Reading passage Grade 3 English Language Arts
Every Drain in Lindenrow Leads to Catbriar Creek
A grade 3 first-person passage about a class walking its schoolyard with a water map and learning what a watershed is, with seven comprehension questions.
Objectives
- Students will answer questions about a first-person passage using details stated in the text.
- Students will define a watershed in their own words using the passage.
- Students will explain how litter on a blacktop can reach a creek.
Vocabulary
- Storm drain
- A storm drain is the grate at the edge of a street that swallows rainwater and sends it through pipes to the nearest creek or river. That water is usually not treated, so only rain belongs down the drain.
- Watershed
- A watershed is all the land where rain that falls will drain to the same stream, river, or lake. Everyone lives in a watershed, no matter how far from the water they live.
Also: ditch, downhill, blacktop
Teacher overview
A third grader narrates a walk around a fictional school in Lindenrow with a map that shows where rain goes, ending at Catbriar Creek six blocks away. The passage builds the word "watershed" out of things the class could see, which makes it a useful text for students who have met the term only as a definition to memorize. The misconception it corrects head on is the widespread belief that a storm drain carries rain to a treatment plant, when in most towns it carries rain straight to the nearest creek.
Passage
Every Drain in Lindenrow Leads to Catbriar Creek
Last fall my class walked around our school with a map. Our teacher, Mr. Sowell, called it a water map. It showed our street, our playground, and a thin blue line at the edge marked Catbriar Creek.
We started at the storm drain by the bus loop. A storm drain is the metal grate at the curb. Rain runs off the street into it. I always thought that drain took the water to the water plant. Mr. Sowell told us it does not. Storm drains carry rain straight to the creek, and nothing cleans it on the way.
Then he poured a cup of water on the blacktop. It did not sit still. It ran toward the fence. He told us to look at our feet. The whole playground tilts a little, and none of us had ever noticed.
We followed the tilt to the fence and then to a ditch behind the field. The ditch was dry that day. Mr. Sowell said it fills fast in a storm and runs downhill to Catbriar Creek, six blocks away.
At the creek we found a leaf, a candy wrapper, and part of a foam cup. My friend Delphine said the wrapper looked like the ones from our lunchroom. We could not prove that. But we could see how a wrapper would get there. Wind takes it to the parking lot. Rain takes it to the drain. The drain takes it to the creek.
Back in class we learned the word for the land we had walked. A watershed is all the land where rain runs downhill to the same creek or river. Our school sits in the Catbriar Creek watershed. So do the houses on my street, the fire station, and the corn field past the highway.
Mr. Sowell asked one last question. He asked what we could do about the wrapper. Delphine said that picking up trash at the bus loop was really a way of cleaning the creek. We made a plan to check the bus loop every Friday.
Questions
- What did the class carry with them on their walk?
- Where does the water in a Lindenrow storm drain go?
- What did the class find out when Mr. Sowell poured a cup of water on the blacktop?
- What is a watershed?
- Name two places besides the school that are in the Catbriar Creek watershed.
- The narrator says the class could not prove the wrapper came from their lunchroom. Why could they not prove it?
- Why did Delphine think that picking up trash at the bus loop would help the creek?
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: A map, which their teacher called a water map. The first paragraph says it showed their street, the playground, and Catbriar Creek.
- Answer: Straight to Catbriar Creek. The second paragraph says nothing cleans the water on the way.
- Answer: That the playground tilts, because the water ran toward the fence instead of sitting still.
- Answer: All the land where rain runs downhill to the same creek or river. Accept a student's own wording that keeps both parts of that idea.
- Answer: Any two of: the houses on the narrator's street, the fire station, and the corn field past the highway.
- Answer: Because they only saw that the wrapper looked like the ones from the lunchroom.
Accept answers explaining that looking alike does not show where it came from. - Answer: Because trash on the ground gets blown to the parking lot, washed into the drain, and carried to the creek, so trash picked up early never reaches the water.
Differentiation
Support
Before reading, sketch the walk on the board as four stops: bus loop, blacktop, ditch, creek. Give these students a copy of the passage with the definition of watershed already underlined, and let them answer questions 6 and 7 aloud to a partner who writes the answers.
Extension
Ask students to write the paragraph the narrator would add after the first Friday of checking the bus loop, using only what the passage establishes about how trash travels. They should include one sentence that names something the class still could not prove.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "storm drain," "ditch," "blacktop," and "downhill" with photographs, and demonstrate the tilt by pouring a spoonful of water on a slanted tray. Allow questions 1 through 5 to be answered in short phrases, and provide this frame for question 4: "A watershed is all the land where ___."
Extensions
The class can make its own water map of the schoolyard, marking each storm drain and drawing arrows in the direction water runs, then compare their arrows after the next rain. Checking the predictions against a real storm shows the class whether each arrow was drawn correctly.