Lesson plan Grade 4 English Language Arts
Ossaway's Water Tower on Gunnett Hill: A Grade 4 Writing Lesson
Students read a three-part text about a fictional town's hilltop water tank, then write an informative paragraph that groups related facts with linking words.
Objectives
- Students will cite three details from a text that explain why a town stores drinking water above the homes it serves.
- Students will write an informative paragraph that groups related facts and joins them with linking words.
- Students will use the words pressure, gravity, and pump correctly in their own writing.
Vocabulary
- Water tower
- A water tower is a big tank raised high above town that stores drinking water. Its height is what pushes water through the pipes, keeping the pressure steady even when the power goes out.
- Pump
- A pump is a machine that adds energy to water to move it or push it uphill, doing the job gravity cannot do on its own. Water systems use many different kinds of pumps to move water from wells, through treatment, and out to customers.
- Water main
- A big underground pipe that carries drinking water beneath the streets to a neighborhood. Smaller service lines branch off it to reach each building.
Also: pressure, gravity
Teacher overview
Ossaway is a fictional town written for this lesson, and its steel tank sits on Gunnett Hill above every roof in the valley. The handout text is deliberately organized under three bold headings so that students can see how a writer groups related facts before they are asked to group facts themselves. A misconception worth addressing directly is that the tower contains a motor that pushes water into the pipes; the pumps sit down at the well house, and it is the weight of stored water high on the hill that supplies pressure. Fourth graders can hold both ideas at once when the text separates the pumping job from the pressure job into two different sections.
Procedure
Hook (5 min): Ask students to picture the tallest thing in a small town and to write one guess on a sticky note about why a tank of water would be put up on a hill instead of on flat ground. Post the sticky notes on chart paper without correcting any of them.
Shared reading (10 min): Read the handout text aloud while students follow along. Stop after each bold heading and ask the class to say, in one sentence, what that section is mostly about. Record those three sentences on chart paper as section labels: where the water waits, why the tank is high, and what happens in a power outage.
Modeled writing (10 min): Think aloud as you build one informative paragraph from two of the three sections. Show students how you pick a fact from the storage section, add a fact from the pressure section, and join them with a linking word such as because, so, or also. Write the model paragraph where the class can see it, and underline every linking word in a second color.
Guided practice (15 min): Students work in pairs on handout questions 1 through 5. Circulate and press pairs to point to the exact sentence in the text that supports each answer, since the standard asks for details, not recollection. Pairs who finish early should underline any sentence in the text that names a job somebody does.
Independent writing (7 min): Students complete handout question 6 on their own. The paragraph must contain at least three facts drawn from at least two different sections and at least two linking words.
Closure and exit ticket (3 min): Each student writes one sentence on an index card answering this question: what pushes Ossaway's water through the pipes under the streets? Sort the cards into two piles as students leave. If more than five students name a motor inside the tower rather than the weight of the stored water, reopen the pressure section at the start of the next lesson.
Student Handout
Read the text. Then answer questions 1 through 6 in complete sentences.
Where the water waits
Ossaway is a small town in a river valley. Its drinking water starts in three deep wells near Quarrymouth Road. Pumps at the well house push that water uphill to a tall steel tank. The tank stands on Gunnett Hill, above every roof in town. Ossaway keeps about one day of water in the tank.
Why the tank stands so high
Water is heavy, and heavy water pushes down. When water sits high above a town, its own weight gives it a push. Workers call that push pressure. Pressure moves the water through the wide pipes under the streets, which are called water mains. The higher the tank sits, the stronger the push at the faucet. Ossaway did not have to buy a pump for every street, because the hill does that work all day and all night.
What happens when the power goes out
Pumps need electricity to run. A storm can knock out the power at the well house. The tank still holds water, and gravity still pulls that water down the hill. Faucets in Ossaway keep running for hours. Crews use those hours to start the pumps again.
- Where does Ossaway store its drinking water before that water reaches homes?
- According to the text, what job do the pumps at the well house do?
- Which of the three headings tells you why the tank sits on a hill? Write the heading.
- The text uses the word pressure. What does pressure mean in this text?
- Why do faucets in Ossaway keep running for hours after a storm cuts the power? Use one detail from the text.
- Write an informative paragraph about Ossaway's water tower. Use at least three facts from at least two different sections. Join your facts with at least two linking words, such as because, so, or also.
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: In the tall steel tank on Gunnett Hill. The first section states that pumps send well water uphill to a tank that stands above every roof in town.
- Answer: They push water from the three deep wells uphill to the tank. The text places the pumps at the well house near Quarrymouth Road, not inside the tower.
- Answer: Why the tank stands so high. That section explains that stored water high above town supplies the push that moves water through the mains.
- Answer: The push that the weight of high water gives to the water in the pipes. The text says heavy water pushes down and that workers call this push pressure.
- Answer: Because the tank is still full and gravity still pulls that water downhill, so water keeps moving even though the pumps have stopped. Accept any answer that names the stored water plus gravity.
- Answer: Accept any paragraph with three or more accurate facts drawn from at least two sections and two or more linking words. A proficient response might state that Ossaway stores about one day of water in a tank on Gunnett Hill, that the tank sits high because the weight of the water pushes it through the mains, and that faucets keep running during an outage because gravity does not need electricity.
Differentiation
Support
Give these students a copy of the text with the three headings already matched to three summary sentences, and let them answer questions 1 through 3 by highlighting the supporting sentence and copying it before they write. For question 6, provide a paragraph frame with the first sentence written and two linking words printed in the margin.
Extension
Ask students to add a fourth section to the text under a heading of their own, such as how a crew washes the inside of the tank or how the town knows the tank is getting low, and to write two or three sentences that would fit under it. The added sentences must not contradict any fact already in the text.
ELL supports
Pre-teach pump, pressure, and gravity with a simple demonstration: hold a full, uncapped water bottle over a tub, poke a small hole near its bottom, and let students watch the stream weaken as the water level drops. Provide a word bank with the three vocabulary terms and allow questions 1 through 3 to be answered with short phrases rather than full sentences.
Extensions
Have students find out how their own town or city stores water, using a district or utility page the teacher has printed in advance, and write two sentences that compare that real arrangement with Ossaway's hilltop tank.