Worksheet Grade 8 English Language Arts
Three Jobs at the Ironwick Water Plant: Interview Worksheet
A grade 8 ELA worksheet on a fictional interview transcript with three water plant staff, covering paraphrase, evidence, and word meaning from context.
Objectives
- Students will cite the transcript line that most strongly supports a claim about a job path.
- Students will paraphrase a speaker's description of daily work without copying phrasing.
- Students will use context to define technical terms a speaker uses.
Vocabulary
Key words: transcript, paraphrase, license, grab sample, certificate
Teacher overview
The transcript on this worksheet is fictional, written for a student newspaper visit to the Ironwick Regional Water Plant. Three staff members describe how they came into their work: an operator who trained on the job and passed a state exam, a laboratory technician who finished a two-year certificate, and an engineer who finished a four-year degree. The pay and job-opening figures the speakers mention come from federal labor statistics and describe operators specifically. Items move from locating stated facts to paraphrasing, defining terms from context, and writing a short explanatory paragraph.
Student Worksheet
The interview below is fictional. A student reporter visited the Ironwick Regional Water Plant and recorded three short conversations.
Reporter: Marisol, what do you do here?
Marisol Reyes, plant operator: I run the treatment process on my shift. I watch the gauges, add the right amount of treatment chemicals, and check that the filters are working. I hold a Class II operator license from the state.
Reporter: How did you get the license?
Marisol Reyes: I finished high school and started here as a plant helper. I trained on the job for two years, took a class at night, and passed the state exam. The federal labor data puts the median pay for operators at $60,020 a year. The bottom tenth earn less than $39,110, and the top tenth earn more than $91,060.
Reporter: Terrence, you work in the lab. What does a normal morning look like?
Terrence Boyd, laboratory technician: I collect grab samples from four points in the plant before eight o'clock. A grab sample is one bottle of water taken at one moment, not a mix collected over hours. Then I test each bottle and log the results. If a result looks wrong, I test it again before I tell anyone.
Reporter: What training did you need?
Terrence Boyd: A two-year certificate in water quality technology at the community college. My sister is an operator, and she told me the plant needed lab people.
Reporter: Priya, what does an engineer do at a plant this size?
Priya Anand, environmental engineer: I design changes to the plant. Right now I am working on a new pump room. I finished a four-year degree in environmental engineering, and I am working toward a professional license.
Reporter: Is it hard to hire people here?
Priya Anand: It will be. Federal projections show about 10,000 openings a year for water and wastewater operators from 2025 to 2035, even though the total number of operator jobs is expected to shrink by 6 percent. All of those openings come from replacing people who retire or change careers. That is the best news a student could hear.
Reporter: Any advice?
Marisol Reyes: Come see a plant before you decide anything. A written description will not tell you what a shift on the plant floor is actually like.
- What license does Marisol hold, and how did she earn it? Quote the line that supports your answer.
- Paraphrase Terrence's description of his morning in one sentence. Do not use more than two words in a row from the transcript.
- Which speaker's path required the longest schooling? Quote the line that most strongly supports your answer.
- Use the transcript to define "grab sample" in your own words.
- Priya says, "That is the best news a student could hear." Is that statement a fact or an opinion? Explain how you can tell.
- The median pay figure covers operators across the country. Explain one thing that figure does not tell a student who is choosing a path.
- Marisol and Terrence both describe checking their own work. Write one claim about plant work that both lines support.
- Which quotation would you use to support the claim that this plant needs people with different kinds of training? Explain why that quotation is the strongest choice.
- A student wants to work at the plant within a year of finishing high school. Which path in the transcript fits, and what evidence supports your answer?
- Write a paragraph of four sentences for your school newspaper about the three paths described in the transcript. Include one quotation and the speaker's name.
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: A Class II operator license from the state. Support: "I finished high school and started here as a plant helper. I trained on the job for two years, took a class at night, and passed the state exam."
- Answer: Accept any one-sentence paraphrase with fresh wording. Model: Before eight in the morning, Terrence fills one bottle at each of four spots around the plant, runs tests on them, records what he finds, and repeats any test that looks off.
- Answer: Priya Anand. Support: "I finished a four-year degree in environmental engineering, and I am working toward a professional license." Her four years exceed the two-year certificate Terrence names and the on-the-job training Marisol describes.
- Answer: One bottle of water collected at a single moment from one spot, rather than a mixture collected over several hours.
- Answer: Opinion. The number of projected openings is a fact drawn from federal projections, while calling it the best news a student could hear is a judgment that another person could reasonably dispute.
- Answer: Accept any reasonable limit of a national median. Strong responses note that a median covers the whole country and says nothing about pay at one plant, in one state, or at the start of a career, and that the transcript itself gives a much wider range from less than $39,110 to more than $91,060.
- Answer: Accept any claim supported by both lines, such as: plant work depends on checking results before acting on them. Marisol watches gauges and checks the filters, and Terrence retests a sample before reporting it.
- Answer: Accept Terrence's line "My sister is an operator, and she told me the plant needed lab people," Priya's line about designing a new pump room, or Marisol's line about running the treatment process, paired with an explanation. The strongest choice points to a need or a task that one kind of training covers and another does not, which shows the plant needs more than one path.
- Answer: The operator path Marisol describes. Evidence: she started as a plant helper after high school and trained on the job, so a student could begin work while studying for the state exam.
- Answer: Accept any four-sentence paragraph that names all three paths, stays accurate to the transcript, and includes one quotation with the speaker's name. Look for a topic sentence about the plant needing several kinds of training, rather than a list of the three jobs alone.
Differentiation
Support
Provide the fictional transcript with each speaker's training path already underlined and a chart with three columns labeled operator, technician, and engineer. Reduce the required items to 1, 4, 9, and 10, and give a paragraph frame for item 10.
Extension
Ask students to write four interview questions they would ask a fourth staff member at the fictional plant, such as a maintenance mechanic, and explain what each question is designed to find out that the transcript does not already cover.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "license," "certificate," "shift," and "sample" with a labeled sketch of the fictional plant showing where each speaker works. Allow items 1 through 5 to be answered in phrases, and let students record item 10 as speech before writing it.
Extensions
Students turn the fictional transcript into a short profile article of about 150 words for the school paper, choosing one speaker and using two direct quotations with correct punctuation.