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Reading passage Grade 2 Science

Where Is Earth's Water Today? A Grade 2 Reading Passage

A grade 2 reading passage following a student's day noticing solid and liquid water in ice, a puddle, a creek, frost, and clouds, with comprehension questions.

Objectives

  1. Students will identify examples of solid and liquid water mentioned in the passage.
  2. Students will answer literal and inferential questions using details from the passage.

Vocabulary

Key words: solid, liquid, melt, frost

Teacher overview

This passage follows Nora, a second grader, through one ordinary day as she notices water showing up in more places, and more forms, than she expected. It gives students a concrete, close-to-home way to practice identifying where Earth's water is found and whether it appears as a solid or a liquid, using scenes any student can picture, from an ice cube to a cloud overhead.

Where Is Earth's Water Today? A Grade 2 Reading Passage — Grade 2 Science
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Passage

Nora looks for water all day. She finds it in many forms. It does not always look the same.

At breakfast, ice cubes sit in her glass. The ice is solid. It is hard. She can hold it in her hand. Soon the ice melts. It turns into liquid water. Liquid water pours and splashes.

On her walk to school, Nora sees a puddle. Rain fell last night. The puddle is liquid too. Next she crosses a small bridge. A creek runs under it. The creek water flows and flows. It never stops.

At recess, Nora checks the fence. Frost sits on the shady side. It is thin and white and cold. Frost is solid. The sun has not melted it yet. Nora looks up. Clouds float by. Clouds hold water too. The water sits inside as tiny drops. The drops are too small to see one at a time.

By afternoon, the frost is gone. It melted into the grass. Nora thinks back on her day. She saw ice, a puddle, a creek, frost, and clouds. Some were solid. Some were liquid. Water was almost everywhere she looked.

Questions

  1. Name two solid forms of water from the passage.
  2. Name two liquid forms of water from the passage.
  3. What happened to the ice cubes in Nora's glass?
  4. Why might frost in the shade last longer than frost in the sun?
  5. The passage says cloud water sits in tiny drops. What does this tell you about water inside a cloud?
  6. List, in order, the five forms of water Nora saw that day.
  7. Is a creek solid or liquid? Use a detail from the passage to explain.

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: The ice cubes in her glass and the frost on the playground fence are the two solid forms of water Nora noticed; the passage says both are solid.
  2. Answer: Any two of the melted water in her glass, the puddle, the flowing creek, or the clouds; the passage calls the melted water and the puddle liquid, says the creek water flows, and says cloud water sits in tiny drops.
  3. Answer: The ice cubes melted into liquid water; the passage says "Soon the ice melts. It turns into liquid water."
  4. Answer: Answers will vary; accept reasoning that shade stays cooler than a sunny spot, so the sun had less chance to warm and melt the frost there, matching the passage's detail that "the sun has not melted it yet."
  5. Answer: It tells you that a cloud is made of many tiny water droplets rather than one large piece of water, since the passage says the droplets are "too small to see one at a time."
  6. Answer: In order: ice cubes in her glass, the puddle on her walk to school, the creek under the bridge, frost on the playground fence, and clouds overhead.
  7. Answer: Liquid. The passage says the creek water "flows and flows" and "never stops," which describes how liquid water behaves, not how a solid behaves.

Differentiation

Support

Provide the five-example list from question 6 as a word bank students can use to answer questions 1 and 2 by circling or copying the matching words.

Extension

Ask students to describe one more place they have personally seen water as a solid or as a liquid, and label which one it is.

ELL supports

Read the passage aloud twice before students answer the questions, and preview "solid," "liquid," "frost," and "melted" using real objects, such as an ice cube and a cup of water, before reading.