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Worksheet Grade 5 Math

Hazelmoor's Rain Garden Test Kit: A Grade 5 Unit Conversion Worksheet

A grade 5 worksheet converting cups, quarts, and gallons of captured rain-garden runoff, then using decimal multiplication to total a week of samples.

Objectives

  1. Students will convert measured water volumes between cups, quarts, and gallons.
  2. Students will add converted volumes to find a weekly total in a single unit.

Vocabulary

Rain garden
A rain garden is a shallow planted dip in the ground that catches rain running off a roof or driveway and lets it soak slowly into the soil. Its deep-rooted plants help clean the water.

Also: cup, quart, gallon, runoff

Teacher overview

Hazelmoor Elementary, a fictional school used for this worksheet, built a rain garden last spring to catch runoff from its parking lot before the water reaches a storm drain. The school's science club checks a rain garden test kit after every storm, recording how much water the garden captures in cups before converting each reading into quarts and gallons for the club's weekly report. A common mistake students make with this math is treating a quart the same as a gallon; remember that four cups make one quart, and four quarts make one gallon, so a measurement in cups needs two separate conversion steps before it becomes gallons.

Hazelmoor's Rain Garden Test Kit: A Grade 5 Unit Conversion Worksheet — Grade 5 Math
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Worksheet

Use these facts for every item: 1 quart = 4 cups, and 1 gallon = 4 quarts.

  1. On Monday, the rain garden captured 3 cups of runoff. How many quarts is that? Write your answer as a decimal.
  2. On Tuesday, the rain garden captured 6 cups. How many quarts is that?
  3. On Wednesday, the rain garden captured 2 cups. How many quarts is that?
  4. On Thursday, a heavier storm filled the collection barrel with 12 cups. How many quarts is that?
  5. On Friday, the rain garden captured 5 cups. How many quarts is that?
  6. Add the week's cup totals from Monday through Friday (3 + 6 + 2 + 12 + 5). What is the week's total in cups?
  7. Convert the week's total from item 6 into quarts.
  8. The science club wants the week's total in gallons for its report. Convert your answer from item 7 (in quarts) into gallons.
  9. Explain in one or two sentences why converting all five days into the same unit before adding them together makes finding the weekly total easier than adding cups, quarts, and gallons directly.
  10. The science club is planning a second rain garden that they expect to capture exactly double what this week's garden captured. Using your answer from item 8, find how many gallons the second garden is expected to capture.

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: 0.75 quart.
    3 cups ÷ 4 cups per quart = 0.75 quart.
  2. Answer: 1.5 quarts.
    6 cups ÷ 4 = 1.5 quarts.
  3. Answer: 0.5 quart.
    2 cups ÷ 4 = 0.5 quart.
  4. Answer: 3 quarts.
    12 cups ÷ 4 = 3 quarts.
  5. Answer: 1.25 quarts.
    5 cups ÷ 4 = 1.25 quarts.
  6. Answer: 28 cups.
    3 + 6 + 2 + 12 + 5 = 28 cups.
  7. Answer: 7 quarts.
    28 cups ÷ 4 cups per quart = 7 quarts.
  8. Answer: 1.75 gallons.
    7 quarts ÷ 4 quarts per gallon = 1.75 gallons.
  9. Answer: Converting to a common unit avoids mixing units when adding.
    Answers will vary, but should explain that adding cups, quarts, and gallons directly without converting them first would combine unequal-sized units and produce an incorrect total, the same way adding 3 apples and 2 baskets of apples would not give a meaningful single number.
  10. Answer: 3.5 gallons.
    Doubling 1.75 gallons gives 1.75 × 2 = 3.5 gallons.

Differentiation

Support (below grade level)

Provide a printed conversion reference card showing "1 quart = 4 cups" and "1 gallon = 4 quarts" as arrow diagrams, and allow a calculator for the division steps in items 1 through 8.

Extension (above grade level)

Ask students to find how many total cups the week's runoff represents (28 cups), then determine how many 8-cup watering cans the science club could fill from that amount, including how much would be left over.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "cup," "quart," and "gallon" with a labeled picture showing four cup icons filling one quart icon, and four quart icons filling one gallon icon. Allow item 9 to be answered orally with a partner before writing a short response.

Extensions

Have students design their own rain garden test kit log for one full month, predicting whether a rainy month or a dry month would produce a larger weekly total, then compare their prediction with real rainfall data if your school tracks it.