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Worksheet Grade 6 English Language Arts

Yarrowfield's Farm Water Report: A Grade 6 Structure Worksheet

A grade 6 ELA worksheet in which students name the text structure of four excerpts from a fictional farm water report and write one excerpt of their own.

Objectives

  1. Students will name the text structure of four short informational excerpts and quote the signal words that show it.
  2. Students will explain why a writer would choose one structure over another for a given purpose.
  3. Students will write a short passage using a named structure and the details from the report.

Vocabulary

Key words: text structure, sequence, cause and effect, compare and contrast, problem and solution, irrigation

Teacher overview

Students who can define the four common text structures often still label a whole document with one name, as though a report could only be organized one way from beginning to end. This worksheet takes four excerpts from the annual report of the fictional Yarrowfield Valley irrigation district, each written in a different structure, and asks students to name each one and prove it with signal words. The town, the district, and every local figure in the report are invented for this worksheet.

Yarrowfield's Farm Water Report: A Grade 6 Structure Worksheet — Grade 6 English Language Arts
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Worksheet

Read the four excerpts from the fictional Yarrowfield Valley water report. Then answer the questions. A text structure is the way a writer arranges ideas. Four common ones are sequence, cause and effect, compare and contrast, and problem and solution.

Excerpt A. Water reaches a Yarrowfield field in stages. First, the district opens the head gate at the reservoir on the first Monday in May. Next, water flows down the main canal for about six miles. Then it enters a smaller ditch that serves a group of farms. Finally, a farmer lifts a small gate to let water onto one field at a time.

Excerpt B. Yarrowfield moved most watering to the night hours three years ago. Daytime heat and wind pulled water into the air before it could soak into the root zone. Because of that loss, farms had to run water longer to wet the same soil. Switching to night watering cut the time each field needed and left more water in the canal for farms at the far end.

Excerpt C. Two watering methods are common in the valley. Furrow watering sends water down shallow trenches between crop rows, costs little to set up, and works well on flat ground. Sprinkler watering sprays water over the crop from pipes on wheels, costs far more to buy, and can water uneven ground that furrows cannot reach. Both methods wet the same soil, yet they do it at different prices and on different land.

Excerpt D. The oldest section of the Yarrowfield canal is cut through sandy soil, and water seeps out through the sand before it reaches the last four farms. The district loses about 1 gallon in every 5 that leaves the reservoir. The district lined a two-mile stretch of that section with concrete last fall, and the farms at the end of the line received water three weeks earlier this spring.

  1. Name the text structure of Excerpt A. Quote two signal words that show it.
  2. Name the text structure of Excerpt B. Quote one signal word or phrase that shows it.
  3. Name the text structure of Excerpt C. Quote one word or phrase that shows it.
  4. Name the text structure of Excerpt D. Write the problem in your own words.
  5. In Excerpt B, what was the effect of switching to night watering? Copy the sentence that states it.
  6. In Excerpt C, name one way the two methods are alike and one way they are different.
  7. Excerpt D gives a result of lining the canal. Write that result and explain how it shows the solution worked.
  8. A reader wants to know the order of steps that brings water to a field. Which excerpt should the reader use, and why?
  9. Excerpt B could have been written as a sequence instead. Explain what a reader would lose if the writer made that change.
  10. Write three or four sentences about the sandy canal section using a problem and solution structure. Use only details from Excerpt D, and include one signal word such as "problem," "because," or "solved."

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: Sequence. Accept any two of "First," "Next," "Then," and "Finally," which mark the order of steps from the head gate to the field.
  2. Answer: Cause and effect. Accept "Because of that loss," or the phrase "cut the time each field needed," which reports the result of the change to night watering.
  3. Answer: Compare and contrast. Accept "Both methods," "yet," or "different," each of which signals that two things are being measured against each other.
  4. Answer: Problem and solution. The problem is that water seeps out through the sandy soil in the oldest canal section before it reaches the last four farms.
  5. Answer: Night watering cut the time each field needed and left more water in the canal for farms at the far end. Students should copy that final sentence of Excerpt B.
  6. Answer: Alike: both methods wet the same soil. Different: accept any one of cost, the ground each suits, or the way water is delivered, such as trenches against overhead spray.
  7. Answer: The farms at the end of the line received water three weeks earlier this spring. The result shows the lining worked because the same water now reaches farther down the canal.
  8. Answer: Excerpt A, because it is written in sequence and lists the steps in the order they happen, from the head gate to the farmer's field gate.
  9. Answer: Answers will vary. A complete answer says the reader would lose the reason for the change, since a sequence would list what the district did without explaining that daytime heat and wind were pulling water into the air.
  10. Answer: Answers will vary. A proficient response names the seepage through sandy soil as the problem, names the concrete lining as the solution, includes at least one signal word, and ends with the result of water reaching the last farms three weeks earlier.

Differentiation

Support

Give these students a labeled reference card with the four structures, two signal words for each, and a one-sentence example. Reduce the required items to 1 through 5 and item 10, and allow them to answer item 10 in two sentences using the frame "The problem was ___. The district solved it by ___."

Extension

Ask students to rewrite Excerpt C as a cause and effect passage explaining why a farm on uneven ground would choose sprinklers, using only the details already in the excerpt. Then have them explain in one sentence which structure serves a farmer choosing a method better, and why.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "irrigation," "canal," "furrow," and "seep" with a simple drawing of a reservoir, a canal, a ditch, and a field. Provide a signal word bank grouped by structure, and let students highlight signal words in each excerpt before naming any structure.