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Worksheet Grade 4 English Language Arts

How Rain Becomes Crowfield's Tap Water: A Grade 4 Worksheet

A grade 4 worksheet tracing rain through a fictional town's creek, plant, and pipes, with items on stage order, word meaning, inference, and a short explanation.

Objectives

  1. Students will put the stages of a town's water path in the order the text gives.
  2. Students will use context to explain what a domain word means in this text.
  3. Students will write a short explanation of the four stages in their own words.

Vocabulary

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.
Reservoir
A human-made lake, usually created by a dam, that stores water for later. Reservoirs supply cities and farms and help control floods.

Also: evaporate, treatment plant, stage

Teacher overview

Crowfield is a fictional town on Threadneedle Creek, and its water path is written here in four labeled stages so students can practice following a sequence across headings. Grade 4 readers often treat the water cycle as a closed loop that has nothing to do with a faucet, so this text deliberately ties the cloud stage to the plant stage and then to the drain. The final item asks students to retell the four stages in their own words rather than copy the headings.

How Rain Becomes Crowfield's Tap Water: A Grade 4 Worksheet — Grade 4 English Language Arts
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Worksheet

Read the text. Then answer items 1 through 10.

Four stages: how rain becomes tap water in Crowfield

Stage 1: Rain falls on the hills. Clouds move over the hills west of Crowfield. Rain falls on the slopes. Some rain soaks into the soil. The rest runs downhill in little streams. All the land that drains into one creek is called a watershed. Every drop that lands in the Threadneedle watershed heads for the same creek.

Stage 2: The creek fills the reservoir. Threadneedle Creek carries the rain into Crowfield Reservoir. A reservoir is a lake that a town keeps for its drinking water. The reservoir holds water from wet weeks so the town can use it in dry ones. On a hot day, some of the lake water evaporates, which means it turns into vapor and rises into the air. That vapor can form new clouds later.

Stage 3: The plant cleans the water. Pipes carry lake water to the Crowfield Water Plant. There the water sits still so dirt can settle. Then it passes through sand filters. Last, workers add a small amount of a chemical that kills germs. The water is tested before any of it leaves the plant.

Stage 4: Pipes carry it to homes. Clean water flows into the pipes under Crowfield's streets. It reaches sinks, showers, and drinking fountains. After people use it, the used water goes down the drain to a second plant. That plant cleans the used water and returns it to the creek below town.

  1. Put these four stages in order: the plant cleans the water, rain falls on the hills, pipes carry water to homes, the creek fills the reservoir.
  2. What is a watershed, according to the text?
  3. Where does Threadneedle Creek carry the rain?
  4. Name the three things the plant does to clean the water in stage 3.
  5. What does the word evaporates mean in stage 2?
  6. Where does used water go after it leaves a sink in Crowfield?
  7. The text says the reservoir holds water from wet weeks for use in dry ones. Explain why a town would want that.
  8. Rain that falls on the hills in stage 1 can end up in a drinking fountain in stage 4. Use two details from the text to explain how.
  9. Suppose almost no rain fell on the hills for a whole season. Stage 1 would change right away. Which of the other three stages would change first, and why?
  10. Write four sentences that explain the four stages in your own words. Write them in order and use the word reservoir in one of them.

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: Rain falls on the hills, the creek fills the reservoir, the plant cleans the water, pipes carry water to homes. This is the order of the four stage headings.
  2. Answer: All the land that drains into one creek. Stage 1 gives this definition and names the Threadneedle watershed as the example.
  3. Answer: Into Crowfield Reservoir. Stage 2 states this in its first sentence.
  4. Answer: The water sits still so dirt can settle, it passes through sand filters, and workers add a small amount of a chemical that kills germs. Stage 3 lists all three.
  5. Answer: It turns into vapor and rises into the air. Stage 2 explains the word right after using it.
  6. Answer: Down the drain to a second plant, which cleans it and returns it to the creek below town. Stage 4 states this.
  7. Answer: So the town still has drinking water when little rain falls. Accept any answer explaining that stored water covers the dry stretches between wet weeks.
  8. Answer: Accept any answer using two stated links, such as rain running downhill into Threadneedle Creek, the creek filling the reservoir, pipes carrying lake water to the plant, and clean water flowing to fountains.
  9. Answer: Stage 2 would change first. Accept any answer explaining that less rain means less water running into the creek, so the reservoir would start to drop before the plant or the pipes were affected.
  10. Answer: Accept any four ordered sentences in the student's own words that use reservoir correctly. A proficient response covers rain on the hills, the creek filling the reservoir, cleaning at the plant, and pipes carrying water to homes.

Differentiation

Support

Give these students four sentence strips, one per stage, to physically place in order before they write item 1. Provide the stage headings as a word bank for item 10, and allow items 2 through 6 to be answered by copying the supporting sentence and underlining the part that answers the question.

Extension

Ask students to add a fifth stage to the text that explains what happens to the cleaned used water once it is back in the creek below town, using only ideas already supported by stages 1 through 4. The new stage needs a heading and three sentences.

ELL supports

Pre-teach watershed, reservoir, and evaporate with a tray demonstration: tilt a tray of crumpled foil hills, spray water on it, and watch it collect in a low corner. Provide a four-box picture organizer so students can sketch each stage before writing, and allow phrase answers for items 2 through 6.