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Worksheet Grade 8 English Language Arts

Reading Halden Row's Public Notice About Lead in Water

A grade 8 close-reading worksheet on a fictional town's public notice about lead, where students cite evidence and interpret the action level and next steps.

Objectives

  1. Students will cite specific sentences in a public notice to support their answers.
  2. Students will interpret what an action level does and does not mean.

Vocabulary

Lead (Pb)
A soft gray metal that is poisonous, especially for children. It can get into drinking water from old pipes and plumbing, so utilities work hard to control it.
Service line
A service line is the small pipe that connects the water main under the street to the plumbing inside one home or building. It is the last leg of the trip water makes to your tap.
Action level
A trigger number in lead and copper testing. If too many homes test above this level, the utility must take steps like improving treatment and telling the public.

Also: parts per billion, corrosion

Teacher overview

Utilities send residents public notices about lead, and those notices reward careful reading. This worksheet gives students an original notice written for a fictional town, then asks them to cite evidence, interpret a regulatory action level, and catch a common misreading. It pairs well with a science or social-studies unit on water safety, though the reading and citing work stands on its own as an informational-text exercise.

Reading Halden Row's Public Notice About Lead in Water — Grade 8 English Language Arts
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Worksheet

Read the notice below. It was written for this lesson and describes a fictional town.

Halden Row Water Department: Notice to Residents

Recent tests found lead in the tap water of some homes in Halden Row. This notice explains what that means and what the town is doing.

What is the problem? Lead is a metal that can harm health, especially in young children. Water leaves our treatment plant with no lead in it. Lead gets into the water later, when water sits inside old pipes that contain lead. The small pipe that connects a single home to the water main is called a service line. In older parts of Halden Row, some service lines are still made of lead.

What is the action level? The federal government sets an action level for lead. Right now that level is 15 ppb, which means 15 parts of lead per billion parts of water. Starting in 2027, the action level drops to 10 ppb. When more than a set share of tested homes read above the action level, the town must take extra steps. An action level is not a line between safe and unsafe. Health experts agree there is no completely safe level of lead for children.

What is Halden Row doing? The town keeps a list of which homes still have lead service lines. Across the country, the EPA estimates that about 4 million lead service lines remain in use. Halden Row plans to replace its own lead lines over the next several years. Until then, the town adds a treatment that coats the inside of old pipes and slows lead from dissolving into the water.

What can residents do? Run your cold tap for a short time before drinking if the water has been sitting for hours. Use only cold water for cooking and for baby formula, because hot water pulls more lead from pipes. Ask the water department whether your home has a lead service line.

Answer each question in complete sentences.

  1. The notice says the water leaves the plant clean. Where, then, does the lead get into the water? Quote the sentence that supports your answer.
  2. In your own words, what is a service line?
  3. The action level is 15 ppb now and drops to 10 ppb in 2027. Is the rule getting stricter or looser? Explain how you know from the numbers.
  4. Find the sentence that most strongly supports this claim: "The action level is not the same thing as a safety line." Quote it.
  5. Why does the notice tell residents to use cold water, not hot water, for cooking and baby formula? Use a detail from the text.
  6. The notice names two things the town is doing about lead right now. List both.
  7. A resident says, "If the plant sends out clean water, my tap water must be clean too." Using the notice, explain why that reasoning could be wrong.
  8. What does the notice tell residents to do before drinking water that has been sitting in the pipes for several hours?
  9. Reread the paragraph headed "What is the action level?" State its central idea in one sentence of your own.
  10. The notice mentions more than once that lead is most harmful to young children. Why might the writer repeat that point? Support your answer with evidence from the text.

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: Lead gets in from the old pipes, not the plant. The supporting sentence is: "Lead gets into the water later, when water sits inside old pipes that contain lead."
  2. Answer: A service line is the small pipe that connects a single home to the water main. In older parts of the town, some are still made of lead.
  3. Answer: Stricter. A lower number means less lead is allowed before the town must act, so dropping from 15 ppb to 10 ppb makes the limit tighter, not looser.
  4. Answer: The sentence is: "An action level is not a line between safe and unsafe," supported by the next sentence stating there is no completely safe level of lead for children.
  5. Answer: Because hot water pulls more lead from pipes than cold water does, so using cold water for cooking and baby formula lowers how much lead a person takes in.
  6. Answer: It keeps a list of which homes still have lead service lines and plans to replace them, and until then it adds a treatment that coats the inside of old pipes to slow lead from dissolving.
  7. Answer: The reasoning is wrong because the notice says the water is clean when it leaves the plant but can pick up lead afterward, inside a home's old lead pipes. Clean water at the plant does not guarantee clean water at that resident's tap.
  8. Answer: Run the cold tap for a short time before drinking, so the water that sat in the pipes is flushed out first.
  9. Answer: Answers will vary but should capture that the action level is a legal number that triggers extra steps, not a guarantee of safety, since no level of lead is fully safe for children.
  10. Answer: Answers will vary. Students should note that the writer repeats it to stress who is most at risk and to make readers with young children act, supported by the sentences naming children in both the "problem" and "action level" paragraphs.

Differentiation

Support

Give students a copy of the notice with the four headings boxed, and have them label which question points to which heading before they answer. Locating the right paragraph first removes much of the difficulty in the citing items.

Extension

Ask students to rewrite the "What can residents do?" paragraph as a short set of numbered instructions for a neighbor who reads little English, keeping every fact from the original but using simpler words and shorter steps.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "lead," "service line," "action level," and "parts per billion" with a labeled picture of a house, a water main, and the small pipe between them. Allow students to answer items 1, 2, and 8 by underlining the sentence in the notice and copying it, rather than paraphrasing.