Worksheet Grade 4 Health & Consumer Science
The Delaney Family Water Bill in Kilgore: Gallons and Dollars
A grade 4 worksheet on a fictional town's monthly water bill, where students find the gallons used and check the service fee, use charge, and total.
Objectives
- Students will find the gallons used in a month by subtracting two meter readings.
- Students will calculate a household water bill from a service fee, a usage rate, and a sewer fee.
- Students will explain why two households on the same rate pay different use charges.
Vocabulary
- Water bill
- The statement a household receives showing how much water it used and how much it owes. Reading it carefully can reveal hidden leaks and ways to save money.
Also: meter reading, service fee, sewer fee
Teacher overview
A water bill is one of the few household documents a fourth grader can read almost line by line, and this worksheet treats it that way. The bill belongs to the fictional Delaney family in the town of Kilgore, and every charge on it is built from numbers the student can check. The predictable error at this grade is the first step rather than the last: students see two meter readings and add them, or copy the larger one, instead of subtracting to find the gallons actually used. Item 1 isolates that subtraction so the mistake surfaces before it spreads through the rest of the bill, and item 10 runs the bill backward, which is where students who only followed the order of the printed lines will stall.
Student Worksheet
Imagine the Delaney family lives in the town of Kilgore. Their water bill for June is printed below. Use the bill to answer the questions. Show your work.
| Line on the bill | Amount |
|---|---|
| Meter reading on June 1 | 84,200 gallons |
| Meter reading on July 1 | 88,300 gallons |
| Monthly service fee | $16 |
| Water use charge | $3 for every full 1,000 gallons used |
| Sewer fee | $9 |
- Subtract the June 1 meter reading from the July 1 meter reading. How many gallons did the Delaneys use in June?
- How many full groups of 1,000 gallons are in the number of gallons you found in question 1?
- Kilgore charges 3 dollars for every full 1,000 gallons. Use your answer from question 2. What is the Delaneys' water use charge in dollars?
- Add the 16 dollar service fee, your water use charge from question 3, and the 9 dollar sewer fee. What is the total bill in dollars?
- Four people live in the Delaney house. Suppose each person used the same number of gallons in June. Divide the June gallons by 4. How many gallons did each person use?
- In May the Delaneys used 3,600 gallons. How many more gallons did they use in June than in May?
- The 16 dollar service fee is the same every month. How much do the Delaneys pay in service fees in 12 months?
- Their neighbor used 6,000 gallons in June. At 3 dollars for every full 1,000 gallons, what is the neighbor's water use charge in dollars?
- Look at your answers to questions 3 and 8. Explain in one or two sentences why the neighbor's water use charge is larger than the Delaneys' charge.
- The Delaneys want their July bill to be 34 dollars or less. The service fee and the sewer fee will not change. What is the largest water use charge they can have in dollars?
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: 4,100 gallons.
Subtract the two meter readings: 88,300 - 84,200 = 4,100 gallons used in June. Students who add the readings or report 88,300 have skipped the subtraction. - Answer: 4 groups.
4,100 gallons holds 4 full thousands with 100 gallons left over, and the leftover 100 is not a full group. - Answer: 12 dollars.
4 full groups at 3 dollars each is 4 x 3 = 12 dollars. - Answer: 37 dollars.
16 + 12 + 9 = 37 dollars. Accept any correct order of addition. - Answer: 1,025 gallons.
4,100 ÷ 4 = 1,025 gallons for each person. A student who checks with multiplication should find 1,025 x 4 = 4,100. - Answer: 500 gallons.
4,100 - 3,600 = 500 more gallons in June than in May. - Answer: 192 dollars.
16 x 12 = 192 dollars in service fees over 12 months. - Answer: 18 dollars.
6,000 gallons is 6 full groups of 1,000, and 6 x 3 = 18 dollars. - Answer: The neighbor used more gallons, so the neighbor was charged for more groups of 1,000 gallons.
Both households pay the same rate of 3 dollars per group. The neighbor had 6 groups while the Delaneys had 4, which is why 18 is larger than 12. - Answer: 9 dollars.
Take the fees off the target: 34 - 16 = 18, then 18 - 9 = 9 dollars left for the water use charge. Students may also add the two fixed fees first, since 16 + 9 = 25 and 34 - 25 = 9.
Differentiation
Support
A student who loses track of which charge belongs where can work from a blank bill form with the three charge lines already labeled and a box beside each one, so the only work left is filling in the numbers. For item 5, allow a drawing of four equal groups instead of the long division algorithm.
Extension
Suppose the town of Kilgore changes its rate to 4 dollars for every full 1,000 gallons and leaves the other charges alone. Ask students to rebuild the Delaneys' June bill under the new rate and to write one sentence stating how much more the family would owe.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "meter reading," "service fee," "sewer fee," and "use charge" by pointing to each line of the printed bill as you say it. Provide a two-column glossary card with the term on one side and a short plain-language definition on the other. Sentence frames for items 9 and 10 help: "The neighbor's charge is larger because ___." and "The largest use charge can be ___ because ___."
Extensions
Have each student bring home a copy of the Kilgore bill and compare it with a real bill from their own household, with an adult's permission. Real bills print different line names, so ask students to match each Kilgore line to the closest line on the real bill and to mark any line they cannot match. Collect the unmatched lines and use them to start a class list of questions a family could ask its water utility.