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Reading passage Grade 5 Careers & CTE

The Broken Main on Third Street: A Harlow Bend Water Crew

A grade 5 careers reading passage that follows a distribution line crew as they fix a broken water main and explains why the job keeps a town safe.

Objectives

  1. Students will identify the steps a distribution line crew takes to fix a broken water main.
  2. Students will explain why strong water pressure keeps dirt out of the pipes.
  3. Students will make an inference about why a city tracks every main break.

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.

Also: distribution line worker, pressure, flushing

Teacher overview

This passage follows a distribution line crew through the morning they fix a broken water main. It shows a real water-sector job in action and explains, at a grade 5 level, why the work keeps a town's water safe. Teachers can use it to build reading and inference skills while introducing a job that keeps a town's water flowing behind the scenes.

The Broken Main on Third Street: A Harlow Bend Water Crew — Grade 5 Careers & CTE
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Passage

Before the sun came up in Harlow Bend, a water main broke under Third Street. A water main is a large pipe that carries clean water to homes. When it broke, water rushed up through the road. A cold puddle spread across the street. Harlow Bend is a made-up town, but this problem is real in many places. Across the country, a water main breaks about every two minutes. Many pipes are old, and cold weather makes them crack.

The city sent a repair crew. These workers are called distribution line workers. Their job is to keep the buried pipes working. Maria leads the crew, and she has fixed hundreds of pipes.

First, the crew found the right valve and turned off the water to that block. This stopped the flooding. It also meant some homes had no water for a few hours. Maria knocked on doors to warn the families.

Next, a machine dug a deep hole down to the pipe. The crew climbed in carefully. They cut out the broken piece. Then they fit a new piece of pipe in its place and sealed it tight.

Before the crew turned the water back on, they flushed the pipe. Flushing means running water through the pipe to wash out any dirt. Maria explained why this step matters. The water in the pipes must stay above 20 psi of pressure. Pressure is a push. When the push is strong, clean water flows out and dirt cannot leak in. When a pipe breaks, the push drops, and dirt can slip in. So the crew flushes the pipe and tests the water before anyone drinks it.

By noon, the water was back on and the street was patched. Maria wrote a report about the break. The city keeps these reports to find the pipes that break most often. Those pipes go on a list to be replaced first.

Maria says the best part of the job comes at the end. She turns a valve, and clean water flows again to a whole street that depends on her work.

Questions

  1. What broke under Third Street, and what is a water main?
  2. What did the crew do first to stop the flooding?
  3. What does "flushing" the pipe mean?
  4. Why did some homes have no water for a few hours? Use the passage.
  5. Why does the city keep a report about every water main break?
  6. The passage says pressure is a push. Explain why strong pressure keeps dirt out of the pipes.

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 water main broke, and a water main is a large pipe that carries clean water to homes, as the first paragraph states.
  2. Answer: They found the right valve and turned off the water to that block, which stopped the flooding.
  3. Answer: Flushing means running water through the pipe to wash out any dirt, as Maria explains.
  4. Answer: The crew turned off the water to that block so they could fix the pipe, so the homes on that block had no water until the repair was done.
  5. Answer: The city keeps the reports to find the pipes that break most often, so those pipes can be put on a list to be replaced first.
  6. Answer: Strong pressure pushes clean water outward, so dirt cannot leak in; when a pipe breaks the push drops and dirt can slip in, which is why the crew flushes and tests the water.

Differentiation

Support

Provide a five-box picture sequence (broken pipe, valve off, digging, new pipe, flushing) beside the passage so students can follow the steps while they answer. Allow questions 1 through 3 to be answered by underlining the sentence in the passage.

Extension

Ask students to write two or three sentences explaining why an old pipe that has already broken several times should be replaced before a newer one, using only the passage's point about the city's repair list.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "water main," "valve," "pressure," and "flushing" with a labeled picture for each. Allow the inference questions 4, 5, and 6 to be answered with a sentence starter, such as "The homes had no water because ___."