer: 0.75 inch.
4.5 feet divided by 6 feet per inch is 0.75 inch.
Answer: No.
The classmate's parts have a ratio of 2 to 3, but the real parts have a ratio of 1 to 2. For every 1 inch of the utility's part, the drawing needs 2 inches of the homeowner's part, so a 2-inch utility part needs a 4-inch homeowner part.
Answer: Thicker.
A heavier line makes the service line the first thing the eye finds. Thinner lines for the soil and the house keep those parts in the background, which gives the drawing a clear visual hierarchy.
Answer: An orange-brown, copper color.
A color that looks like the real metal helps a homeowner recognize the pipe when they look at their own basement or meter box. Accept any warm orange or brown with this reason.
Answer: Use colors that differ in lightness, or add a pattern.
For example, show lead as a dark gray and copper as a light orange-brown, draw lead as a dashed line, or print the name of the material along each pipe. Accept any change that does not depend on telling red from green.
Answer: In open space with a leader line.
Words placed on the pipe cover the subject and are hard to read against the lines behind them. Open space keeps the label easy to read, and the leader line still shows exactly which part is the curb stop.
Answer: The service line is buried, so only a cutaway can show it A cutaway shows the hidden pipe, how deep it lies, and where the curb stop divides the utility's part from the homeowner's part. An outdoor view would show only grass and a sidewalk.

Differentiation

Support

Provide a partly filled scale table with two columns, "real feet" and "drawn inches," and the first row, 6 feet and 1 inch, already filled in, so students extend the table to find items 4 through 7. Give a printed sample cutaway with the parts labeled so students can point to the service line, curb stop, soil layers, and house before answering items 9 through 13.

Extension

Ask students to draw the full cutaway on an 11-inch-wide sheet at the scale of 1 inch for every 6 feet, using their answers to items 4 through 7. They add a legend for lead, copper, and plastic pipe that works for readers who cannot tell red from green, then trade drawings with a partner who checks the drawn lengths with a ruler and the legend with a gray-only photocopy.

ELL supports

Pre-teach cutaway, curb stop, legend, and leader line with a labeled diagram, and model the phrase "1 inch for every 6 feet" with a ruler held against a drawn line. Allow students to answer items 9 through 13 with a quick sketch plus a short phrase, and provide sentence starters such as "I would draw it thicker because..." and "This color helps because..."