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Reading passage Grade 3 Science

How Water Climbs the Hill: A Grade 3 Pumping Reading Passage

A grade 3 informational passage explaining why water cannot flow uphill on its own and how pumps push it into a tower so gravity can finish the job.

Objectives

  1. Students will explain why water cannot travel uphill on its own without help.
  2. Students will describe the job a pump does in moving water from a treatment plant toward a water tower.
  3. Students will explain how a water tower uses height, instead of a pump, to send water to homes.

Vocabulary

Pump
A pump is a machine that adds energy to water to move it or push it uphill, doing the job gravity cannot do on its own. Water systems use many different kinds of pumps to move water from wells, through treatment, and out to customers.
Water tower
A water tower is a big tank raised high above town that stores drinking water. Its height is what pushes water through the pipes, keeping the pressure steady even when the power goes out.

Also: gravity, pipe

Teacher overview

This passage follows water on its trip from a treatment plant to a kitchen faucet, focusing on a practical question: how does water reach houses on a hill, or fill a tank sitting high above a town, if water always flows downhill on its own? The answer, a machine called a pump, gives students a concrete introduction to how a town's pipes actually move water from place to place.

How Water Climbs the Hill: A Grade 3 Pumping Reading Passage — Grade 3 Science
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Passage

Pour water on a table that leans to one side. Where does the water go? It runs to the low edge. Water never flows uphill by itself. This makes a problem for every town. Water leaves a treatment plant. It must reach houses on a hill. It must reach the top floor of a building too. Something has to push it there.

That something is called a pump. A pump is a machine. It has spinning parts inside. It pushes water through a pipe. It can push water uphill. That is the opposite of what water wants to do. Treatment plants use big pumps. The pumps push treated water out into a town's pipes.

Many towns also use a water tower. A water tower is a tall tank. It sits high above the buildings around it. Pumps push water up into the tower. This often happens at night, when fewer people use water. Once the tower is full, something changes. The town does not need pumps running all day. Gravity can do the work instead. Water sitting high in the tower wants to flow back down. It is just like water on a leaning table. As people turn on faucets, water flows down out of the tower. It moves through the pipes to reach them.

This is why towers are built tall. This is why they sit on high ground when they can. A taller tower gives the water more force as it flows back down. A short tower on flat ground gives much less force.

Pumps and gravity work as a team. Pumps do the hard work of lifting water up into the tower. That fights against what water wants to do on its own. Gravity then does the work of bringing it back down to houses, without a pump running the whole time. A water utility worker watches the pumps and the tower's water level, making sure the tower never runs too low.

Questions

  1. What happens when water is poured on a table that leans to one side?
  2. What is a pump? What job does it do for a town's water system?
  3. Why do towns often fill a water tower at night?
  4. Why can a taller water tower send water to homes with more force than a shorter one? Use details from the passage.
  5. Once the tower is full, what takes over the job of moving water to homes during the day?
  6. Why does the passage say pumps and gravity work "as a team"?

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 water always runs toward the lower edge of the table; it never flows uphill on its own.
  2. Answer: A pump is a machine with spinning parts or moving pistons that pushes water through a pipe with enough force to send it uphill. Its job is to move treated water out into a town's underground pipes and up into a water tower.
  3. Answer: The passage states that towns often fill the tower overnight, when fewer people are using water, so the tower is ready and full before people start using more water during the day.
  4. Answer: The passage explains that the taller the tower, and the higher the ground it sits on, the more force gravity can give the water flowing back down, so a tall tower on a hill sends water out with more force than a short tower on flat ground.
  5. Answer: Gravity takes over. Water stored high up in the tower flows back down through the pipes on its own as people open faucets, without needing a pump running constantly.
  6. Answer: Answers will vary but should reflect that pumps do the work of lifting water up against gravity to fill the tower, while gravity then does the work of bringing it back down to homes, so each part handles a different half of the job, similar to teammates sharing a task.

Differentiation

Support (below grade level)

Provide a simple labeled diagram showing water moving from a treatment plant, up through a pump, into a tower, and back down to a house, for students to point to while answering the questions. Allow question 6 to be answered as a short spoken response instead of writing.

Extension (above grade level)

Ask students to write two or three sentences explaining what might happen to a town's water pressure at homes if the water tower were allowed to run almost empty before the pumps turned back on, using the passage's explanation of height and force as their reasoning.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "pump," "gravity," and "water tower" with a simple demonstration: tilt a cup of water on a book to show gravity pulling it downhill, then show a picture of a tall water tower. Allow students to answer questions 1 and 5 with short phrases rather than full sentences.