Graphic organizer Grade 6 English Language Arts
Kilverstone Water by the Numbers: A Grade 6 Units Organizer
A five-column organizer in which students unpack six sentences from a fictional utility's by-the-numbers page, naming each unit and restating it in everyday words.
Objectives
- Students will name what each unit in a utility report measures.
- Students will restate a sentence containing a technical unit in everyday words.
- Students will distinguish sentences that report a rate from those that do not.
Vocabulary
- Turbidity
- Turbidity is a measure of how cloudy or murky water looks because of tiny particles floating in it. Clear water has low turbidity, and muddy water has high turbidity.
Also: unit, rate, pressure, residual, main
Teacher overview
A utility's annual page of figures is one of the few documents a household receives that is written almost entirely in units, and the units carry the meaning. This organizer is a five-column frame that takes six sentences from a fictional water department's page and asks students to name the number, name what its unit measures, restate the sentence for an ordinary reader, and write the question they would still want answered. The misconception to name first is that a number is the information; many sixth graders copy a figure faithfully and skip the unit that tells a reader what the figure counts, and the second column is there to prevent that omission.
Organizer
The six sentences below come from the annual page published by the Kilverstone Water Department, a fictional utility. Fill in every empty cell for each row. Then answer the two prompts under the table.
| Sentence from the page | The number and its unit | What that unit measures | The same idea in everyday words | One question I would ask |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. "Our plant treated an average of 1.8 MGD last year." | ||||
| 2. "The Ridge Street pump station moves 1,250 gpm when both pumps run." | ||||
| 3. "Pressure in the Highfield zone is held near 62 psi." | ||||
| 4. "We keep a chlorine residual of 0.8 mg/L at the far end of the system." | ||||
| 5. "Finished water turbidity stayed at or below 0.09 NTU all year." | ||||
| 6. "We maintain 84 miles of water main." |
Prompts:
- Two of these sentences report a rate, which means an amount for every unit of time. Which two are they, and what in the unit tells you?
- Choose one row and rewrite its sentence for a neighbor who has never seen that unit. Keep every fact the same and change only the words.
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Completed Exemplar
| Sentence from the page | The number and its unit | What that unit measures | The same idea in everyday words | One question I would ask |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. "Our plant treated an average of 1.8 MGD last year." | 1.8 million gallons per day | How much water the plant cleans in a day | On a normal day the plant cleans about 1.8 million gallons of water for the town | Was any day much higher than the average? |
| 2. "The Ridge Street pump station moves 1,250 gpm when both pumps run." | 1,250 gallons per minute | How much water the pumps push in one minute | With both pumps running, the station moves 1,250 gallons of water every minute | What happens when only one pump is working? |
| 3. "Pressure in the Highfield zone is held near 62 psi." | 62 pounds per square inch | How hard the water pushes against the inside of the pipe | The water in that neighborhood pushes hard enough to reach an upstairs shower | Is the pressure the same at night as during the day? |
| 4. "We keep a chlorine residual of 0.8 mg/L at the far end of the system." | 0.8 milligrams per liter | How much of a substance is dissolved in a set amount of water | Even at the last house on the line, a small amount of chlorine is still in the water | Why does it matter most at the far end? |
| 5. "Finished water turbidity stayed at or below 0.09 NTU all year." | 0.09 nephelometric turbidity units | How cloudy the water is, measured by how much light it scatters | A meter shining light through the treated water found almost nothing to scatter it | How cloudy is the water before treatment? |
| 6. "We maintain 84 miles of water main." | 84 miles | Distance, in this case the total length of the pipes | The town's big water pipes would stretch 84 miles if laid end to end | How old are the oldest of those miles? |
Prompt answers:
- Answer: Sentences 1 and 2. Both units name a unit of time after the word "per," since MGD means million gallons per day and gpm means gallons per minute. The other four units name a push, a concentration, a cloudiness, and a distance, and none of them mentions time.
- Answer: Answers vary by row. A strong rewrite of sentence 3 reads, "The water in the Highfield neighborhood pushes with about 62 pounds of force on every square inch of pipe, which is enough to reach an upstairs faucet." A strong rewrite of sentence 5 reads, "All year, the treated water measured no more than 0.09 turbidity units, so a light meter shining through it found almost nothing to scatter the light." Withhold credit if the rewrite drops the number, changes it, or replaces the fact with an opinion about whether the figure is good.
Differentiation
Support
Give these students the second column already completed, so the task narrows to naming what each unit measures and restating the sentence. Provide a unit key card listing "per day," "per minute," "per square inch," and "per liter" with the plain meaning of each beside it. Work row 1 together as a class before releasing the rest, and reduce the requirement to four rows.
Extension
Ask these students to write a short paragraph for the utility's page explaining why it reports both a daily average and a per-minute pumping figure, when both describe moving water. A second option is to add a seventh row of their own, inventing a sentence a utility might publish, and to fill in all five columns for it.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "per," "pressure," "residual," "turbidity," and "main," and post a chart pairing each abbreviation with the words it stands for. Allow the fourth column to be completed with a labeled drawing, such as a faucet on an upper floor for pressure. Offer the sentence frame "This number tells how much ___ in every ___" for the third column.
Extensions
Have students find a real utility's annual report or system page, copy two sentences that contain units, and complete the same five columns for them. Ask students to note which of the two sentences would need the most rewriting before a neighbor could use it.