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Worksheet Grade 5 Math

Cedarhurst Apartments' Water Meter: A Grade 5 Decimal Worksheet

A grade 5 worksheet where students subtract, add, multiply, and divide decimal water-meter readings from a fictional apartment building to track usage and find a leak.

Objectives

  1. Students will subtract decimal meter readings to find monthly water usage.
  2. Students will add and divide decimal quantities to analyze several months of usage.
  3. Students will multiply a decimal rate by a whole number to calculate the size of a suspected leak.

Vocabulary

Water meter
A device that measures how much water a home or business uses so the utility can bill fairly. Reading the meter can also reveal hidden leaks.

Also: usage, decimal, leak

Teacher overview

Unit 4B at Cedarhurst Apartments, a fictional building used for this worksheet, has its own water meter that the building manager reads on the first of every month. The meter shows a decimal number of gallons, and the manager subtracts each new reading from the previous one to find that month's usage. This worksheet uses four months of Unit 4B's meter readings to practice adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing decimals to the hundredths place, the same decimal precision that appears on a real water bill.

Cedarhurst Apartments' Water Meter: A Grade 5 Decimal Worksheet — Grade 5 Math
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Worksheet

Cedarhurst Apartments (a fictional building) recorded these meter readings for Unit 4B, in gallons, on the first of each month:

Date Meter reading (gal)
January 1 142,305.60
February 1 144,850.15
March 1 147,122.40
April 1 149,900.85
  1. Subtract the January 1 reading from the February 1 reading. This is January's usage.
  2. Subtract the February 1 reading from the March 1 reading. This is February's usage.
  3. Subtract the March 1 reading from the April 1 reading. This is March's usage.
  4. Which month used the most water? How many more gallons did it use than the month with the least?
  5. Add up January's, February's, and March's usage. What is the total for all three months?
  6. March has 31 days. Divide March's usage by 31 to find the average gallons used per day. Round to the nearest hundredth.
  7. A leak added 0.75 gallons per hour for all of March, or 744 hours. Multiply to find the leak's total gallons.
  8. Subtract the leak's total from March's usage. What would March's usage have been without the leak?
  9. Why can comparing monthly readings help a manager notice a leak? Write one sentence.
  10. Why does the manager subtract the earlier reading from the later reading, not the later from the earlier?

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: 2,544.55 gal.
    144,850.15 - 142,305.60 = 2,544.55 gallons.
  2. Answer: 2,272.25 gal.
    147,122.40 - 144,850.15 = 2,272.25 gallons.
  3. Answer: 2,778.45 gal.
    149,900.85 - 147,122.40 = 2,778.45 gallons.
  4. Answer: 506.20 gal.
    March had the highest usage (2,778.45 gal) and February had the lowest (2,272.25 gal). 2,778.45 - 2,272.25 = 506.20 gallons more.
  5. Answer: 7,595.25 gal.
    2,544.55 + 2,272.25 + 2,778.45 = 7,595.25 gallons total.
  6. Answer: 89.63 gal.
    2,778.45 divided by 31 equals 89.6274..., which rounds to 89.63 gallons per day.
  7. Answer: 558 gal.
    744 hours x 0.75 gallons per hour = 558 gallons.
  8. Answer: 2,220.45 gal.
    2,778.45 - 558 = 2,220.45 gallons is what March's usage would have been without the leak.
  9. Answer: Comparing readings shows unusual jumps.
    A month with a much higher usage than the others, like March compared to February, is a sign that water may be escaping somewhere instead of being used normally, which is exactly what the leak in this worksheet turned out to be.
  10. Answer: The meter only counts upward.
    A water meter counts total gallons that have passed through it and never resets, so subtracting the earlier reading from the later one isolates just the gallons used during that specific period.

Differentiation

Support (below grade level)

Provide a printed subtraction template with the decimal place values already lined up in columns for items 1 through 3, and allow a calculator for the division in item 6 and the multiplication in item 7.

Extension (above grade level)

Ask students to calculate April's usage as well, using a given May 1 reading of 151,988.30 gallons, and then find the average monthly usage across all four months.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "meter," "reading," and "usage" using a simple picture of a water meter dial with two dates labeled beside it. Provide a sentence frame for item 9: "A month with much higher usage, like ___, can be a sign of ___."