Worksheet Grade 6 Careers & CTE

Sable Flats Irrigation Technician: A Weekly Delivery Schedule

A grade 6 careers worksheet where students work as an irrigation district technician, finding acre-feet per acre unit rates, percent shares, and canal flow rates.

Grade: Grade 6
Subject: Careers & CTE
Material: Worksheet
Time: 40 min
Prep: No prep
Materials: None

Standards

6.RP.A.2 Common Core Math

Understand the concept of a unit rate a/b associated with a ratio a:b with b not equal to 0, and use rate language in the context of a ratio relationship.

How this material aligns: Items 2 and 3 find acre-feet per acre for two farms, which is the unit rate associated with a water-to-land ratio.

All materials for 6.RP.A.2 →

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 5 and 8 find one farm's percent share of a weekly total and the percent of released water lost to seepage.

All materials for 6.RP.A.3 →

6.NS.B.3 Common Core Math

Fluently add, subtract, multiply, and divide multi-digit decimals using the standard algorithm for each operation.

How this material aligns: Item 7 multiplies the multi-digit decimal 448.8 by a whole number to convert cubic feet per second into gallons per minute.

All materials for 6.NS.B.3 →

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This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely, without attribution. Updated 2026-07-23.

Objectives

Students will calculate acre-feet per acre as a unit rate for farms on a canal.
Students will find percent shares and percent losses in a weekly water order.
Students will convert acre-feet to gallons and cubic feet per second to gallons per minute.

Vocabulary

Acre-foot: The amount of water it takes to cover one acre of land, about the size of a football field, one foot deep. Western states use acre-feet to measure large amounts of water.
Headgate: The gate at the entrance of an irrigation canal or ditch that opens and closes to control how much water flows toward the fields.

Also: ditch rider, seepage, unit rate

Teacher overview

This worksheet places students in the role of an irrigation district technician, sometimes called a ditch rider, who sets headgates and records deliveries along a canal in the fictional Sable Flats Irrigation District. All figures come from one week of a single delivery schedule, so the items build on each other. The misconception worth heading off is that the farm receiving the most water is wasting the most water, when a large farm may in fact be the most efficient. Comparing acre-feet per acre, rather than acre-feet alone, is what makes the farms comparable, and it is the calculation the technician actually makes.

Sable Flats Irrigation Technician: A Weekly Delivery Schedule — Grade 6 Careers & CTE

Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Worksheet

Your job this week. You are an irrigation district technician for the fictional Sable Flats Irrigation District, which delivers water to farms outside the town of Ridleyville. Four farms take water from the Muleshoe Canal. You open and close the headgates, measure the flow, and record how much each farm receives. Water is measured in acre-feet. One acre-foot is enough water to cover one acre of ground one foot deep. Most technicians start with a high school diploma and learn the canal on the job, and many later take a two-year college course in irrigation technology or water management. Some districts hire engineers with four-year degrees to redesign canals and gates.

Muleshoe Canal, week of July 6

Farm	Water ordered (acre-feet)	Acres irrigated
Tindal Farm	25	100
Varnum Farm	20	50
Cotterell Farm	35	175
Durling Farm	20	80

Answer every item. Show the numbers you used.

How many acre-feet did the four farms order in total this week?
Varnum Farm ordered 20 acre-feet for 50 acres. How many acre-feet per acre is that?
Cotterell Farm ordered 35 acre-feet for 175 acres. How many acre-feet per acre is that?
Tindal Farm ordered 0.25 acre-feet per acre and Durling Farm ordered 0.25 acre-feet per acre. Using your answers to items 2 and 3, which of the four farms ordered the most water for each acre?
Cotterell Farm ordered 35 acre-feet out of the 100 acre-feet ordered by all four farms. What percent of the week's total is that?
One acre-foot equals 325,851 gallons. How many gallons did Tindal Farm's 25 acre-feet come to?
The headgate at Durling Farm runs at 5 cubic feet per second. One cubic foot per second equals 448.8 gallons per minute. How many gallons per minute is the headgate delivering?
The district released 100 acre-feet into the canal, and 12 acre-feet soaked into the canal bed before reaching any farm. What percent of the released water was lost to seepage?
Cotterell Farm ordered more acre-feet than any other farm this week. Explain why that does not prove Cotterell Farm is the least careful with water.
Name two different education paths a person could follow into irrigation district work, using the information at the top of this worksheet.

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: 100 acre-feet.
25 plus 20 plus 35 plus 20 equals 100 acre-feet.
Answer: 0.4 acre-feet per acre.
20 acre-feet divided by 50 acres equals 0.4 acre-feet for each acre.
Answer: 0.2 acre-feet per acre.
35 acre-feet divided by 175 acres equals 0.2 acre-feet for each acre.
Answer: Varnum Farm.
Varnum Farm ordered 0.4 acre-feet per acre, which is more than Tindal Farm and Durling Farm at 0.25 and more than Cotterell Farm at 0.2.
Answer: 35 percent.
35 divided by 100 equals 0.35, and 0.35 written as a percent is 35 percent.
Answer: 8,146,275 gallons.
325,851 gallons times 25 acre-feet equals 8,146,275 gallons.
Answer: 2,244 gallons per minute.
448.8 gallons per minute times 5 equals 2,244 gallons per minute.
Answer: 12 percent.
12 divided by 100 equals 0.12, and 0.12 written as a percent is 12 percent.
Answer: Because Cotterell Farm irrigates far more acres than the others.
Cotterell Farm covers 175 acres and used only 0.2 acre-feet for each acre, the lowest rate of the four farms, so its large total comes from its size rather than from waste.
Answer: Any two of these paths.
A high school diploma followed by on-the-job training on the canal, a two-year college course in irrigation technology or water management, or a four-year engineering degree for the people who redesign canals and gates.

Differentiation

Support

Give these students a copy with items 2 and 3 already set up as division sentences, such as 20 divided by 50. Provide a labeled drawing of one acre-foot as a square of land with a one-foot layer of water on it. Reduce the item set to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 9 for students who need more time on the unit rate idea.

Extension

Give students this added order for the following week in the fictional Sable Flats Irrigation District: Tindal Farm takes 30 acre-feet, Varnum Farm takes 15, Cotterell Farm takes 35, and Durling Farm takes 20. Ask students to find each farm's new acre-feet per acre, identify which farm changed the most, and write two sentences explaining what a technician would ask that farm about.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "acre-foot," "headgate," "ditch rider," and "seepage" using a simple canal sketch with a gate, a field, and arrows showing water leaving the canal. Provide the sentence frame "____ Farm ordered ____ acre-feet for each acre." Allow items 9 and 10 to be answered in short phrases or with a labeled drawing.

Extensions

Ask students to find the amount of water it takes to grow one common crop and compare it with the acre-feet per acre figures on this worksheet. Students then write a short paragraph on why an irrigation district might charge by acre-foot delivered rather than by acre farmed, naming who gains under each choice.