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Worksheet Grade 5 Health & Consumer Science

The Petrosino Family's Drain Rules: What Belongs and What Does Not

A grade 5 worksheet on a fictional town's drain flyer, in which students explain where used water goes and sort household items by whether they may go down a drain.

Objectives

  1. Students will trace the path water takes from a household drain to a treatment plant.
  2. Students will sort household items into those that belong in a drain and those that do not.
  3. Students will write a short explanation of drain rules for a younger reader.

Vocabulary

Wastewater
Wastewater is used water from sinks, showers, toilets, and businesses that goes down the drain. It travels through sewer pipes to a treatment plant to be cleaned before returning to nature.

Also: sewer, septic tank, microbe

Teacher overview

What a household pours down a drain reaches a sewer line and then a treatment plant, and the wrong material shows up later as clogged pipes, backed-up basements, and waste that the plant was never built to remove. This worksheet gives students a one-page flyer from a fictional town, sent to the fictional Petrosino family, and asks them to trace where drain water goes, sort common household items, and explain the rules to a younger reader. The items move from stated details to inference and then to a short explanatory paragraph.

The Petrosino Family's Drain Rules: What Belongs and What Does Not — Grade 5 Health & Consumer Science
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Worksheet

The town of Quarryfield and the Petrosino family are fictional. Read the flyer, then answer the items below it.

Where the water you send down the drain goes

Water from your sinks, showers, and toilets leaves your house in a pipe. That pipe joins a larger sewer pipe under the street. The sewer carries the used water to the town wastewater plant. At the plant, screens catch trash. Tanks let heavy solids settle to the bottom. Tiny living things called microbes eat the waste that is left. The cleaned water is tested before it goes back to Quarry Creek.

Some things do not belong in a drain:

  • Cooking grease and oil. They cool, turn solid, and stick to pipe walls.
  • Wipes, even ones labeled flushable. They do not break apart the way toilet paper does.
  • Leftover medicine. The plant is not built to remove it. Bring it to the take-back box at the town police station.
  • Paint and paint thinner. Bring these to the county household waste day.

Homes outside town use a septic tank instead of a sewer. The same rules protect the tank and the field of pipes buried beside it.

  1. According to the flyer, where does used water go after it leaves the pipe under a house?
  2. The flyer describes what happens at the plant. Name two steps that take place there.
  3. Grease is a liquid while it is warm. Use the flyer to explain how warm grease can still clog a pipe later.
  4. A package of wipes says the wipes are flushable. Use the flyer to explain why the town still asks families to put wipes in the trash.
  5. Where does the flyer tell families to bring leftover medicine?
  6. Sort these five items into two groups, one for things that may go down the drain and one for things that may not: dish soap, cooking grease, plain rinse water, paint, wipes.
  7. Desmond's family lives outside town and uses a septic tank. Use the flyer to explain why the same rules still matter at his house.
  8. Name one thing a family could keep near the kitchen sink to make the grease rule easier to follow, and explain how it would help.
  9. Write three or four sentences that explain to a second grader what happens to water after it goes down a drain. Name two things that should never go down it.

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: It joins a larger sewer pipe under the street, and the sewer carries it to the town wastewater plant.
  2. Answer: Any two of these: screens catch trash, tanks let heavy solids settle, microbes eat the waste that is left, and the cleaned water is tested before it returns to Quarry Creek.
  3. Answer: The flyer says grease cools, turns solid, and sticks to pipe walls, so grease poured in warm hardens farther down the pipe and builds up until water cannot pass.
  4. Answer: The flyer says wipes do not break apart the way toilet paper does, so they stay whole in the pipes and catch on other material, which is why the town asks for them in the trash.
  5. Answer: To the take-back box at the town police station.
  6. Answer: May go down the drain: dish soap and plain rinse water. May not: cooking grease, paint, and wipes.
  7. Answer: A septic tank and its buried field handle the same used water, so grease, wipes, medicine, and paint would clog or damage them just as they would a sewer, which is why the flyer says the rules protect the tank and the field.
  8. Answer: Accept any workable answer with a reason, such as an empty can or jar kept by the stove for cooling grease, which lets the family throw the hardened grease in the trash instead of pouring it into the sink.
  9. Answer: Accept a paragraph that names the pipe, the sewer, and the plant, describes at least one cleaning step, and names two banned items such as grease and wipes. A strong response also says the cleaned water is tested before it returns to a creek.

Differentiation

Support

Read the flyer aloud once while students follow along, then reread the bulleted section before items 3 and 4. Give these students a two-column sorting mat labeled "drain" and "trash or drop-off" with picture cards for item 6, and allow them to dictate item 9 to a partner or a recorder before writing it.

Extension

Ask students to redesign the flyer as a refrigerator card of no more than six lines that keeps every rule but uses fewer words, then explain which details they cut and why those details were the least necessary. Students should keep at least one sentence about where the cleaned water goes.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "sewer," "wastewater," "septic tank," and "microbe" with a labeled sketch showing a house, a street pipe, and a plant. Post the sentence frames "____ does not belong in the drain because ____" and "First the water goes ____, then ____," and allow students to answer items 1 and 5 by pointing to the line in the flyer before writing.

Extensions

Students can look for a real notice from their own water or sewer provider, compare its list of banned items with the flyer's list, and report one item that appears on only one of the two lists. A short class chart of the findings shows how local rules differ while the reasons stay the same.