Worksheet Grade 8 English Language Arts
Redwillow's Water Reclamation Plant: A Grade 8 Vocabulary Worksheet
A grade 8 word-study worksheet where students use context in a fictional wastewater plant tour to define terms like influent, effluent, aeration, and biosolids.
Objectives
- Students will use context clues to define technical terms from a plant tour.
- Students will write a precise sentence using domain vocabulary correctly.
Vocabulary
- Influent
- Influent is the incoming dirty water that arrives at a treatment plant, ready to be cleaned. Operators test it to see how much work the plant has to do.
- Effluent
- Effluent is the cleaned water that leaves a treatment plant at the end of the process. It is tested carefully before being released to a river, lake, or the ocean.
- Aeration
- Aeration means mixing air into water. At a wastewater plant, blowers bubble huge amounts of air through tanks so the helpful microbes have the oxygen they need to eat the waste.
- Clarifier
- A clarifier is a big round or rectangular tank where water sits calmly so solids can sink to the bottom and be scraped away. Treatment plants use clarifiers at more than one stage of cleaning.
- Biosolids
- Biosolids are the nutrient-rich solid material left over after sewage sludge has been treated and made safe. Many farms use treated biosolids as fertilizer for their fields.
Also: digester, reclamation
Teacher overview
Wastewater plants come with a vocabulary of their own, and students meet those words most naturally on a tour. This worksheet gives students an original account of a class visit to a fictional reclamation plant, then asks them to build the meaning of each term from how the guide used it. The task trains context-clue reading and precise writing at once, and it fits either an ELA vocabulary unit or a science unit on how used water is cleaned.
Student Worksheet
Read the account below. It describes a fictional plant and was written for this lesson.
A class visited the Redwillow Water Reclamation Facility, a plant that cleans a town's used water before returning it to a river. The guide used words the students had never heard. You can work out each word from how the guide used it.
The dirty water that arrives at the plant is called the influent. It flows in from every home and business in town. After the plant finishes its work, the water that leaves is called the effluent. By law, the effluent must be clean enough to release, cleaned until its waste strength drops to about 30 mg/L or less.
The first stop was a large tank of bubbling water. The guide called this step aeration. Machines push air through the water so that helpful bacteria get the oxygen they need. Those bacteria feed on the waste and break it down. Without air, the bacteria would slow down and the cleaning would fail.
Next came a wide, calm tank called a clarifier. Here the water moves slowly, so the heavy solids sink to the bottom. The clear water on top moves on, while the settled sludge is pumped away.
The guide led the class to a sealed tank called a digester. Inside, a different set of bacteria break down the collected sludge without any air at all. The material left over is called biosolids. Some plants dry the biosolids and give them to farmers, because they are rich in the nutrients that crops need.
The word reclamation puzzled a few students. The guide explained that to reclaim something is to make it useful again. A reclamation plant does not throw the water away. It cleans the water and returns it to the river, where the cycle starts over.
Answer each item in complete sentences.
- Using the text, define influent in your own words. Quote the phrase that helped you.
- Define effluent. How is it different from influent?
- The guide said the effluent must be "clean enough to release." What sentence in the text explains how clean that must be? Quote it.
- What is aeration, and why do the bacteria need it? Use context from the passage.
- In one sentence, explain what a clarifier does. Cite the detail that reveals its job.
- What is a digester, and how is it different from the aeration tank? Think about air in your answer.
- Define biosolids. Why might a farmer want them?
- The word reclamation comes from "reclaim." Using the guide's explanation, write a precise one-sentence definition of a water reclamation plant.
- Two words in the passage look almost alike but mark opposite ends of the process. Name them and explain the difference.
- Choose any two terms from the passage. Write one clear sentence that uses both correctly to explain part of how the plant works.
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: Influent is the dirty water that arrives at the plant from homes and businesses. The helpful phrase is "the dirty water that arrives at the plant is called the influent."
- Answer: Effluent is the cleaned water that leaves the plant. It is different from influent because influent flows in dirty and effluent flows out cleaned.
- Answer: The sentence is: "By law, the effluent must be clean enough to release, cleaned until its waste strength drops to about 30 mg/L or less."
- Answer: Aeration is the step of pushing air through the water. The bacteria need it because air gives them the oxygen they use to feed on the waste and break it down; without air, the cleaning would fail.
- Answer: A clarifier lets heavy solids sink so the clear water can move on. The revealing detail is that the water moves slowly, "so the heavy solids sink to the bottom."
- Answer: A digester is a sealed tank where bacteria break down the collected sludge with no air. It differs from the aeration tank, which adds air on purpose, because the digester works without any air at all.
- Answer: Biosolids are the material left over after the sludge is broken down in the digester. A farmer might want them because they are rich in the nutrients that crops need.
- Answer: Answers will vary but should say that a water reclamation plant cleans used water and makes it useful again by returning it to the river instead of throwing it away.
- Answer: Influent and effluent. Influent is the dirty water entering the plant, and effluent is the cleaned water leaving it, so they mark the start and the end of the process.
- Answer: Answers will vary. A correct sentence uses two terms accurately, such as: "After aeration, the water enters a clarifier where the heavy solids sink to the bottom."
Differentiation
Support
Give students a matching column of the seven terms and short definitions to confirm against the text before they write. Confirming a meaning first makes the "quote the clue" items far less daunting.
Extension
Ask students to draw a simple flow diagram of the plant, labeling each stage with the correct term and one detail from the passage, then write a caption that uses at least three of the terms in order.
ELL supports
Provide a picture glossary showing water flowing in, bubbling in a tank, settling in a tank, and flowing out clean. Allow students to answer items 1 through 5 by copying the clue sentence and adding a short phrase, rather than writing a full paraphrase.