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Worksheet Grade 9 English Language Arts

Elkmont Reservoir Sampling Protocol: Following a Procedure

A grade 9 ELA worksheet in which students read a fictional reservoir's water-sampling protocol and answer questions about following its steps and special cases.

Objectives

  1. Students will locate specific steps in a technical procedure and explain their order.
  2. Students will apply the procedure's special cases and exceptions to new situations.

Vocabulary

Key words: protocol, calibrate, residual, exception, sample

Teacher overview

Reading a technical procedure closely is a real literacy skill, and water sampling gives students a procedure where small mistakes have real consequences. This worksheet uses a fictional protocol from the Elkmont Reservoir, run by the Staverly water utility, and asks students to read it the way a field technician must, attending to the exact steps and the exceptions that override the normal rule. The questions move from locating steps to applying the protocol's special cases to situations the text did not spell out directly.

Elkmont Reservoir Sampling Protocol: Following a Procedure — Grade 9 English Language Arts
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Worksheet

Read the fictional sampling protocol below for Elkmont Reservoir, which stores treated drinking water, then answer the questions. Read it twice before you begin.

Elkmont Reservoir Monthly Sampling Protocol (fictional)

  • Before you leave the lab, calibrate the pH meter using two buffer solutions. A meter that fails to calibrate must be repaired before any trip.
  • At the reservoir, rinse each sample bottle three times with the water you are sampling. Exception: bottles pre-filled with preservative for bacteria testing must never be rinsed, because rinsing removes the preservative.
  • Collect water from the mid-depth intake, not the surface. Surface water can carry floating debris that does not belong in the sample.
  • Record the water temperature the moment you collect the sample, not later at the lab, because temperature begins changing as soon as the water leaves the reservoir.
  • Test the chlorine residual on site within fifteen minutes. A normal residual reads between 0.2 and 2.0 milligrams per liter.
  • Label every bottle with the site name, the date, and the time, in that order. If a label smears in the rain, discard that sample and collect a new one.
  • Keep bacteria samples on ice and deliver them to the lab within six hours. If delivery will take longer than six hours, discard the samples and collect again.
  • If any reading falls outside its normal range, collect a second sample before you report anything.
  1. According to the protocol, when must you calibrate the pH meter, and what must happen if the meter fails to calibrate?
  2. The protocol says to rinse each bottle three times. Which bottles are the exception, and why would rinsing them cause a problem?
  3. A trainee fills a bottle from the surface of the reservoir. Which step did the trainee ignore, and what could end up in that sample as a result?
  4. Explain, using the protocol's own reasoning, why temperature must be recorded at the reservoir rather than back at the lab.
  5. On site, a chlorine residual reads 0.05 milligrams per liter. Is that inside the normal range the protocol gives, and what does the protocol tell you to do about an out-of-range reading?
  6. A sudden rain smears the label on a filled bottle. What does the protocol require, and why is discarding the whole sample stricter than simply writing a new label?
  7. A driver says the bacteria samples will not reach the lab until seven hours after collection. What does the protocol require the technician to do?
  8. List, in the exact order the protocol requires, the three pieces of information that must appear on every label.
  9. Explain your reasoning: why does the protocol ask for a second sample before reporting any out-of-range result, instead of reporting the first reading right away?
  10. A new worker suggests testing chlorine back at the lab an hour after collection to save time in the field. Which step rules this out, and what is the risk of the shortcut?

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: Before leaving the lab; a meter that fails to calibrate must be repaired before any trip. The first bullet states both the timing and the repair requirement.
  2. Answer: The bacteria bottles pre-filled with preservative. Rinsing them would wash out the preservative they depend on, per the rinsing exception.
  3. Answer: The step to collect from the mid-depth intake, not the surface. Surface water can carry floating debris into the sample.
  4. Answer: Because temperature begins changing the moment the water leaves the reservoir, so a later lab reading would no longer match the reservoir's true temperature.
  5. Answer: No, 0.05 is below the normal range of 0.2 to 2.0 milligrams per liter, so the protocol requires collecting a second sample before reporting.
  6. Answer: Discard that sample and collect a new one. A smeared label can be misread, so the protocol removes the risk entirely rather than trusting a rewritten guess.
  7. Answer: Discard the bacteria samples and collect again, because delivery longer than six hours exceeds the protocol's limit for bacteria samples.
  8. Answer: Site name, date, and time, in that order, as the labeling step specifies.
  9. Answer: A single out-of-range reading could be an error; a second sample confirms whether the result is real before it is reported, protecting against a false alarm or a missed problem.
  10. Answer: The step requiring on-site testing within fifteen minutes. Chlorine residual changes over time, so a later lab reading would misstate the reservoir's actual residual.

Differentiation

Support

Provide the protocol with each exception highlighted and a two-column note sheet (normal rule on the left, exception on the right) students fill in before answering. Allow items 1, 3, and 8 to be answered by pointing to the exact bullet.

Extension

Ask students to write one new special-case rule that would fit this protocol, such as what to do if the intake is frozen, and to explain how their rule follows the same logic as the exceptions already in the text.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "calibrate," "residual," "preservative," and "exception" with simple definitions and an image of a labeled sample bottle. Allow students to answer the locating questions (1, 3, 8) with short phrases and to underline the matching sentence in the protocol as part of the answer.