Reading passage Grade 6 English Language Arts
Listening for Leaks in Kirtland: A Grade 6 Reading Passage
A grade 6 informational passage following a fictional night-shift leak detection technician who finds cracked water mains by sound, with seven questions.
Objectives
- Students will identify the stated reasons a leak technician works at night.
- Students will explain how two recordings of the same sound locate a leak along a pipe.
- Students will cite two details from the passage to justify a decision the passage does not state directly.
Vocabulary
- Water main
- A big underground pipe that carries drinking water beneath the streets to a neighborhood. Smaller service lines branch off it to reach each building.
- Leak detection
- Finding hidden leaks in buried water pipes before they become big breaks. Crews listen for the sound of escaping water using sensitive equipment.
- Valve
- A valve is a device in a pipe that operators can open or close to control where water flows. Valves let crews shut off one street for repairs without turning off the whole town.
Also: acoustic logger, hydrant
Teacher overview
Leak detection is a real job with a method students can follow, and it lets students study aging infrastructure through the work of one person. This passage follows a fictional night-shift technician in the town of Kirtland as she uses sound to find cracks in buried mains, and it explains why two recordings of the same hiss can locate a leak within a few feet. The misconception worth naming before students read is that a leaking pipe must show water at the surface, when in practice a crack can run for years while the water travels sideways through soil and never appears on the street.
Passage
Water pipes run under nearly every street in Kirtland. Most sit about four feet down. Some were laid more than eighty years ago. Pipes that old crack in small ways long before they burst. A crack no wider than a pencil lead can leak for years without ever showing at the surface. Finding those cracks is somebody's job.
Nadia Okonjo works nights for the fictional Kirtland Water District. Her shift starts at ten. She drives slowly along a street list and stops every few hundred feet. At each stop she lifts a small metal cover in the sidewalk. Under it is a valve on the water main. She sets a listening device against the valve and waits.
Leaks make noise. Water forced through a narrow crack hisses. That sound travels a long way through metal pipe, much farther than it travels through soil. A device pressed to a valve or a hydrant can pick it up from a block away. Nadia works at night because the town is quiet then. Traffic, washing machines, and running taps all add noise that hides a leak.
Some of her devices only listen while she stands there. Others, called acoustic loggers, record for hours and store what they hear. Nadia sets those loggers in the evening and collects them before dawn. Software then sorts the sounds. A steady hiss that holds the same pitch all night usually means a leak. A noise that starts and stops is usually a shower or a toilet.
Two recorders on the same pipe can do more than one. If both hear the same hiss, the sound reaches the nearer recorder first. The gap between the two arrival times tells the software where along the pipe the leak sits. A crew can then dig one hole in the right place instead of three in the wrong ones.
Lost water matters for more than one reason. The water was already pumped, treated, and paid for, so a leak wastes all of that work before anyone can use it. A slow leak also washes soil out from under the pipe. A pipe without support underneath bends, and a bent pipe cracks further. In the United States, a water main breaks about every two minutes, and many of those breaks began as small leaks that nobody had found.
Leaks inside houses add up as well. The EPA reports that leaks in an average home waste about 180 gallons a week, which comes to nearly 9,400 gallons a year. Nadia says most of what she finds underground is small, and that the small ones have usually been running the longest.
By four in the morning Nadia has a short list. She marks each spot with a spray-painted circle and a code. A repair crew arrives after sunrise and starts digging where the paint is. Drivers on their way to work pass the open hole and the crew beside it. The hole sits where it does because of what Nadia heard through a valve cover at two in the morning.
Questions
- According to the passage, why does Nadia work at night?
- What sound does a leak make in the passage?
- Why does a listening device pick up a leak better through the pipe than through the soil?
- How does the software tell a leak apart from a shower or a toilet?
- Besides wasting water, what damage does a slow leak do to the ground around a pipe?
- Explain why many water main breaks begin as leaks nobody has found. Use the passage.
- Explain why a crew would rather dig one hole than three. Use two details from the passage.
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Answer Key
- Answer: Because the town is quiet at night, and daytime noise from traffic, washing machines, and running taps hides the sound of a leak.
The passage states this directly in the paragraph that explains how leaks make noise. - Answer: A hiss, made by water forced through a narrow crack.
The passage adds that the hiss holds a steady pitch, which is how it is recognized later. - Answer: Because the sound travels much farther through metal pipe than it travels through soil.
The passage says a device on a valve or hydrant can pick up a leak from a block away. - Answer: A leak makes a steady hiss at the same pitch all night, while a shower or toilet makes a noise that starts and stops.
Students should name the steadiness of the sound, not only its loudness. - Answer: It washes soil out from under the pipe, so the unsupported pipe bends and cracks further.
This is the second reason the passage gives for why lost water matters. - Answer: Accept any answer explaining that a small crack can run for years without showing at the surface, so it goes unrepaired while it washes away the soil that supports the pipe until the pipe fails.
Strong answers connect the hidden leak to the statement that a main breaks about every two minutes. - Answer: Accept any answer using two details, such as the statement that two recorders can locate the leak from the gap in arrival times, and the statement that a crew can then dig one hole in the right place instead of three in the wrong ones.
Students may also note the cost and disruption of digging up a street more than once.
Differentiation
Support
Give these students a simplified street diagram showing a pipe, two recorders, and a leak between them, and let them trace the path of the sound to each recorder before answering questions 3 and 7.
Extension
Ask students to write the short report Nadia would leave for the morning repair crew, using four details from the passage and stating what the crew should expect to find when they open the ground.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "main," "valve," "hydrant," and "hiss" with a picture for each and a spoken example of a hissing sound. Allow students to answer questions 1 through 5 in phrases, and provide the frame "One hole is better because ___ and ___." for question 7.
Extensions
Have students list three sounds in their own school building that would make leak listening hard, then rank the sounds by how much trouble each would cause and explain the ranking in one sentence.