Graphic organizer Grade 3 English Language Arts
Two Jobs at the Inglenook Water Plant: A Compare Frame
A grade 3 compare-and-contrast organizer with two job cards from a fictional water plant, a six-question frame, a Both box, and a filled example.
Objectives
- Students will sort facts about two jobs into matching categories.
- Students will name two things the jobs share and two ways they differ.
- Students will write a short paragraph describing both jobs.
Vocabulary
Key words: operator, technician, sample, filter, license
Teacher overview
This organizer is a three-column compare frame that puts two workers from the Inglenook water plant, a fictional plant in a small town, side by side across six matching questions, with a Both box underneath for what they share. Two short job cards supply every fact students need, so the frame tests sorting and wording rather than memory. The cards also show that a water plant has more than one kind of job and that people work inside it every day. The two preparation paths on the job cards, on-the-job training with a state license and a two-year college lab program, are both ordinary ways into water work, and the cards state each one without ranking them.
Organizer
Job card one: Mr. Peckover, plant operator
| Question | Fact |
|---|---|
| Where in the plant? | In the filter room and the pump room, walking between them all day. |
| First thing each morning? | He reads the dials and writes down the numbers from the night before. |
| Tools? | Wrenches, a radio, a flashlight, and the plant's control screen. |
| Watches for? | A filter that is clogging, or a pump making a new sound. |
| How he got ready? | He finished high school, trained on the job, and passed a state test for his license. |
| Talks to? | The night operator, the repair crew, and the lab. |
Job card two: Ms. Sawtry, lab technician
| Question | Fact |
|---|---|
| Where in the plant? | In the lab, a small room with a counter, a sink, and a warm box. |
| First thing each morning? | She lines up the sample jars that came in and labels each one. |
| Tools? | Glass jars, a meter, a warm box for growing germs, and a laptop. |
| Watches for? | Water that is too cloudy, or a jar that shows germs growing. |
| How she got ready? | She went to a two-year college program for lab work. |
| Talks to? | The operators, the sample driver, and the state office that gets the reports. |
The compare frame. Fill in every empty box.
| Question | Mr. Peckover, operator | Ms. Sawtry, lab technician |
|---|---|---|
| Where does this person work inside the plant? | ||
| What does this person do first each morning? | ||
| What tools does this person use? | ||
| What problem does this person watch for? | ||
| How did this person get ready for the job? | ||
| Who does this person talk to during the day? |
| Both | Write three things that are true of both jobs |
|---|---|
| 1 | |
| 2 | |
| 3 |
| My paragraph plan | Write your sentence here |
|---|---|
| Topic sentence: what this paragraph is about | |
| Sentence 2: what Mr. Peckover does | |
| Sentence 3: what Ms. Sawtry does | |
| Last sentence: one thing that is true of both |
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Completed Exemplar
| Question | Mr. Peckover, operator | Ms. Sawtry, lab technician |
|---|---|---|
| Where does this person work inside the plant? | The filter room and the pump room. | The lab, a small room with a counter and a sink. |
| What does this person do first each morning? | Reads the dials and writes down last night's numbers. | Lines up the sample jars and labels each one. |
| What tools does this person use? | Wrenches, a radio, a flashlight, and the control screen. | Glass jars, a meter, a warm box, and a laptop. |
| What problem does this person watch for? | A filter clogging or a pump making a new sound. | Water that is too cloudy, or germs growing in a jar. |
| How did this person get ready for the job? | High school, training on the job, and a state test for his license. | A two-year college program for lab work. |
| Who does this person talk to during the day? | The night operator, the repair crew, and the lab. | The operators, the sample driver, and the state office. |
| Both | Sample answers |
|---|---|
| 1 | Both work at the same water plant every day. |
| 2 | Both write things down and keep records. |
| 3 | Both watch for a problem before it reaches anybody's tap. |
| My paragraph plan | Sample sentence |
|---|---|
| Topic sentence | Two people with very different jobs keep the water clean at the Inglenook plant. |
| Sentence 2: Mr. Peckover | Mr. Peckover is the operator, and he walks the filter room and the pump room, listening for a pump that sounds wrong. |
| Sentence 3: Ms. Sawtry | Ms. Sawtry is the lab technician, and she tests the sample jars to see whether the water is cloudy or has germs in it. |
| Last sentence: both | Both of them write down what they find, because the plant keeps a record of every day. |
Differentiation
Support
Give these students a frame with the operator column already filled in, so the sorting task is one column wide instead of two. Cut the job cards into strips and let students place each strip in the matching row before writing anything. Accept two Both answers instead of three.
Extension
Ask students to write a third job card for a person the two cards already mention, such as the sample driver or a member of the repair crew, using only what the two cards say about that person and marking anything they had to guess with a question mark.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "operator," "technician," "sample," and "license" with a picture beside each row heading, such as a wrench for tools and a clock for morning. Read both job cards aloud before students write. Provide the frames "Mr. Peckover works in ___, and Ms. Sawtry works in ___," and "Both of them ___," and allow students to copy exact wording from the job cards.
Extensions
The class can turn the finished frame into a two-column poster for the hallway, adding a third column for a water job nobody in the class has heard of yet, then filling that column after a short search with the teacher. The third column stays blank until the class has found real information to put in it.