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Worksheet Grade 6 English Language Arts

Cresswell Flats Plant Tour: A Grade 6 Sequencing Worksheet

Grade 6 students put six scrambled treatment steps from a fictional plant tour in order, choose transitions, and write a sequenced explanatory paragraph.

Objectives

  1. Students will order six drinking water treatment steps from intake to delivery.
  2. Students will select transition words that show the order of steps in a process.
  3. Students will write an explanatory paragraph that sequences a process for a reader.

Vocabulary

Key words: intake, settle, filter, chlorine, transition

Teacher overview

Students who write about a process usually know the parts and still produce a paragraph that jumps around, because ordering and signaling that order are separate skills from recalling content. This worksheet scrambles six steps from a tour of the fictional Cresswell Flats water plant and asks students to put them in order, justify a placement, and then join the steps with transitions in a paragraph of their own. Order matters in real treatment for a physical reason worth mentioning to the class: settling removes the large clumps so the filters are not overwhelmed, and the finished water has to meet a turbidity limit of 0.3 NTU in 95 percent of monthly samples under the EPA Surface Water Treatment Rules.

Cresswell Flats Plant Tour: A Grade 6 Sequencing Worksheet — Grade 6 English Language Arts
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Worksheet

A class visited the water plant in the fictional town of Cresswell Flats. The guide described six steps. The notes below are out of order.

Step P. The clean water leaves the plant and travels through pipes to the town's water tower.

Step Q. A screen at the intake keeps out leaves, sticks, and fish.

Step R. Sand and gravel filters catch the small bits that did not settle.

Step S. The plant adds a chemical that makes tiny bits of dirt stick together in clumps.

Step T. In a wide basin, the clumps sink slowly to the bottom.

Step U. Chlorine is added to kill germs before the water leaves the plant.

  1. Write the six letters in the order the water meets them, from the intake to the town.
  2. Which step comes right after the clumps sink to the bottom? Write the letter.
  3. Why must the filters come after the wide basin? Explain in one sentence.
  4. Which transition fits the blank best? "The plant adds a chemical. ___, the clumps sink in a wide basin." Choose from: First, Next, Finally.
  5. Combine these two sentences into one, using the word "after." The filters catch the small bits. Chlorine is added.
  6. A tour guide says, "Then the water gets cleaned." Rewrite that sentence so it names one step by name.
  7. Which step protects the filters and pumps from leaves and sticks? Write the letter.
  8. Which step describes where the water goes once it leaves the plant? Write the letter.
  9. Name three transition words you could use to join the first three steps in order.
  10. Write a paragraph of five to seven sentences that explains the trip water takes through the Cresswell Flats plant. Put the steps in order and use at least three transitions.

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: Q, S, T, R, U, P.
    Water passes the intake screen, receives the clumping chemical, settles in the basin, moves through the filters, is disinfected with chlorine, and then leaves for the tower.
  2. Answer: Step R.
    Once the clumps have settled in the basin, the water moves to the sand and gravel filters.
  3. Answer: The basin drops out the large clumps first, so the filters receive far less material and can catch the small bits that are left.
    Accept any answer naming clogging or overloading of the filters.
  4. Answer: Next.
    "First" would signal the opening step, and "Finally" would signal the last one, while the clumping and settling steps sit in the middle of the order.
  5. Answer: After the filters catch the small bits, chlorine is added.
    Accept any correct combination that keeps the same order of events.
  6. Answer: Accept any rewrite that names a step, such as "Then the water passes through sand and gravel filters."
    The original sentence names no step, so a reader cannot tell what happens.
  7. Answer: Step Q.
    The screen at the intake keeps out leaves, sticks, and fish before the water reaches anything else.
  8. Answer: Step P.
    The clean water leaves the plant and travels through pipes to the town's water tower.
  9. Answer: Accept any three ordering transitions, such as first, next, and then.
    Also accept "to begin," "after that," and "once."
  10. Answer: Accept any paragraph of five to seven sentences that keeps the order Q, S, T, R, U, P and uses at least three transitions correctly.
    Strong paragraphs also name what each step removes rather than saying only that the water is cleaned.

Differentiation

Support

Give these students the six steps printed on separate strips of paper so they can physically arrange the order before writing anything, and provide the first two letters of item 1 as a start.

Extension

Ask students to write one sentence explaining what would go wrong if steps R and T were swapped, then add a sentence predicting what an operator would notice first at the plant.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "intake," "settle," "filter," and "chlorine" with a simple left-to-right drawing of the six steps. Provide a transition word bank containing first, next, then, after that, and finally, and allow students to label the drawing instead of writing item 3 in a full sentence.

Extensions

Have students turn their item 10 paragraph into a six-panel poster with one sentence per panel, then trade posters and check whether a classmate can name the step shown in each panel without reading the caption.