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Career spotlight Grade 5 Careers & CTE

Meet the Water Sampler Who Tests Marsh Glen's Tap Water

A grade 5 career spotlight on a water quality sampler who collects and tests water around town each day so the utility can prove the water is safe.

Objectives

  1. Students will describe the daily tasks of a water quality sampler.
  2. Students will explain why a town collects and tests water samples.
  3. Students will write a short informative explanation of the sampler's job.

Vocabulary

Key words: water sample, chlorine, route, lab

Teacher overview

This profile follows a water quality sampler, the person who collects the water that proves a town's supply is safe. It describes a shift on the route, the training path into the role, and the outlook for water jobs, and it ends with a short informative writing task. The profile does not give a pay figure for this specific sampling role and describes the work instead.

Meet the Water Sampler Who Tests Marsh Glen's Tap Water — Grade 5 Careers & CTE
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Career Profile

Priya is a water quality sampler in the town of Marsh Glen, a made-up town used for this profile. Her job is to collect water and test it. The town must show that its water is safe. Priya's samples are part of that proof.

Priya drives a set route around town. She stops at planned spots, like sampling stations and taps inside public buildings. At each stop she fills clean bottles with water. She labels every bottle with the place and the time. She also checks the chlorine level right there. Chlorine keeps germs from growing inside the pipes. The state wants the chlorine to stay in a safe range. Water systems usually keep the chlorine between 0.2 and 2.0 mg/L in the pipes. If a reading is too low, Priya calls the plant so they can fix it. Then she brings the bottles back to the lab. The lab runs more tests on each one.

Clean work matters at every step. A dirty bottle can ruin a test. So Priya keeps her bottles sealed until the moment she fills them. She washes her hands and wears gloves. She writes down each reading in a log, because the town keeps these records for years.

Priya got ready for this job step by step. First she finished high school. Then she trained on the job. She learned how to take a clean sample the right way. Many water workers also earn a state license by passing a test.

This profile does not have an exact pay number for this sampling job, so it does not give a made-up salary. Even so, the water field needs new workers. About one in three water workers can retire within the next ten years. Towns will need careful samplers to keep testing the water. This is one path in water among many, from hands-on jobs to science degrees.

Student Handout

Answer each question using the profile.

  1. Find and copy one sentence that tells what Priya does at each stop on her route.
  2. Why does the town collect and test water samples?
  3. What might Priya do if a chlorine reading is too low?
  4. Why does Priya keep her bottles sealed until she fills them?
  5. Write two or three sentences that explain what a water sampler does. Use at least two facts from the profile.

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: Any exact sentence naming a stop task, such as "At each stop she fills clean bottles with water." or "She labels every bottle with the place and the time." Accept any such sentence copied correctly, including "She also checks the chlorine level right there."
  2. Answer: The town must show that its water is safe, and the samples are part of that proof.
  3. Answer: She calls the plant so they can fix it.
  4. Answer: A dirty bottle can ruin a test, so keeping the bottles sealed keeps the sample clean and the result correct.
  5. Answer: Accept any two-to-three-sentence explanation that uses at least two facts, such as: A water sampler drives a route and fills clean bottles with water at set stops. The sampler checks the chlorine level and brings the bottles to the lab for more tests.

Differentiation

Support

Provide a picture route map with three or four labeled stops (a sampling station, a school tap, the lab) so students can follow Priya's day while they answer questions 1 and 2. Let question 5 be completed as one sentence with a sentence starter: "A water sampler ___."

Extension

Ask students to add one or two more sentences to their question 5 explanation that tells why clean, careful work matters, using the profile's point that a dirty bottle can ruin a test.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "sample," "chlorine," "route," and "lab" with a labeled picture for each term. Allow questions 1 through 4 to be answered with short phrases, and provide the sentence starter above for question 5.