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Reading passage Grade 4 English Language Arts

The Fish Ladder at Kellet Falls Dam: A Grade 4 Reading Passage

An original grade 4 passage about a fictional dam's fish ladder and the counting window where a volunteer tallies the trout that climb it each spring.

Objectives

  1. Students will locate stated details about how a fish ladder works.
  2. Students will infer why fish can climb a ladder but not a dam wall.
  3. Students will use two details to explain how a trout finds the ladder.

Vocabulary

Dam
A strong wall built across a river to hold back water. Dams store water for people and farms, help prevent floods, and can make electricity.
Fish ladder
A series of water steps built beside a dam so migrating fish, like salmon, can swim past it. Fish leap or swim from pool to pool to reach the river above.
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: pool, current

Teacher overview

This original passage follows a fourth grader named Ruthie to the counting window at a fictional dam on the Ingleby River, where her aunt volunteers during the spring trout run. The text explains what a dam does for a town, why a wall of concrete stops a fish, and how a stair-step ladder of pools gets the fish past it. Four questions are answered from stated details and three call for inference, including one that asks students to combine two separate details to explain how a fish finds the ladder in the first place.

The Fish Ladder at Kellet Falls Dam: A Grade 4 Reading Passage — Grade 4 English Language Arts
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Passage

The Counting Window

Ruthie's aunt worked at a window under the ground, and she said Ruthie could come along on the first Saturday in April.

The window was at Kellet Falls Dam, on the Ingleby River above the town of Cardown. The dam is a curved wall of concrete as tall as a house. It holds the river back into a long reservoir. Water from that reservoir spins two machines inside the dam. Those machines make electricity for Cardown. The reservoir also keeps water on hand for dry summers.

A wall that tall works well for the town, yet it is a problem for the fish in the river. Every spring, trout swim up the Ingleby to lay their eggs in the cold gravel where they hatched. A trout can jump, but it cannot jump a wall as tall as a house, and it cannot climb wet concrete.

So the dam has a fish ladder along one side. Ruthie had pictured a real ladder with rungs. What she saw instead was a long concrete chute. It is divided into eighteen pools, one above the next. Each pool sits about ten inches higher than the one below it, and water spills from every pool into the one under it. The pools are like a set of stairs with water resting on each step. A trout swims into the lowest pool, rests, then pushes through the spill into the next pool up. Eighteen small climbs take it over the dam and into the reservoir, where the river begins again.

Halfway up the ladder, one wall is a thick pane of glass. Behind the glass is the counting window, a small dark room with a bench, a clipboard, and a lamp. Ruthie's aunt sat there for an hour and marked a tally each time a fish slid past the glass.

"Sixty-two this hour," she said, and she wrote the number on the sheet. "Last Saturday we counted nine. The water is warmer now, so more of them are moving."

Ruthie pressed her hand against the cool glass and watched a speckled trout hang in the green water, fins working, holding its place against the current.

"How do they even know the ladder is here?" she asked.

Her aunt tapped the glass. "They swim into the current. The ladder spills water down into the river at the bottom, so there is a little stream coming out of the wall. The fish follow it, the way you would follow a hallway toward a door that was open."

Questions

  1. Why does Ruthie's aunt bring her to the dam on the first Saturday in April?
  2. According to the passage, what two things does the reservoir behind Kellet Falls Dam do for the town of Cardown?
  3. What is the fish ladder made of, and how is it arranged?
  4. What does Ruthie's aunt do during her hour at the counting window?
  5. A trout cannot get over the dam wall, but it can get up the ladder. Use details from the passage to explain why.
  6. The passage says the pools are like a set of stairs with water resting on each step. Explain what that comparison helps a reader picture.
  7. Ruthie asks how the fish know the ladder is there. Use two details from the passage to explain how a trout finds the bottom of the ladder.

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: To watch the spring trout run at the counting window where her aunt volunteers. The opening states that the aunt works at the window and invited Ruthie for the first Saturday in April.
  2. Answer: Its water spins machines that make electricity for Cardown, and it keeps water on hand for dry summers. Both jobs appear in the second paragraph.
  3. Answer: A long concrete chute divided into eighteen pools, one above the next, with each pool about ten inches higher than the one below it. The fourth paragraph states this.
  4. Answer: She sits behind the glass and marks a tally each time a fish swims past. The passage says she counted sixty-two in that hour and nine the Saturday before.
  5. Answer: Accept any answer that contrasts one tall climb with many small ones, such as noting that the wall is as tall as a house and cannot be climbed, while the ladder breaks the same height into eighteen steps of about ten inches with a resting pool at each one.
  6. Answer: Accept any answer explaining that the comparison lets a reader picture level places to rest between short rises, rather than one steep slide of water.
  7. Answer: Accept any answer using two stated details, such as the ladder spilling water down into the river at the bottom, the little stream that comes out of the wall, the fish swimming into the current, and the aunt's comparison to following a hallway toward an open door.

Differentiation

Support

Read the passage aloud once while students follow, then reread only the fourth paragraph before students answer questions 3, 5, and 6. Provide a simple side-view sketch of the ladder with the pools drawn as steps and the counting window marked, and allow questions 1 through 4 to be answered by copying the sentence that holds the answer.

Extension

Ask students to write the same visit as a short entry for the counting sheet, in the aunt's voice, recording the date, the hour, the count, and one sentence about why the number changed from the week before. The entry has to stay inside what the passage actually states.

ELL supports

Pre-teach dam, reservoir, pool, and current with stacked plastic trays set in a tub as steps and a cup of water poured down them. Provide the passage with the eight longest words glossed in the margin. Allow students to answer questions 1 through 4 with phrases, and give a frame for question 7: "A trout finds the ladder because ___ and because ___."