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Reading passage Grade 2 English Language Arts

The Water Meter Lid on Larkspur Street: A Grade 2 Passage

A grade 2 read-aloud passage about the meter under a lid in the grass and how its spinning wheel found a silent toilet leak, with seven questions and a key.

Objectives

  1. Students will answer key-detail questions about an informational passage.
  2. Students will explain why the wheel in a meter spins.
  3. Students will tell how the family knew the leak was fixed.

Vocabulary

Key words: meter, lid, leak, wheel, flap

Teacher overview

Most houses served by a water utility have a meter, often under a small lid near the sidewalk, though in colder places it may sit in the basement to keep it from freezing. That makes it one of the few parts of the water system a second grader can go home and look at. This read-aloud passage explains what the meter does and then shows a family using it to find a leak they could not hear. The misconception it targets is the belief that a leak has to be visible or noisy to matter; the toilet in the passage wastes water silently, and the spinning wheel is the only evidence the family has. The setting is a fictional street named Larkspur Street.

The Water Meter Lid on Larkspur Street: A Grade 2 Passage — Grade 2 English Language Arts
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Passage

The Water Meter Lid on Larkspur Street

A small metal lid sits in the grass by the sidewalk on Larkspur Street. Ada steps over it every morning. For a long time she thought it covered a hole for a bolt.

Under the lid is a water meter. One pipe brings water from the street into the meter. Another pipe carries the water on into Ada's house. Every drop her family uses goes through the meter first. The meter counts the water. Inside it there is a little wheel. When water moves, the wheel spins. When no water moves, the wheel holds still. The town reads the count and uses it to write the water bill.

One Saturday, Ada's dad lifted the lid with a hook. He wanted to test something. First he turned off every tap in the house. No one washed hands. No one flushed. Then he and Ada knelt down and watched the little wheel.

The wheel kept spinning.

That meant water was going somewhere with no one using it. Ada's dad checked each toilet. In one of them, water slipped past a worn rubber flap and ran into the bowl all day and all night. The sound was too soft to hear from the hall. A new flap was cheap, and it went in fast.

Then Ada and her dad walked back out to the lid. They watched the wheel again. This time it sat still.

Questions

  1. What is under the metal lid in the grass?
  2. What does the meter count?
  3. When does the little wheel spin?
  4. Why did Ada's dad turn off every tap before he watched the wheel?
  5. What was leaking inside the house?
  6. Why did no one in the family hear the leak?
  7. How did Ada and her dad know the leak was fixed?

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 meter. The passage says one pipe brings water from the street into the meter and another carries it into the house.
  2. Answer: The water the family uses. The passage says every drop the family uses goes through the meter first and the meter counts it.
  3. Answer: When water is moving through it. The passage says the wheel spins when water moves and holds still when no water moves.
  4. Answer: So that any spinning would mean water was leaking. With every tap off, no one was using water, and the wheel should have been still.
  5. Answer: A toilet. The passage says water slipped past a worn rubber flap and ran into the bowl all day and all night.
  6. Answer: The sound was too soft to hear from the hall. Accept an answer saying the water ran quietly into the bowl.
  7. Answer: They watched the wheel again and it sat still. Because no water was moving, the leak had stopped.

Differentiation

Support

Read the passage aloud twice and stop after the sentence about the spinning wheel to ask what that tells the family. Let these students answer items 1 through 3 by pointing to the sentence in the text and copying a few words from it before writing a full answer.

Extension

Ask students to write directions a neighbor could follow to run the same test at home, in order, using the words first, next, then, and last. Challenge them to add one sentence saying what a still wheel means.

ELL supports

Pre-teach meter, lid, wheel, and leak with a simple drawing of a lid in the grass and a wheel with an arrow. Let students trace the water's path from the street pipe to the meter to the house with a finger before answering item 1, and accept phrase answers throughout.

Extensions

Ask students to look for a meter lid on the way home, with an adult and without lifting the lid, and to draw where it sits in relation to the sidewalk and the front door. Post the drawings and compare how many were found in grass, in a driveway, or in a walkway. If meters in your area are indoors, have students ask an adult where theirs is and draw that instead.