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Reading passage Grade 2 Careers & CTE

The Night Crew That Fixed Lantern Row's Broken Pipe

A grade 2 read-aloud passage following a fictional water crew from the midnight phone call to the moment the tap on Lantern Row runs clear again.

Objectives

  1. Students will retell the order of a water main repair from the call to the finished street.
  2. Students will name three different jobs that took part in one repair.

Vocabulary

Water main
A big underground pipe that carries drinking water beneath the streets to a neighborhood. Smaller service lines branch off it to reach each building.
Valve
A valve is a device in a pipe that operators can open or close to control where water flows. Valves let crews shut off one street for repairs without turning off the whole town.

Also: dispatcher, crew

Teacher overview

A water main break is often repaired and filled back in before morning, which leaves little for anyone to see afterward. This read-aloud passage follows one fictional repair on Lantern Row from the midnight phone call through the dig to the moment the water comes back, and it names three different jobs along the way: a dispatcher, a backhoe operator, and a pipe crew. It pairs well with any lesson on where tap water comes from, and it gives students a concrete answer to the question of who fixes a broken pipe.

The Night Crew That Fixed Lantern Row's Broken Pipe — Grade 2 Careers & CTE
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Passage

The teacher reads aloud:

At midnight the phone rang at the water office. A man on Lantern Row said water was coming up through the road.

Ms. Okoye took the call. She is a dispatcher. Her job is to send the right crew to the right place. She wrote down the street. Then she called the night crew.

Mr. Brennan drove the big truck. Behind it came a digging machine called a backhoe. The crew set out orange cones. They turned a valve to shut the water off, so the leak would stop while they worked.

The backhoe scooped out the road. Down in the hole was a pipe as wide as a dinner plate. It had a long crack in it. That pipe is called a water main. It carries water to every house on the street.

Two workers climbed down. They cut out the cracked piece. They slid in a new piece and pulled the clamps tight. It took a long time, and it was cold.

At four in the morning the crew turned the valve back on. Water pushed through the new pipe. The crew filled the hole with gravel and packed it down.

When the sun came up, people on Lantern Row turned on their taps. The water ran clear. Most of them never knew anyone had been there.

Questions

  1. Who took the phone call, and what is her job?
  2. What was wrong with the pipe under the road?
  3. When did the crew turn the water back on?
  4. Why did the crew turn the valve off before they started to dig?
  5. Name three jobs that helped fix the pipe on Lantern Row.
  6. The passage says most people never knew anyone had been there. Tell why that is true.

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: Ms. Okoye took the call, and she is a dispatcher who sends the right crew to the right place. The second paragraph names her and her job.
  2. Answer: It had a long crack in it, and water was coming up through the road. The passage describes the crack after the backhoe opens the hole.
  3. Answer: At four in the morning. That is when the passage says the crew turned the valve back on.
  4. Answer: They turned the valve off so the leak would stop while they worked. The passage states this in the paragraph where the crew sets out the cones. Also accept the added idea that a hole without water running into it is easier to work in.
  5. Answer: The dispatcher, the backhoe operator who drove the digging machine, and the pipe crew workers who cut out the cracked piece and put in the new one. Also accept the truck driver, Mr. Brennan, as one of the jobs.
  6. Answer: The crew worked while the street was asleep, filled the hole back in before morning, and left the water running clear, so most people slept through the work and found their water working normally in the morning.

Differentiation

Support (below grade level)

Read the passage twice and pause after each paragraph to ask what just happened. Give students four picture cards showing the call, the dig, the new pipe, and the tap, and have them put the cards in order before answering any question.

Extension (above grade level)

Ask students to write the note Ms. Okoye might leave for the day crew, telling them what happened overnight and what still needs checking on Lantern Row.

ELL supports

Pre-teach valve, crack, crew, and dig with a gesture for each, and have the class do the gesture when the word comes up in the read-aloud. Accept oral answers first. Provide the frame "The crew ____ so the water ____" for items 4 and 6.

Extensions

Ask students to look for a patched square of road near the school, the kind that shows where a hole was filled back in, and to draw it. Then discuss what might be buried underneath it.