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Worksheet Grade 4 English Language Arts

Two Accounts of the Mud in the Garnock River

Students read a short news report and a fourth grader's journal entry about the same muddy river, then compare what each account tells and what it leaves out.

Objectives

  1. Students will answer questions using details stated in one of two accounts.
  2. Students will draw an inference from a detail that a writer reports but does not explain.
  3. Students will tell what happened in three ordered sentences drawn from both accounts.

Vocabulary

Key words: account, runoff, soil, bank, site

Teacher overview

The town of Ilbury, the Garnock River, and both writers on this worksheet are fictional. Students read a short news report about three brown days on the river and a journal entry written by a fourth grader who was standing at the water that week, so the same event arrives twice with different details in each version. Many fourth graders assume that a muddy river has been poisoned by something dumped in it, when the ordinary cause is soil washing off bare ground during a storm, and the news report names that cause plainly. The last item asks students to combine both accounts into three ordered sentences.

Two Accounts of the Mud in the Garnock River — Grade 4 English Language Arts
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Worksheet

Read both accounts. Then answer items 1 through 11.

Account 1. From the Ilbury Weekly, May 14.

The Garnock River ran brown for three days last week. The color came from soil washed off a building site on Birchmore Hill. Heavy rain fell on May 9. Bare dirt at the site had no cloth fence to hold it in place. The rain carried the loose soil down a ditch and into the river. Water that runs off the land during a storm is called runoff. The town told the builder to put up a soil fence before work started again. By May 12 the river ran clear.

Account 2. From Nadia's journal, May 10.

Saturday. I walked to the river with Grandpa. The water looked like chocolate milk. It smelled like wet dirt. Two ducks left the near bank and swam to the far side, where the water was less brown. A long orange line of mud ran along the edge of the water. Grandpa said he had not seen the river look like this since he was a boy. On the way home we passed the hill where the new houses are going up. The dirt there had no fence around it. My shoes were orange by the time I got home.

  1. According to the news report, how many days did the Garnock River run brown?
  2. Where was Nadia when she saw the brown water?
  3. What does the news report name as the cause of the brown water?
  4. The report says the site had no cloth fence. What was that fence supposed to do?
  5. Use the report to explain what runoff means.
  6. Give one detail from Nadia's journal that tells how the water looked or how it smelled.
  7. Nadia writes that two ducks left the near bank. What can you tell from that detail?
  8. Nadia never names the cause of the brown water. What did she see on the way home that the report also mentions?
  9. One writer stood at the river that week. Which account did that writer write?
  10. What did the town tell the builder to do before work started again?
  11. Write three sentences that tell what happened to the Garnock River. Use at least one detail from each account. Put your sentences in order.

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: Three days. The report states this in its first sentence.
  2. Answer: At the river with her grandfather. Her journal opens with the walk to the river.
  3. Answer: Soil washed off a building site on Birchmore Hill. The report names this in its second sentence.
  4. Answer: Hold the bare dirt in place so rain could not carry it off the site. Accept any answer that names holding soil back as the purpose.
  5. Answer: Water that runs off the land during a storm. The report gives this meaning directly after describing the rain.
  6. Answer: Accept either sensory detail from the journal: the water looked like chocolate milk, or it smelled like wet dirt.
  7. Answer: The water near that bank was muddier, so the ducks moved to where it was clearer. Accept any answer that connects the move to the muddier near bank.
  8. Answer: The hill with the new houses going up, where the dirt had no fence around it. Both accounts describe the same bare site.
  9. Answer: Account 2, Nadia's journal. She writes about walking to the river and about her own orange shoes.
  10. Answer: Put up a soil fence. The report states this in its next to last sentence.
  11. Answer: Accept any three ordered sentences that use a detail from each account and keep the order of events. A proficient response has rain falling on the bare site, soil washing down the ditch into the river, and the water turning brown before the town required a soil fence.

Differentiation

Support

Give these students a copy with the sentence that answers each of items 1 through 5 already underlined in the two accounts. For item 11, supply a strip printed with first, next, and last and allow the three sentences to be dictated to a partner before being copied.

Extension

Ask these students to write a third account of the same week from the builder's point of view, no longer than six sentences, that stays true to every detail in both accounts. Then have them list one thing the builder would know that neither of the other writers could.

ELL supports

Pre-teach bank, site, soil, and runoff using a tray of dirt tilted under a watering can, and point out that bank here means the edge of a river. Provide a two-column chart headed "The report says" and "Nadia says" so students can sort details orally before writing any item.

Extensions

Have students look at a bare patch of ground on the school grounds after the next rain and write four sentences describing where the water went and whether it carried soil with it. Compare their observations with account 2 and note which sensory details a firsthand writer can supply that a report cannot.