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Reading passage Kindergarten English Language Arts

Meet the Pipe Crew of Juniperton: A Kindergarten Read-Aloud

An original kindergarten read-aloud in which a town water crew finds the leaking pipe that stopped the Juniperton school fountain, with oral questions and a key.

Objectives

  1. Students will listen to a read-aloud story and recall three stated facts from it.
  2. Students will explain why the school fountain had no water that day.
  3. Students will name one job the town water crew does for the school.

Vocabulary

Key words: pipe, crew, leak, fountain

Teacher overview

Juniperton is a fictional town used for this passage, and its water crew is called out when the drinking fountain at the school stops working one Monday. The story shows the crew asking a question, looking for clues, finding the leak in the buried pipe, and fixing it, which gives kindergartners a concrete picture of who takes care of the water they drink at school. The misconception the story is written to correct is a persistent one at this age: many students assume a drinking fountain holds its own supply inside the box and refills itself like a bottle, rather than sitting at the end of a pipe that runs under the street.

Read the story aloud twice, once straight through and once pausing for the questions. Students may answer by speaking, pointing, or drawing.

Meet the Pipe Crew of Juniperton: A Kindergarten Read-Aloud — Kindergarten English Language Arts
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Passage

The Day the Fountain Went Dry

Kwame went to get a drink at school. He pushed the button on the fountain. No water came out. He pushed it again. Still no water came.

His teacher called the town water crew. Two workers came in a white truck. Their names were Rafi and Marta.

Marta asked Kwame a question first. "When did it last work?" Kwame said it worked on Friday. Rafi wrote that down on a pad.

Then the crew went outside. They walked along the grass by the road. They found a wet spot in the grass. Water was seeping up from below.

"The pipe down there has a hole," Rafi said. The crew set out cones. They dug down to the pipe. The hole was big. It let the water out before it got to the school.

Rafi cut out the bad part of the pipe. Marta put in a new piece. They sealed it tight. Then they filled the hole back up with dirt.

Marta turned a big valve back on. Water rushed through the pipe again. Kwame pushed the button one more time. This time the water came up. He took a long drink.

"Thank you," he said. Marta smiled at him. "That is our job," she said. "We keep the water going."

Questions

  1. What did Kwame want to do at school?
  2. What came out of the fountain when he pushed the button?
  3. Who did the teacher call for help?
  4. What did the crew find in the grass by the road?
  5. What was wrong with the pipe under the grass?
  6. Why did no water reach the fountain that day?
  7. Marta said the crew keeps the water going. Tell one thing the crew did to keep it going.

Draw and tell task. Draw Rafi and Marta at work by the road. Write or copy one label for a tool or a part in your picture, such as pipe, cone, or truck. Then tell a grown-up one true thing the pipe crew does.

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: Get a drink of water. The first sentence says Kwame went to get a drink at school.
  2. Answer: Nothing. The story says no water came out, even after he pushed the button a second time.
  3. Answer: The town water crew. The teacher called them, and two workers named Rafi and Marta came in a white truck.
  4. Answer: A wet spot. The crew walked along the grass by the road and found a wet spot where water was seeping up from below.
  5. Answer: It had a hole in it. Rafi said the pipe down there had a hole, and the crew dug down and found it.
  6. Answer: The water leaked out of the hole first. Accept any answer showing that the water escaped through the hole in the pipe before it could reach the school.
  7. Answer: Answers will vary. Accept any one action from the story, such as digging down to the pipe, cutting out the bad part, putting in a new piece, or turning the valve back on.

Draw and tell task answer. Answers will vary. Accept any drawing of the two workers with one readable or sound-spelled label, plus one true statement such as "they fix pipes" or "they bring water to our school."

Differentiation

Support

Read the story a third time in short chunks, stopping after each paragraph for one yes-or-no question ("Did the water come out?"). Give these students three picture cards for the draw-and-tell task, a truck, a pipe, and a cone, and let them glue one down and copy its label rather than drawing from scratch.

Extension

Ask confident students to put the crew's four repair steps in order out loud: dig, cut, put in a new piece, and turn the valve on. Have them add a second labeled tool to their drawing and explain in one sentence what it is for.

ELL supports

Pre-teach pipe, leak, crew, and fountain with a gesture for each: two hands making a tube for the pipe, fingers dripping down for the leak, a sweep of the arm for the crew, and a thumb pressing a button for the fountain. Allow students to answer questions 1 through 5 by pointing to a picture, and accept single-word answers throughout.

Extensions

Invite a custodian or a maintenance worker from the school to visit for ten minutes and show the class one real tool they use on the building's water lines. Add the tool's name to the class word wall next to the words from this story.