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Reading passage Grade 3 Science

The Drill Rig That Found Water Under Yeoverly

A grade 3 informational passage following a well driller as she reads maps, drills to an aquifer, and waits for lab results before a fictional town uses its new well.

Objectives

  1. Students will locate stated details about a well driller's work in an informational passage.
  2. Students will explain what an aquifer is using the description given in the passage.
  3. Students will combine two details from the passage to support an inference about the job.

Vocabulary

Aquifer
An aquifer is an underground layer of rock, sand, or gravel that holds water in the tiny spaces between its grains. Wells reach down into aquifers to bring water up to the surface.

Also: well driller, drill rig, casing, screen, pump test, sample

Teacher overview

This passage follows a well driller through the steps of finding groundwater for a small town, from reading maps to running a pump test and waiting for lab results. It gives third graders a picture of an occupation that rarely appears in classroom texts, and it corrects the common idea that groundwater sits in underground lakes. Teachers can assign it before or after a hands-on groundwater model, and the questions ask students to point back to the sentence that gave them each answer.

The Drill Rig That Found Water Under Yeoverly — Grade 3 Science
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Passage

The town of Yeoverly sits on a wide, flat plain. Yeoverly is a fictional town. For sixty years its water came from one well beside the old fire hall. Last spring that well began to run low. The town needed a new one.

Ada Kowalczyk drives a drill rig. A drill rig is a truck with a tall steel tower on the back. Ada is a well driller. Her job is to make a deep, narrow hole and turn that hole into a well.

Ada did not start by drilling. First she read maps. The maps showed the kinds of rock and sand under the town. She was looking for a thick layer of sand and gravel. Water hides in the small spaces between the grains. A layer like that is called an aquifer.

Ada tells people that an aquifer is like a wet sponge. The water is not in an underground lake. It sits in the tiny gaps between grains, the way water sits in the holes of a damp sponge.

The maps pointed to a spot behind the ball field. Ada set up the rig there on a Monday. The drill turned all day. It brought up wet sand at 40 meters. It hit thick, sticky clay at 45 meters. Water moves through clay too slowly for a well. Ada kept going. At 58 meters the drill reached thick, clean sand and gravel. That was the layer she wanted.

Next the crew slid a steel pipe down the hole. The pipe keeps the walls from falling in. It also keeps dirty water near the top from leaking down. The bottom of the pipe has narrow slots. The slots let clean water in and keep sand out. That slotted part is called a screen.

Then the crew ran a pump test. They pumped for eight hours and watched the water level. The level dropped a little. Then it held steady. That told Ada the aquifer could keep up with the pump.

Nobody drank the water that day. A lab took samples first. A water operator named Dev Raghavan read the lab results. He also added a small amount of chlorine to the well line. Two weeks later the tests came back clear. Only then did Yeoverly turn on its new well.

Ada packed up the rig on a Friday. A class of third graders came to watch. One of them asked how she knew where to dig. "I read the maps, and then I listen to the drill," Ada said. "Finding water takes patience."

Questions

  1. What is Ada Kowalczyk's job?
  2. Why did the town of Yeoverly need a new well?
  3. The passage says water hides in small spaces. What is the name for a layer that holds water that way?
  4. What did the crew slide down the hole after the drilling was done?
  5. What does the screen at the bottom of the pipe let in, and what does it keep out?
  6. Ada says an aquifer is like a wet sponge. What does that comparison help you picture?
  7. Ada says that finding water takes patience. Use two details from the passage to explain why.
  8. Name two different jobs in the passage that helped Yeoverly get clean water.

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: She is a well driller. The passage states that she drives a drill rig and that her job is to make a deep, narrow hole and turn it into a well.
  2. Answer: The old well was running low. The passage states that the town's one well beside the old fire hall began to run low last spring.
  3. Answer: An aquifer. The passage names the layer of sand and gravel that holds water in the spaces between grains.
  4. Answer: A steel pipe. The passage states that the crew slid a steel pipe down the hole to keep the walls from falling in.
  5. Answer: It lets clean water in and keeps sand out. The passage says the bottom of the pipe has narrow slots that do exactly that.
  6. Answer: Water sitting in tiny gaps, not in a lake. Accept any answer describing water held in small holes or spaces the way a damp sponge holds water. The passage says plainly that the water is not in an underground lake.
  7. Answer: She read maps before drilling and drilled through wet sand and clay before reaching the layer she wanted. Accept any two details that show waiting or repeated steps, including the eight-hour pump test or the two-week wait for the lab results.
  8. Answer: The well driller and the water operator. Accept the driller and Dev Raghavan, or the driller and the lab that tested the samples, since the passage names each of them as part of getting the water ready.

Differentiation

Support

Read the passage aloud one section at a time and stop after each to ask what just happened. Give these students a copy with the sentences that answer questions 1 through 5 already numbered in the margin, so the task becomes locating and copying rather than searching. Assign questions 1 through 5 and question 8.

Extension

Ask students to write a short paragraph explaining what would have happened if Ada had stopped drilling at 45 meters, using details from the passage about the clay layer. Then have them list three questions they would ask Ada about her work that the passage does not answer.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "drill," "well," "layer," and "sample" with a labeled cross-section drawing of soil, clay, and a sand-and-gravel layer with a pipe running into it. Provide a damp sponge for students to squeeze while you reread the aquifer paragraph. Offer the frame "The passage says ___, so I know ___."