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Quiz & test questions Grade 4 English Language Arts

Unit Quiz: How Vellmore Cleans Its Drinking Water

A 25-point grade 4 reading quiz on a fictional five-step treatment plant, mixing multiple choice, short answer, and one short explanatory paragraph.

Objectives

  1. Students will answer detail questions from a five-step informational passage.
  2. Students will infer why a plant tests water after every step.
  3. Students will write an ordered paragraph explaining how a plant cleans water.

Vocabulary

Floc
Floc is the fluffy clumps of dirt and treatment chemicals that form in the water during cleaning at a treatment plant. Floc looks like tiny snowflakes drifting in the water.

Also: settle, filter, carbon, chlorine

Teacher overview

This quiz is worth 25 points and covers one short informational passage about a fictional water plant in the town of Vellmore. The items run from two one-point multiple-choice questions through short-answer items to a four-point paragraph, so the same passage is used for recall, for inference, and for writing. Fourth graders often believe that a filter alone makes water safe to drink, which is why the passage separates the job of the sand from the job of the chlorine and why items 4 and 6 ask about each of those two jobs on its own. Allow 45 minutes, or split the quiz after item 11 for a shorter session.

Unit Quiz: How Vellmore Cleans Its Drinking Water — Grade 4 English Language Arts
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Assessment

Read the passage. Then answer items 1 through 12. The passage and the town of Vellmore are made up for this quiz.

How Vellmore Cleans Its Water

Vellmore takes its drinking water from Rooksend Lake. Lake water is not safe to drink as it comes. The plant cleans it in five steps.

First comes mixing. Workers add a chemical that makes tiny bits of dirt stick together. The bits form clumps called floc.

Second comes settling. The water rests in a long tank. The heavy clumps sink to the floor, and clearer water moves on.

Third comes filtering. The water passes down through beds of sand and gravel. The sand traps bits that were too small to sink.

Fourth is a step Vellmore added three years ago. Families kept calling about a musty taste each August. The plant now sends the water through black grains of carbon, which hold on to whatever causes that taste.

Last comes disinfecting. A small amount of chlorine goes into the water. It kills germs in the water and keeps killing them in the pipes on the way to homes.

An operator tests the water after every step. Water leaves the plant only after the last test passes.

  1. Where does Vellmore get its drinking water? (1 point)
    A. a well under the town
    B. Rooksend Lake
    C. rain barrels
    D. a mountain spring
  2. What are the clumps of dirt called? (1 point)
    A. floc
    B. gravel
    C. carbon
    D. chlorine
  3. In which step do the heavy clumps sink to the floor of a tank? (2 points)
  4. What does the sand trap that the settling tank misses? (2 points)
  5. Why did Vellmore add the carbon step? (2 points)
    A. The lake ran low in summer.
    B. Families kept calling about a musty taste.
    C. The plant ran out of sand.
    D. The town got bigger.
  6. What job does the chlorine do? (2 points)
  7. The passage says an operator tests the water after every step. What can you tell about why the plant tests that often? (2 points)
  8. The passage says the carbon grains hold on to whatever causes the musty taste. Explain what happens to that taste. (2 points)
  9. Suppose the mixing step stopped working, so no clumps formed. What would happen in the settling tank? (2 points)
  10. Put these three steps in the order the passage gives them: filtering, mixing, settling. (2 points)
  11. Explain in two sentences why the plant cannot skip the settling tank and send lake water straight to the sand. (3 points)
  12. Write a paragraph of four or more sentences explaining how Vellmore cleans its water. Use the words mixing, settling, filtering, and disinfecting, and keep the steps in order. (4 points)

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: B, Rooksend Lake. The first sentence of the passage names the lake, and no well, barrel, or spring appears anywhere in the text.
  2. Answer: A, floc. The mixing paragraph states that the bits form clumps called floc.
  3. Answer: Settling, the second step. The passage says the heavy clumps sink to the floor of the long tank.
  4. Answer: Bits that were too small to sink. The filtering paragraph states this directly.
  5. Answer: B, families kept calling about a musty taste each August. The passage gives the complaints as the reason the step was added.
  6. Answer: It kills germs in the water and keeps the water safe in the pipes on the way to homes. Accept any answer naming killing germs.
  7. Answer: So a problem is caught at the step where it starts, before the water moves on. Accept any answer that connects testing after each step to catching trouble early.
  8. Answer: The taste is taken out of the water and stays behind on the carbon grains. Accept any answer showing the taste is removed rather than covered up.
  9. Answer: Little would sink, so the water would leave the tank still cloudy. Accept any answer that links missing clumps to water that stays cloudy.
  10. Answer: Mixing, settling, filtering. That is the order given in the passage.
  11. Answer: Accept any two sentences that explain that the sand would fill with dirt quickly if the heavy clumps were not removed first, so the plant would have to wash the filters far more often. A proficient response names the settling tank as the step that removes most of the dirt before filtering.
  12. Answer: Accept any paragraph of four or more sentences that uses all four supplied words and keeps mixing, settling, filtering, and disinfecting in the passage's order. Award full credit only when the sentences explain what happens at each named step rather than listing the words alone.

Differentiation

Support

Give these students the passage with each step's name printed in the margin beside its paragraph, and allow items 3, 4, 6, and 10 to be answered with a single word or short phrase. For item 12, provide the four topic words already written as sentence starters in order.

Extension

Ask these students to add item 13 for themselves: write the paragraph a Vellmore operator would send to families the year the carbon step was added, explaining what changed and why. Their paragraph must stay inside the facts the passage gives.

ELL supports

Pre-teach settle, filter, grain, and germ with a jar of muddy water left to stand and then poured through a coffee filter. Provide a picture strip of the five steps in order, unlabeled, and let students match the step names to the pictures before beginning item 10.

Extensions

Have students compare this five-step plant with a well that pumps groundwater straight to a home, listing which of Vellmore's five steps a well owner still needs and which one the ground has already done. Keep the comparison to two short paragraphs so the ordering practice from item 12 carries over.