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Worksheet Grade 4 English Language Arts

Grease in the Halberd Street Sewer: A Grade 4 Reading Worksheet

A grade 4 reading worksheet built on a fictional city crew's notice about kitchen grease in a sewer, with items on details, cause and effect, comparison, and inference.

Objectives

  1. Students will locate stated details in a public notice about a sewer.
  2. Students will use the notice to explain what causes a pipe to close up.
  3. Students will write four sentences explaining how to keep grease out of a drain.

Vocabulary

Key words: sewer, grease, drain, crew, notice

Teacher overview

Stannick is a fictional city, and the notice on this worksheet is the kind a sewer crew mails to homes and restaurants on one block after a bad blockage. The text explains how cooking grease turns hard inside a pipe, what happens when a sewer closes, and what the crew wants people to do instead. Students answer six items from stated details, three items that call for inference, and a final item that asks for a short explanation in their own words. Fourth graders often assume that anything liquid at the sink stays liquid in the pipe, so the notice states the cooling step plainly.

Grease in the Halberd Street Sewer: A Grade 4 Reading Worksheet — Grade 4 English Language Arts
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Worksheet

Read the notice. Then answer items 1 through 10.

A notice from the sewer crew, the city of Stannick

This notice goes to every home and every diner on Halberd Street.

Last winter our crew opened the sewer under your street, and inside we found a gray lump the size of a car door. The lump was made of cooked grease, cooking oil, and wet wipes packed together. Crews call a lump like this one a fatberg.

Here is how one forms. A cook pours hot grease down the drain, and because hot grease pours like water, it seems harmless. Farther along the pipe the grease cools and turns hard, the way butter turns hard in a cold refrigerator. The hardened grease sticks to the pipe wall, and each new pour makes the lump thicker. Wipes and bits of food catch on it until the pipe finally closes up.

When a sewer closes, the used water has nowhere to go, so it backs up into sinks and floor drains. Last winter it flooded two basements on Halberd Street.

Our crew broke the lump apart with a jet of water, and the work took three nights. It used money the city had saved for new pipe.

You can help us keep the pipe open. Let grease cool in a can. Put a lid on the can and set it in the trash. Wipe greasy pans with a paper towel before you wash them. Put wipes in the trash, even when the box says they flush.

  1. Who sends this notice?
  2. What did the crew find in the sewer last winter?
  3. What three things was the lump made of?
  4. What do crews call a lump like this?
  5. What happens to hot grease after it cools inside a pipe?
  6. Where did the used water go when the sewer closed up?
  7. The notice says hardened grease is like butter in a cold refrigerator. Explain what that helps a reader picture.
  8. The repair used money the city had saved for new pipe. Explain how that could matter to a person who lives on a different street.
  9. A cook says his grease is fine because he runs hot water after it. Use a detail from the notice to explain why the pipe could still close.
  10. Write four sentences that tell a family how to keep grease out of the sewer and why it matters. Use the word grease and the word drain.

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: The sewer crew of the city of Stannick. The heading and first line state who wrote the notice and who receives it.
  2. Answer: A gray lump the size of a car door. The second paragraph states this.
  3. Answer: Cooked grease, oil, and wet wipes. The second paragraph lists all three.
  4. Answer: A fatberg. The notice gives this name at the end of the second paragraph.
  5. Answer: It turns hard and sticks to the pipe wall. The third paragraph states both steps in order.
  6. Answer: It backed up into sinks and floor drains, and it flooded two basements on Halberd Street. The fourth paragraph states this.
  7. Answer: Accept any answer explaining that the comparison shows a soft, pourable liquid becoming a solid when it cools, so a reader can picture grease going stiff inside a cold pipe.
  8. Answer: Accept any answer explaining that money spent on the repair was no longer available for new pipe, so work on other streets could be delayed.
  9. Answer: Accept any answer using the cooling detail, such as pointing out that hot water only carries the grease farther down the pipe, where it cools and sticks anyway.
  10. Answer: Accept any four sentences that use grease and drain and give at least two of the notice's steps, such as cooling grease in a can, putting the can in the trash, wiping pans with a paper towel, and putting wipes in the trash. A proficient response also states a reason, such as keeping the sewer from backing up into homes.

Differentiation

Support

Give these students the notice with each paragraph numbered and the six answer sentences for items 1 through 6 already underlined, so the work is locating and copying rather than searching. Provide a two-box organizer for item 10 labeled "What to do" and "Why it matters," with one example filled in.

Extension

Ask students to write the same information as a short sign for the wall above a diner sink, using no more than twenty words, and then explain in two sentences which facts they had to leave out and why the sign still works.

ELL supports

Pre-teach grease, drain, sewer, and lump using a cooled pan of solid shortening and a labeled sketch of a pipe. Provide picture cards for the four steps in the third paragraph so students can put them in order before answering item 5. Allow items 1 through 6 to be answered with phrases, and give a sentence frame for item 10: "Pour grease into ___ instead of the drain, because ___."