Quiz & test questions Grade 5 Engineering & Design

Merrowgate Hydrant Map: A Grade 5 Design Review Quiz

A grade 5 quiz where students review a fictional town's hydrant plan on a coordinate grid, test it against a coverage rule, and judge a proposed move.

Grade: Grade 5
Subject: Engineering & Design
Material: Quiz & test questions
Time: 30 min
Prep: No prep
Materials: None

Standards

5.G.A.2 Common Core Math

Represent real world and mathematical problems by graphing points in the first quadrant of the coordinate plane, and interpret coordinate values of points in the context of the situation.

How this material aligns: Items 2, 3, and 6 require reading and writing ordered pairs on a first-quadrant town grid and reading those coordinate values as street blocks, exactly this standard's skill.

All materials for 5.G.A.2 →

3-5-ETS1-1 NGSS

Define a simple design problem reflecting a need or a want that includes specified criteria for success and constraints on materials, time, or cost.

How this material aligns: Item 1 asks students to separate the four-hydrant spending limit from the 500-foot coverage goal, the criteria-and-constraints sorting this standard requires.

All materials for 3-5-ETS1-1 →

3-5-ETS1-2 NGSS

Generate and compare multiple possible solutions to a problem based on how well each is likely to meet the criteria and constraints of the problem.

How this material aligns: Item 8 makes students judge the original plan against a revised plan on the same coverage rule and spending limit, comparing two solutions as this standard expects.

All materials for 3-5-ETS1-2 →

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This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely, without attribution. Updated 2026-09-23.

Objectives

Students will locate and name points on a first-quadrant grid that stands for a town street map.
Students will measure block distances along streets and convert those blocks to feet.
Students will judge whether a hydrant plan meets a stated coverage rule and a spending limit.

Vocabulary

Key words: hydrant, coordinate, ordered pair, coverage, constraint

Teacher overview

This 30-minute quiz is worth 22 points and asks students to act as reviewers rather than authors: a hydrant plan is already drawn, and their job is to test it against the rule it was supposed to meet. The items mix one multiple-choice question, five computations on a first-quadrant grid, and two written judgments. Every distance is measured along streets, the way a fire hose is actually dragged, not straight across blocks.

A misconception to name before students begin: fifth graders new to coordinates often read the pair (2, 8) as "2 up and 8 over" rather than as 2 across and 8 up, and on a town map that error moves a hydrant to a different neighborhood. Work one example aloud with the class, walking a finger right first and then up, before handing out the quiz. A second habit worth heading off is measuring the diagonal. Students often see the school and a hydrant on a grid and imagine a straight line between them, but water crews and hose lines follow the streets, so the distance is the number of blocks across plus the number of blocks up. Items 3 and 6 depend on that difference, and a student who cuts the corner will report a shorter distance than the plan actually delivers.

Merrowgate Hydrant Map: A Grade 5 Design Review Quiz — Grade 5 Engineering & Design

Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Assessment

Merrowgate is a fictional town laid out on a square street grid. The town map is a grid with a corner at (0, 0). Each grid square is one block, and each block is 100 feet long. Streets run only across and up, so all walking distance is counted in whole blocks.

The town wrote two rules for its new fire hydrant plan.

Every school and firehouse must sit within 500 feet of a hydrant, measured along the streets.
Merrowgate can pay for only four new hydrants this year.

The plan on the table places hydrants at these points: Hydrant W at (2, 2), Hydrant X at (2, 8), Hydrant Y at (8, 2), and Hydrant Z at (8, 8). Merrowgate School stands at (5, 5).

(2 points) Which of the two rules is a constraint?
- A) Every school and firehouse must sit within 500 feet of a hydrant.
- B) Merrowgate can pay for only four new hydrants this year.
- C) Streets run only across and up.
- D) Each block is 100 feet long.
(3 points) A fifth hydrant would sit 3 blocks to the right of Hydrant W and 4 blocks above it. Write the ordered pair for that point.
(3 points) Walking only along streets, how many blocks is it from Merrowgate School at (5, 5) to Hydrant W at (2, 2)?
(3 points) Each block is 100 feet. Using your block count from item 3, how many feet is that walk?
(3 points) In this plan, every one of the four hydrants sits the same number of blocks from the school as Hydrant W does. Does the plan meet the 500-foot coverage rule for the school? Answer yes or no.
(3 points) The town proposes moving Hydrant Z from (8, 8) to (5, 7). Walking only along streets, how many blocks would the school at (5, 5) then be from that hydrant?
(3 points) Using your block count from item 6, how many feet would that walk be?
(2 points) Does the revised plan meet both the coverage rule and the spending limit? Explain in one or two sentences.

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: B) Merrowgate can pay for only four new hydrants this year.
A constraint limits money, materials, space, or time. Choice A states what success looks like, so it is a criterion, and choices C and D describe the map rather than either rule.
Answer: (5, 6).
Hydrant W sits at (2, 2). Moving 3 blocks right gives a first number of 2 plus 3, or 5. Moving 4 blocks up gives a second number of 2 plus 4, or 6.
Answer: 6 blocks.
From (5, 5) to (2, 2) is 3 blocks across, since 5 minus 2 equals 3, plus 3 blocks down, since 5 minus 2 equals 3 again. Together that is 6 blocks. A student who answers 3 or 4 has measured the diagonal instead of the streets.
Answer: 600 feet.
6 blocks times 100 feet per block equals 600 feet.
Answer: No.
The school sits 600 feet from every hydrant in the plan, because it is 3 blocks across and 3 blocks up or down from each of the four corners, and 600 is more than the 500-foot rule allows. Moving to a different hydrant would not help, so the plan fails the coverage rule at the school.
Answer: 2 blocks.
From (5, 5) to (5, 7) the first numbers match, so there is no movement across. The second number rises from 5 to 7, which is 2 blocks up.
Answer: 200 feet.
2 blocks times 100 feet per block equals 200 feet.
Answer: Yes.
The school now sits 200 feet from a hydrant, which is inside the 500-foot rule, and the town still has only four hydrants because one was moved rather than added, so the spending limit holds. The school is the only building placed on this map, so it is the only location the coverage rule can be checked against here.

Differentiation

Support

Hand these students a printed grid with the four hydrants and the school already plotted and labeled, so the quiz tests their measuring rather than their plotting. Let them count squares with a finger or a pencil and mark each block they count. For items 4 and 7, provide the multiplication sentence already set up so the work is the product rather than the setup.

Extension

Ask these students to place all four hydrants themselves, on a blank grid, so that the school at (5, 5), a firehouse at (1, 7), and a nursing home at (9, 4) all sit within 500 feet of some hydrant. They should list the four ordered pairs they chose and show the block count from each building to its nearest hydrant, then explain which building was hardest to cover.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "hydrant," "block," and "ordered pair" with a labeled picture of a street corner and a grid square. Say the phrase "across first, then up" with students several times while tracing the path with a finger. Provide a sentence frame for items 5 and 8: "The plan ___ meet the rule, because the school is ___ feet from a hydrant."

Extensions

Students can walk or map the block around the school and mark where the real hydrants sit, then estimate in blocks how far the farthest classroom door is from the nearest one. Comparing their sketch with the quiz plan gives them a second set of coverage results to judge, and a local firefighter or water crew member visiting the class can explain how a town decides where the next hydrant goes.