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Lesson plan Grade 3 English Language Arts

Asking Questions About the Coppermill Pump House: A Grade 3 Lesson

Students use question words to ask and answer questions about a short text on a hilltop pump house, then write an informative paragraph about what it does.

Objectives

  1. Students will write questions about a text using the six question words.
  2. Students will answer a partner's questions by pointing to the sentence that gives the answer.
  3. Students will write an informative paragraph with a topic sentence and two facts from the text.

Vocabulary

Pump
A pump is a machine that adds energy to water to move it or push it uphill, doing the job gravity cannot do on its own. Water systems use many different kinds of pumps to move water from wells, through treatment, and out to customers.

Also: pump house, sensor, topic sentence, log book

Teacher overview

The fictional town of Coppermill has a water plant at the bottom of a hill and a neighborhood at the top, so its water has to be pushed uphill into a tank before it can flow back down to faucets. This lesson uses a short text about that pump house to practice asking and answering questions with the text in hand. A misconception worth naming before the reading is that pipes move water in any direction on their own, and the text corrects it by showing the pumps and the tank sensor a town needs in order to get water uphill.

Procedure

Hook (5 min): Set a cup of water on a stack of books and ask a volunteer to move the water up to the top of a taller stack without touching the cup. After a few tries, tell students that a town has the same problem, and that today's text explains how one town solves it.

Modeling question words (8 min): Post the six question-word cards. Read the first paragraph of the text aloud and model writing one question for two of the words, such as "Where does the water plant sit?" Show students that a good question has an answer that is actually in the text, and cross out a question the paragraph cannot answer to make the difference clear.

Shared reading (10 min): Read the whole text aloud once while students follow along. Read it a second time, pausing after each section to let students underline the sentence they think is most important in that part.

Partner ask and answer (10 min): Partners each write two questions on sticky notes, each starting with a question word from the cards. They trade notes, write an answer, and then point to the sentence in the text that gave them the answer. This is the formative check: walk the room and confirm that each pair can point to a sentence for at least three of their four questions before students move on to writing.

Writing the paragraph (10 min): Students complete handout item 6, writing three or four sentences about what the pump house does. Remind them to begin with a topic sentence that names the subject, and to use two facts from the text rather than what they already know about pumps.

Exit ticket (2 min): Each student writes one question they still have about the pump house and leaves it on the door chart as they line up.

Asking Questions About the Coppermill Pump House: A Grade 3 Lesson — Grade 3 English Language Arts
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Handout

The Pump House on Coppermill Hill

Most of the town of Coppermill sits at the bottom of a hill. The water plant sits down there too, right next to Copper Creek. But about two hundred homes sit up on the hill, and water will not run uphill on its own.

That is the job of the pump house. A pump house is a small building with pumps inside. A pump is a machine that pushes water through a pipe. The pumps in Coppermill push water up the hill to a tank at the top.

The tank holds the water until people need it. When someone on the hill turns on a faucet, water flows down from the tank to the house. Going down is the easy part, because water flows downhill on its own.

The pumps do not run all day. A sensor in the tank keeps track of how full the tank is. When the water in the tank drops low, the sensor turns the pumps on. When the tank is full again, the sensor turns the pumps off.

Ms. Ackley works at the pump house. She checks the pumps each morning and listens to them run. A pump that makes a new sound may be worn out. She writes what she hears in a log book, so the crew can fix a pump before it quits.

Questions. Answer each one. Then point to the sentence that gave you the answer.

  1. Where does the water plant in Coppermill sit?
  2. What is a pump?
  3. What turns the pumps on and off?
  4. Why do the homes on the hill need a pump house?
  5. Why does Ms. Ackley write what she hears in a log book?
  6. Write three or four sentences that tell what the pump house on Coppermill Hill does. Start with a topic sentence. Use two facts from the text.

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: At the bottom of the hill, next to Copper Creek. The first paragraph gives both details in one sentence.
  2. Answer: A machine that pushes water through a pipe. This definition appears in the second paragraph.
  3. Answer: A sensor in the tank. The fourth paragraph says the sensor turns the pumps on when the water drops low and off when the tank is full.
  4. Answer: Because water will not run uphill on its own. Students may add that the pumps push the water up to the tank at the top of the hill.
  5. Answer: So the crew can fix a pump before it quits. Accept answers that say she is keeping track of new sounds that mean a pump is worn out.
  6. Answer: Answers will vary. A proficient paragraph begins with a topic sentence such as "The pump house on Coppermill Hill moves water uphill," includes two facts from the text, and stays on the subject of the pump house rather than drifting to other machines.

Differentiation

Support

Give these students a copy of the text with the five answer sentences already numbered in the margin, so their task is matching rather than searching. For item 6, provide the topic sentence and ask them to add two fact sentences underneath it.

Extension

Ask students to write two questions the text cannot answer, then explain for each one where the answer might be found, such as asking Ms. Ackley or reading a different article. Students who finish can add a sixth paragraph to the text that answers one of their own questions in the same plain style.

ELL supports

Post the six question-word cards with a picture cue on each one, and keep them visible during writing. Pre-teach "pump," "tank," and "sensor" using a labeled sketch of a hill with a plant at the bottom and a tank at the top. Allow answers to questions 1 through 5 in short phrases, and provide this frame for item 6: "The pump house on Coppermill Hill ___. It also ___."

Extensions

Students can turn the text into a labeled diagram of the hill, with arrows showing the water going up through the pumps and back down to the houses, then write one caption per arrow. Pairing the diagram with the paragraph gives a second chance to check whether students understood that the trip up and the trip down happen for different reasons.