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Reading passage Grade 5 English Language Arts

How Thistle Hollow's Water Tower Serves the Town

A grade 5 informational passage explaining how a hilltop water tower uses height, not constant pumping, to push water through a fictional town's pipes.

Objectives

  1. Students will explain how a water tower's height creates pressure without constant pumping.
  2. Students will identify the comparison the passage uses to explain pressure.
  3. Students will make an inference about why a low water level could cause a safety problem.

Vocabulary

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: pressure, gravity, tower

Teacher overview

The town of Thistle Hollow gets its tap water pressure from a water tower on the hill above Main Street, not from a pump running every minute of the day. This passage explains how the tower's height, rather than constant pumping, pushes water through the town's pipes, giving students an informational text about a common piece of town infrastructure. It supports both literal recall of how the tower works and inference about why utilities build tanks on hills or tall towers instead of low ground.

How Thistle Hollow's Water Tower Serves the Town — Grade 5 English Language Arts
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Passage

Thistle Hollow's water tower stands on Miller's Hill. This hill is the highest point in town. The tower holds a large tank of water high above the rooftops. Pumps at the treatment plant fill the tank for a few hours each day. The pumps do not run all the time. Gravity does the work the rest of the day. Water sitting high inside the tower pushes down through the pipes. Those pipes connect to every house and business in town. This works the same way water flows harder out of a hose when the bucket feeding it is held up high instead of down low. The taller the tower, the stronger that push becomes. That push is called pressure.

Most water systems across the country keep their pressure between 40 and 80 pounds of push on every square inch at the tap. Thistle Hollow's system does too. This range works well for showers, sinks, and fire hydrants. Many states also require at least 20 pounds of push on every square inch at every connection. Pressure that drops too low can let dirt or germs seep backward into the pipes.

Building the tower on Miller's Hill was a choice made by the town's engineers decades ago. They could have built it on flat ground near the treatment plant instead. A tower on flat ground would need to be much taller to create the same pressure. It is the height of the water, not the shape of the tank, that pushes water through the pipes. By using the hill's natural height, the engineers built a shorter, cheaper tower. It still delivers strong, steady pressure across town. That includes the fire hydrant outside the elementary school. Firefighters depend on that hydrant during an emergency.

Today, workers check the tower regularly. They make sure its tank stays full enough to supply the whole town. This matters most on a busy morning, when many households are showering, cooking, and watering gardens at the same time.

Questions

  1. Where is Thistle Hollow's water tower located? Why was that location chosen?
  2. According to the passage, what keeps water flowing to homes when the pumps are not running?
  3. What comparison does the passage use to explain why height creates pressure?
  4. What pressure range does the passage say most water systems, including Thistle Hollow's, try to keep at the tap?
  5. Why does the passage say pressure that drops too low can be a problem?
  6. Why would a tower on flat ground need to be taller than a tower on a hill? Use details from the passage.
  7. Explain why the passage mentions the fire hydrant outside the elementary school.

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: on Miller's Hill, the highest point in town. The passage states this location was chosen because building there let engineers create strong pressure with a shorter, less expensive tower.
  2. Answer: gravity. The passage explains that water sitting high inside the tower pushes downward through the pipes even when the pumps are not running.
  3. Answer: the passage compares tower pressure to water flowing harder out of a hose when the bucket feeding it is held up high instead of down low.
  4. Answer: between 40 and 80 pounds of push on every square inch. The passage states this is the range most systems, including Thistle Hollow's, try to keep at the tap.
  5. Answer: because pressure that drops too low can let dirt or germs seep backward into the pipes instead of staying out, according to the passage.
  6. Answer: because the passage explains that it is the height of the water itself that creates pressure, so a tower on flat ground would need to be built taller to reach the same height and create the same push.
  7. Answer: answers will vary but should note that the passage uses the fire hydrant to show a real, high-stakes example of why steady pressure matters, since firefighters depend on it during an emergency.

Differentiation

Support

Provide a labeled diagram of the water tower on the hill with arrows showing water flowing downhill to homes, for students to reference while answering questions 2, 3, and 6.

Extension

Ask students to reason, using only the passage, what might happen to Thistle Hollow's water pressure on a morning when the tower's tank is unusually low, and write two sentences explaining their reasoning.

ELL supports

Preteach "pressure," "gravity," and "tower" with a simple demonstration (pouring water into a funnel attached to a length of tubing and comparing the stream from the tube's open end when the funnel is held high versus low) before reading. Allow questions 1, 2, and 4 to be answered with short phrases rather than full sentences.