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Worksheet Grade 4 English Language Arts

The Trail Sign at Quarrow Brook: A Grade 4 Text Features Worksheet

A grade 4 worksheet in which students use the headings, caption, and map key on a fictional park's watershed sign to answer detail and inference items.

Objectives

  1. Students will use headings to locate information on an informational sign.
  2. Students will explain what a caption and a map key add to a text.
  3. Students will draft a short sign panel with a heading and three sentences.

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.

Also: ridge, caption, map key, gravel bar

Teacher overview

Pilgrove Park is a fictional town park, and the sign on this worksheet is the fourth of six posted along a trail beside Quarrow Brook. The panel has the features an informational sign usually has: a title, three question headings, a photo caption with a date, and a small map key. Students practice deciding which feature answers which question rather than reading the panel straight through. A common grade 4 habit is to skip captions and keys entirely, so items 4, 5, and 8 cannot be answered without them.

The Trail Sign at Quarrow Brook: A Grade 4 Text Features Worksheet — Grade 4 English Language Arts
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Worksheet

Read the trail sign. Its photo and map are not printed here, so use the photo caption and the map key when an item asks about them. Then answer items 1 through 10.

QUARROW BROOK TRAIL, SIGN 4 OF 6 Pilgrove Park, the town of Pilgrove

What is a watershed?
A watershed is all of the land that drains toward one stream. Rain that falls on this hillside runs downhill into Quarrow Brook, while rain that falls on the far side of the ridge behind you runs into a different stream. You are standing inside the Quarrow Brook watershed.

Where does the water go next?
Quarrow Brook runs east for four miles and joins the Ivelet River behind the old mill. The river then passes three towns before it empties into the bay, so water that starts as rain on this hillside can reach the bay within a few days.

What can you see from this spot?
Look down the slope at the bend below you, where the brook curls around a bar of gravel it dropped during a flood. After a heavy storm the water runs brown, because bare soil washes off the bank and into the brook. Park crews planted willow along that bank last year, and willow roots hold the soil in place.

Photo caption: The same bend in July 2025, before the willow was planted. The bank is bare, and the water is brown.

Map key

Symbol What it means
Blue line Quarrow Brook
Dotted line Edge of the watershed
Green patch New willow planting
Open circle You are here
  1. According to the sign, what is a watershed?
  2. Which heading would you read to find out where Quarrow Brook goes after it leaves the park?
  3. What does Quarrow Brook join behind the old mill?
  4. Look at the map key. What does a dotted line stand for on this map?
  5. What does the photo caption tell you about the bank at the bend?
  6. Rain falls on the far side of the ridge behind the sign. Does that rain reach Quarrow Brook? Use the sign to explain.
  7. Why did park crews plant willow along the bank? Use a detail from the sign.
  8. The caption gives the date the photo was taken. Explain why a hiker needs that date to understand the photo.
  9. A hiker wants to know whether water from this hillside reaches the bay. Which heading gives the best answer, and what does it say?
  10. Write a new panel for sign 5. Give it a heading. Write three sentences that tell hikers one thing they can do to keep soil out of the brook.

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: All of the land that drains toward one stream. The first heading gives this definition and names the Quarrow Brook watershed as the example.
  2. Answer: The heading "Where does the water go next?" That section follows the brook east to the river and on to the bay.
  3. Answer: The Ivelet River. The second section states that the brook joins the river behind the old mill.
  4. Answer: The edge of the watershed. The map key pairs the dotted line with that meaning.
  5. Answer: That the bank was bare in July 2025 and the water was brown, before the willow was planted. The caption states both facts.
  6. Answer: No. Accept any answer using the stated detail that rain on the far side of the ridge runs into a different stream.
  7. Answer: To hold the soil in place. Accept any answer that connects the willow roots to soil washing off the bare bank and turning the water brown.
  8. Answer: Accept any answer explaining that the date shows the photo was taken before the planting, so a hiker knows the bare bank is the old condition rather than what stands there now.
  9. Answer: The heading "Where does the water go next?" It says the brook joins the Ivelet River, which passes three towns and reaches the bay.
  10. Answer: Accept any panel with a heading and three sentences naming one reasonable action supported by the sign, such as staying off the bare bank, keeping to the trail, or leaving the new willow alone. A proficient response also states why the action helps the brook.

Differentiation

Support

Give these students the sign with each of the three headings numbered and a matching numbered box beside items 1 through 9, so locating the right section is scaffolded. Read the caption and the map key aloud with the group before independent work begins, and allow items 1 through 5 to be answered by copying the sentence that holds the answer.

Extension

Ask students to design the map that goes with this key, drawing the brook, the ridge, the watershed edge, and the willow patch in the right places, then to write two sentences explaining how they decided where the dotted line belongs.

ELL supports

Pre-teach watershed, ridge, caption, and map key with a tilted tray of crumpled foil sprayed with water, plus labeled cards for each term. Provide the sign with the four map key terms glossed in the margin. Allow items 1 through 5 to be answered with phrases, and give a frame for item 10: "Please stay ___ so the soil stays ___."