Worksheet Grade 2 Science
The Wet Bus Loop at Pinebank School: A Grade 2 Yard Sheet
Grade 2 students use a chart of six school yard spots to explain why a storm puddle stays in the paved bus loop and to pick a fair pair for a soak test.
Objectives
- Students will explain why a puddle stays on low ground that is paved.
- Students will sort school yard ground covers by whether water soaks in or runs off.
- Students will choose a fair pair of spots for testing one ground cover against another.
Vocabulary
Key words: soak, blacktop, ground cover, puddle, fair test
Teacher overview
The yard at the fictional Pinebank School, in the town of Cranby, has one corner that stays wet for two days after every storm, and the chart on this sheet holds the two reasons apart: the bus loop is the lowest ground in the yard, and it is paved. A standing puddle is easily read as a sign that more rain fell in that one spot, so the sheet says plainly that the same storm crossed the whole yard and then asks students to account for the puddle some other way. Questions 6 and 7 turn on the way the chart is built, since one pair of spots shares a ground height and the other pair does not. Walking the class around the school's own grounds the morning after a rain, before the sheet is handed out, gives students something to compare the chart against.
Student Worksheet
Pinebank School sits in the town of Cranby. Imagine you are checking the school yard with your class. This chart tells about six spots in the yard.
| Spot | How high the ground is | What the ground is made of |
|---|---|---|
| Flag hill | High | Grass |
| Ball court | Middle | Blacktop |
| Sand box | Middle | Sand |
| Grass field | Middle | Grass |
| Bus loop | Low | Blacktop |
| Garden path | Low | Wood chips |
A storm rained on the yard all night. The same rain fell on every spot.
The next morning the class walked the yard. The bus loop still had a wide puddle. The garden path was wet, but it had no puddle. The flag hill was dry.
- Water runs downhill. Which two spots have the lowest ground?
- The flag hill has the highest ground. It was dry the next morning. Where did the rain that fell on it go?
- The bus loop and the garden path both have low ground. Only the bus loop had a puddle. Look at the chart. What is not the same about the ground at those two spots?
- Use your answer from question 3. Where did the rain at the garden path go?
- A parent says the bus loop has a puddle because more rain fell there. The same rain fell on every spot. Is the parent right? Tell why or why not.
- The class wants to know if rain soaks into sand faster than into blacktop. They will watch the sand box and the ball court. Both spots have middle ground. Why is that a fair pair to watch?
- Why would the sand box and the bus loop not be a fair pair for that test?
- The school wants a bench on ground that dries fast. Which spot should they pick? Tell two things from the chart that back the pick.
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: The bus loop and the garden path. The chart lists both spots as low ground, and water that runs downhill gathers on the lowest ground it can reach.
- Answer: It ran downhill or soaked into the grass. Some of the rain ran down toward the lower parts of the yard, and some soaked into the grass, which left the hill dry. Accept either answer or both.
- Answer: The ground cover. The two spots match in height, while the bus loop is blacktop and the garden path is wood chips.
- Answer: It soaked into the ground. Water passes between the loose wood chips and into the soil under them, so nothing was left standing on the path by morning.
- Answer: No. The same rain fell on every spot in this fictional yard, so a larger share of rain cannot be the reason. The bus loop is the low ground that water runs toward, and its blacktop does not let that water soak in.
- Answer: Both spots have middle ground. Keeping the height the same leaves the ground cover as the only difference between the two spots, so a difference in soaking has to come from sand against blacktop.
- Answer: Those two spots differ in two ways. The sand box is middle ground and the bus loop is low ground, so water standing at the bus loop could be caused by the low ground rather than by the blacktop, and the test would settle nothing.
- Answer: The flag hill. It is the highest ground, so water runs off it rather than gathering, and it is grass, which lets water soak in. A choice of the grass field earns partial credit when the reason names the grass, since that spot is not the highest ground in the yard.
Differentiation
Support
Give these students the chart with the two low-ground rows highlighted, and limit the sheet to questions 1, 3, 4, and 8. Read the description of the fictional yard aloud twice before they start, and have them run a finger down the height column as each question is read.
Extension
Ask students to write one rule for the whole yard that names both the height of the ground and the ground cover, then test the rule against the sand box row and say whether a puddle should be expected there. A sound rule predicts no puddle at the sand box, because that spot is not the lowest ground and sand lets water soak in.
ELL supports
Pour a cup of water onto a tray of sand and a cup onto a flat plastic lid while the class watches, naming "soaks in" and "runs off" as each one happens. Provide the sentence frames "The ground at ___ is ___" and "The water ___ because ___," and allow questions 1 and 3 to be answered by pointing at rows of the chart.
Extensions
Imagine that the school paves the garden path with blacktop over the summer. Ask students to write what the path would look like after the first storm of the new year and which line of the chart supports that answer. The prediction of a new puddle sets up a walk outside after the next rain, when students find the lowest paved spot on the real school grounds and check it against the rule they wrote.