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Worksheet Grade 5 English Language Arts

Reading the Stonebarrow Ridge Snowpack Report

A grade 5 ELA worksheet on a short snowpack report, with ten items that ask students to copy the proving sentence, define words in context, and summarize.

Objectives

  1. Students will copy the exact sentence from a report that supports a stated claim.
  2. Students will use nearby words in the text to explain what a term means.
  3. Students will explain why a report does not support a claim a reader has added to it.

Vocabulary

Snowpack
The snow that piles up in the mountains over the winter. As it melts in spring and summer, it acts like a giant water tank feeding rivers and reservoirs.
Reservoir
A human-made lake, usually created by a dam, that stores water for later. Reservoirs supply cities and farms and help control floods.

Also: runoff, melt, summary

Teacher overview

The worksheet uses one short report about the snowpack on Stonebarrow Ridge, a fictional mountain whose spring melt fills the reservoir serving the town of Crestmere. Items ask students to copy the exact sentence that proves a claim, to work out two words from the words around them, and to explain a claim the report does not support.

Teaching note: fifth graders commonly treat rain and snow as interchangeable, since both are water falling from the sky. What differs is timing. Snow holds water on a mountain for months and releases it slowly in spring, while rain runs off within days. Students who miss that distinction answer item 10 by saying a warm winter brings less water, when the report says the water arrives at the wrong time. Ask that group to reread the sentences in Paragraph D about rain running off in January before they revise.

Reading the Stonebarrow Ridge Snowpack Report — Grade 5 English Language Arts
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Worksheet

Read the report. Then answer the questions below it.

Water Stored as Snow: A Report on Stonebarrow Ridge

Paragraph A. Snow falls on Stonebarrow Ridge all winter long. It does not melt right away. Layer piles on top of layer. The deep, packed snow that builds up on the ridge is called the snowpack.

Paragraph B. The snowpack works like a tank made of snow. It holds water high on the mountain for months. No dam and no tank hold this water in place. Cold air alone does the job.

Paragraph C. In April the days grow longer and warmer. The spring sun begins to melt the snow. Melted water runs downhill into small creeks. Those creeks fill Crestmere Reservoir, and the town of Crestmere drinks from that reservoir all summer.

Paragraph D. A warm winter changes the story. More storms drop rain instead of snow. Rain does not stay on the ridge. It runs off fast in January. Runoff is water that flows over the ground instead of soaking in. By August the reservoir can be low.

Paragraph E. Water managers walk the ridge each spring. They measure how deep the snow is. They also measure how much water the snow holds. A slow melt is better for the town than a fast melt. A slow melt spreads the water out over many weeks. A fast melt sends down more water at once than the reservoir can hold.

  1. Copy the sentence from Paragraph A that tells what a snowpack is.
  2. Use that sentence to write what "snowpack" means in your own words.
  3. Claim: the ridge stores water without a dam and without a tank. Copy one sentence from Paragraph B that supports this claim.
  4. Copy the sentence from Paragraph C that tells what starts the melting.
  5. Claim: a warm winter can leave Crestmere Reservoir low in August. Copy one sentence from Paragraph D that supports this claim.
  6. What does the word "runoff" mean in Paragraph D? Copy the words in the report that helped you decide.
  7. Copy one sentence from Paragraph E that names something the water managers measure.
  8. Why is a slow melt better for the town than a fast melt? Answer in one sentence, using words from Paragraph E.
  9. A reader says, "This report proves that snow is cleaner than rain." Explain why the report does not support that claim.
  10. Write a two-sentence summary of the report. Tell what the snowpack does, and tell why a warm winter matters.

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 deep, packed snow that builds up on the ridge is called the snowpack."
    Accept only this sentence. It is the one that defines the term.
  2. Answer: The snowpack is the thick, packed snow that gathers on a mountain over the winter. Accept any wording that includes both the snow itself and the idea that it builds up and stays.
  3. Answer: "No dam and no tank hold this water in place."
    Accept also "The snowpack works like a tank made of snow," but only when the student explains that "like a tank" means it is not a real tank.
  4. Answer: "The spring sun begins to melt the snow."
    Accept also "In April the days grow longer and warmer" when the student explains that the warmth is what starts the melting.
  5. Answer: "By August the reservoir can be low."
    Accept also "It runs off fast in January," since fast January runoff is the reason the August level drops. Accept also "Rain does not stay on the ridge," for the same reason.
  6. Answer: Runoff is water that flows over the ground instead of soaking into it.
    The helping words come from the same paragraph: "water that flows over the ground instead of soaking in."
  7. Answer: "They measure how deep the snow is."
    Accept also "They also measure how much water the snow holds."
  8. Answer: A slow melt spreads the water out over many weeks, and a fast melt sends down more water at once than the reservoir can hold. Both halves are in Paragraph E, so a one-sided answer earns partial credit.
  9. Answer: The report never compares how clean snow and rain are, and it only compares when each one reaches the reservoir. Look for the student naming what the report is actually about rather than arguing about cleanliness.
  10. Answer: The snowpack stores winter water high on Stonebarrow Ridge and lets it melt into Crestmere Reservoir in spring. A warm winter matters because rain runs off in January instead, so the reservoir can be low by August. Accept any two sentences that carry those two ideas in the student's own words.

Differentiation

Support

Give these students the report with the five paragraph labels enlarged and each question tagged with the paragraph it draws on. Work item 1 together as a model of copying a sentence exactly, punctuation included, and allow items 8 through 10 to be answered orally before writing.

Extension

Ask these students to write the two sentences a water manager would add to Paragraph E if the ridge had almost no snow by March, using only information already in the report. Then have them mark which of their new sentences a reader could check and which one is a prediction.

ELL supports

Provide a picture strip showing snow on a ridge, snow melting, a creek, and a reservoir, and label each picture with the matching report word. Pre-teach "layer," "packed," "melt," "runoff," and "reservoir." Allow items 2, 6, 8, and 9 to be answered in phrases, and allow the summary in item 10 to be one sentence with a labeled drawing.

Extensions

Have students turn the report into a short spring notice for Crestmere residents, keeping it under seventy-five words and including one sentence that a reader could check against the managers' measurements. Comparing the notice with the report shows students how much detail a writer drops when the audience changes from a manager to a neighbor.