Reading passage Grade 4 English Language Arts
Groundwater at Elm Hollow Farm: Where Grandma's Well Water Comes From
An original grade 4 passage following a boy's visit to his grandmother's farm, where he learns how rain becomes groundwater that a well and pump bring to the kitchen tap.
Objectives
- Students will locate details in an informational passage that explain how groundwater forms.
- Students will draw inferences the passage supports but does not state directly.
- Students will write a short informative paragraph sequencing rain's path from field to faucet.
Vocabulary
- Aquifer
- An aquifer is an underground layer of rock, sand, or gravel that holds water in the tiny spaces between its grains. Wells reach down into aquifers to bring water up to the surface.
- Groundwater
- Groundwater is water that has soaked into the ground and fills the spaces between soil particles and cracks in rock underground. It is a large underground source of fresh water that wells and springs draw from.
- Water table
- The water table is the underground level below which the ground is completely soaked with water. Dig a hole deeper than the water table and it will start filling with water.
Teacher overview
Many students only know city water that arrives through pipes from a treatment plant, so a grandmother's well offers a different, equally real way that water reaches a home. This original passage follows nine-year-old Diego during a weekend visit to Elm Hollow Farm, where his grandmother explains what happens underground between a rainstorm and a glass of water from her kitchen tap. The comprehension questions move from locating stated details to drawing inferences, matching the two halves of RI.4.1, and a short closing writing task lets students practice sequencing information for W.4.2.
Passage
Grandma's Well
Diego climbed out of the car at Elm Hollow Farm. He noticed something strange right away. No fire hydrants stood along the road, not like back home. "So where does your water come from, Grandma?" he asked.
"From right under our feet," said his grandmother, Rosa. She smiled and led him to a small round building behind the house. A pump stood inside it. "This is our well," she said. "It pulls up groundwater. That is water stored in the ground itself."
Diego frowned. "Water lives in the ground? Like it's buried?"
"Sort of," Grandma said. "Think of the ground like a thick sponge. Rain falls on our fields. A lot of it does not just sit on top. It soaks down through the soil. Then it soaks through cracks in the rock underneath. It moves the same way water soaks into a sponge instead of staying on top."
She explained more. The water keeps sinking. It reaches a level where every space in the soil and rock is already full of water. That level is called the water table. Below the water table, the ground is soaked through, like the bottom of a sponge that has already soaked up all it can hold. This layer of soaked rock and soil is called an aquifer. It can stretch for miles underground.
"Our well is just a deep, narrow hole," Grandma said. "It goes down past the water table, into the aquifer. Our pump pulls water up through a pipe inside the well, all the way to our kitchen faucet."
Diego thought about it. "So every glass of water I drink here started out as rain?"
"Every single one," Grandma said. "Rain fell on this farm, maybe last spring, maybe further back. It soaked down through the soil until it reached the aquifer. It has been waiting there until our pump brought it back up."
Grandma also told him a story from years ago. One summer had almost no rain, and their old well ran dry. The water table had dropped so low that the well's bottom no longer reached below it. Her father paid to have the well drilled deeper. Now it reaches far below where the water table usually sits, so the farm has water even in a dry year.
Before Diego left on Sunday, he filled his water bottle at the kitchen sink. He looked at it in a new way. It was not just tap water anymore. It was rain that the ground had kept safe until his family needed it.
Questions
According to the passage, what does Grandma's well pull up from underground?
According to the passage, what happens to much of the rain that falls on the fields at Elm Hollow Farm?
What is the water table, based on how the passage describes it?
The passage compares the ground to a sponge. What does that comparison help a reader understand about how water moves underground?
Why did Grandma's father have the old well drilled deeper years ago? Use a detail from the passage to explain your answer.
Using the word aquifer, explain in your own words where the water inside Grandma's well actually comes from.
Based on the passage, what would likely happen to the water table during a long summer with very little rain, and why?
Writing task. In one paragraph, explain how rain that falls on Elm Hollow Farm's fields eventually becomes the water in Grandma's kitchen faucet. Use at least three details from the passage, in the order that they happen.
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: Groundwater, water that is stored in the ground itself.
Stated directly in Grandma's first explanation of the well.Answer: Much of the rain soaks down through the soil and then through cracks in the rock underneath, instead of staying on top of the ground. Supported by the sponge comparison in the third paragraph of dialogue.
Answer: The water table is the level underground where every space between the soil and rock is already completely filled with water. This definition appears directly after Grandma's sponge explanation.
Answer: It helps a reader understand that water soaks down and spreads through the ground the way it soaks into a sponge, rather than water simply sitting in an empty underground pool or cave. Accept any answer that connects soaking/absorption to how groundwater fills the spaces in soil and rock.
Answer: During a very dry summer, the water table dropped so low that the old well's bottom no longer reached below it, so the well ran dry, which is why he had it drilled deeper. Both the dry summer and the well running dry should appear in a full-credit answer.
Answer: Answers will vary. A strong answer explains that rain soaks down past the water table into the aquifer, a layer of soaked rock and soil that can stretch for miles, and that the well's pump pulls water up from that aquifer into the pipe to the kitchen.
Answer: The water table would likely drop, because less rain would be soaking down to refill the ground, the same event that caused the old well to run dry described earlier in the passage. Accept any answer that connects less rainfall to a lower water table using that earlier example as evidence.
Writing task exemplar. Rain that falls on Elm Hollow Farm's fields soaks down through the soil and then through cracks in the rock below, the way water soaks into a sponge. It keeps sinking until it reaches the water table, the level where the ground is already completely filled with water, and it collects in the aquifer, a layer of soaked rock and soil that can stretch for miles. Grandma's well is a deep hole drilled down into that aquifer, and her pump pulls the stored water up through a pipe to the kitchen faucet, so the water in a glass at Elm Hollow Farm started out as rain that the ground kept safe until the family needed it.
Differentiation
Support (below grade level)
Read the passage aloud once before students reread it independently, and provide a simple three-box sequence chart (Rain falls → Soaks into ground → Pump brings it up) for students to fill in before answering the questions. Reduce the set to questions 1, 2, 3, and 5.
Extension (above grade level)
After question 7, ask students to research (using only the passage and a teacher-provided diagram, not outside sources) what might happen to a nearby town's wells if too many farms and houses pump water from the same aquifer faster than rain can refill it, and to write two sentences explaining the connection.
ELL supports
Pre-teach groundwater, aquifer, water table, and pump with a simple cutaway diagram showing rain, soil, the water table line, and a well reaching into the aquifer below it. Allow students to answer questions 1 through 3 with short phrases pointed to directly in the text rather than full sentences.