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Worksheet Grade 5 English Language Arts

Microbes at Work in Ambler's Cleanup Ponds: A Grade 5 Worksheet

Students read a fictional plant's tour-guide page about four cleanup ponds, then answer ten items mixing quoting, vocabulary, and short explanatory sentences.

Objectives

  1. Students will explain how living microbes clean used water in a treatment pond.
  2. Students will write explanatory sentences using domain vocabulary and linking words.
  3. Students will correct a stated misconception using evidence from the text.

Vocabulary

Key words: microbe, oxygen, sludge, sample, linking word

Teacher overview

Ambler is a fictional town that cleans its used water in four shallow ponds behind the fairgrounds, and the first of those ponds does its work with living microbes rather than with chemicals. This worksheet uses a page from the plant's tour guide as its source text, then asks students to write explanatory sentences of their own using the terms and linking words the page models. A misconception this worksheet targets in item 10 is the assumption that a treatment plant is a place where chemicals are poured in; at Ambler most of the cleaning is done by living microbes eating the waste, and the light in the third pond adds nothing to the water.

Microbes at Work in Ambler's Cleanup Ponds: A Grade 5 Worksheet — Grade 5 English Language Arts
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Worksheet

A page from the Ambler Water Reclamation Plant tour guide

Ambler cleans its used water in four shallow ponds behind the fairgrounds. Water arrives here through pipes from every home in town. It carries soap, food scraps, and human waste.

The first pond is the working pond. Tiny living things called microbes live in it. Microbes eat the waste in the water. The waste is their food. Microbes need oxygen while they eat. Paddle wheels along the edge stir air into the pond all day long. The stirring keeps enough oxygen in the water for the microbes to keep working.

The second pond is the resting pond. Nothing stirs the water here. The water sits still for hours. Heavy bits sink to the bottom and build up as a soft layer called sludge. Workers scrape the sludge out twice a year and haul it away.

In the third pond the water slides under a row of UV lamps. UV is a kind of light our eyes cannot see. The light stops germs from multiplying. Nothing is added to the water in this pond.

The fourth pond is the holding pond. A worker fills a sample bottle here every morning and walks it to the plant laboratory. If the test comes back clean, the water flows out through a pipe into Ambler Creek.

Answer each item using the tour-guide page.

  1. In which pond do the microbes do their work?
  2. Copy the exact sentence that tells what the microbes eat. Put it in quotation marks.
  3. According to the page, why do the paddle wheels stir air into the first pond?
  4. What is sludge, and in which pond does it build up?
  5. According to the page, what do the UV lamps do to germs?
  6. Finish this sentence in your own words: "The second pond has no paddle wheels because ___."
  7. Write two sentences explaining what happens in the working pond. Use the word microbes in one sentence and the word oxygen in the other.
  8. Name the four ponds in the order the water reaches them.
  9. Write one sentence about the plant that uses the linking word after to connect two of the ponds.
  10. A visitor says that Ambler kills germs by pouring chemicals into the water. Use the page to explain why the visitor is wrong.

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: the first pond, called the working pond.
    The page names it in the first line of the second paragraph.
  2. Answer: "Microbes eat the waste in the water."
    Accept the sentence copied exactly, with quotation marks and the period inside them.
  3. Answer: to keep enough oxygen in the water for the microbes.
    The page states that microbes need oxygen while they eat, and the stirring is what supplies it.
  4. Answer: a soft layer of heavy bits that sinks to the bottom of the second pond.
    Credit any answer naming both the settled layer and the resting pond, since the page ties the two together.
  5. Answer: the light stops germs from multiplying.
    The page also notes that nothing is added to the water in that pond.
  6. Answer: accept any completion meaning that the water must sit still so the heavy bits can settle.
    A strong answer explains that stirring would keep the sludge mixed into the water instead of letting it sink.
  7. Answer: accept any two accurate sentences using both required words.
    One sentence should say that microbes eat the waste in the water, and the other should say that oxygen from the paddle wheels keeps them able to do it.
  8. Answer: working pond, resting pond, the pond with the UV lamps, holding pond.
    The page names the first, second, and fourth ponds directly and identifies the third by its UV lamps, and it presents them in this order, one per paragraph.
  9. Answer: accept any accurate sentence using after to link two ponds.
    An example a student might write is that the water rests in the second pond after the microbes finish eating in the first pond.
  10. Answer: because nothing is added to the water in the UV pond.
    The page states that the third pond uses light our eyes cannot see, and that the light stops germs from multiplying without anything being poured in.

Differentiation

Support

Provide a four-box strip labeled with the pond names in order so students can complete item 8 by matching rather than recalling. Give a word bank containing microbes, oxygen, sludge, settle, and light for items 6, 7, and 9, and allow item 10 to be answered aloud before writing.

Extension

Ask students to write a short caption for each of the four ponds, no more than twelve words apiece, that a visitor could read while walking past, then explain which caption was hardest to shorten and why.

ELL supports

Preteach "microbe," "oxygen," and "sludge" with a jar demonstration: stir soil and water, then let the jar stand until a layer settles at the bottom. Provide sentence frames for items 6, 7, and 9, such as "After the water leaves the ___ pond, it ___." Allow items 1, 4, and 8 to be answered with labeled drawings.

Extensions

Have students write a short note from a plant worker to a visiting class explaining why the paddle wheels must run all day, using two exact phrases from the tour-guide page in quotation marks and one linking word of their own choosing.