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Reading passage Grade 3 Science

Where Rushden, Lambourne, and Cragmoor Find Their Water

A grade 3 informational passage about three made-up towns in three climates, each storing water a different way, with seven comprehension questions.

Objectives

  1. Students will name the water source each of the three towns depends on.
  2. Students will explain how a town's climate shapes where it stores water.
  3. Students will answer questions by pointing to evidence in the passage.

Vocabulary

Reservoir
A human-made lake, usually created by a dam, that stores water for later. Reservoirs supply cities and farms and help control floods.
Dam
A strong wall built across a river to hold back water. Dams store water for people and farms, help prevent floods, and can make electricity.

Also: climate, well, snowmelt, storage tank

Teacher overview

Third graders are expected to gather information about climates in different regions and describe how they differ, and water supply is one of the clearest places to see those differences at work. This passage visits three fictional towns, one on a rainy coast, one on dry plains, and one high in cold mountains, and shows how each one stores water for the season when little arrives. Teachers can assign it before or after a lesson on the water cycle, since it treats rain, snow, and groundwater as three forms of the same supply rather than three separate topics.

Where Rushden, Lambourne, and Cragmoor Find Their Water — Grade 3 Science
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Passage

Three Towns and Their Water

These three towns are made up. Each one gets water in its own way. The weather in each place shapes that choice.

Rushden sits on a rainy coast. Rain falls there in most months. The town gets about 60 inches of rain a year. Fog drifts in from the sea on many mornings. Rushden built a low dam across a creek. Water backs up behind the dam and forms a pond. People call that pond a reservoir. Rain keeps the reservoir full all year. A crew screens the water and cleans it. Then pipes carry it to the houses in town.

Lambourne sits far inland on dry plains. Only about 12 inches of rain fall there in a year. The summers are hot and windy. Small creeks near the town run dry by July. So Lambourne does not use a creek at all. The town drilled deep wells instead. Water fills the tiny spaces inside the rock below the ground. Pumps lift that water up to the town. Lambourne also sets rules each summer. People may water a garden only two days a week. The rules help the wells keep up.

Cragmoor sits high in cold mountains. Winter brings deep snow to the ridge above the town. About 200 inches of snow fall there each winter. Very little rain falls in the summer. The snow piles up all winter long. It melts slowly in the spring. The melt water runs down into Cragmoor Creek. The town pumps some of that water into a big steel tank on the ridge. The creek and the tank carry the town through the dry end of summer. In a warm winter, less snow falls, and the creek runs low sooner.

Each town watches its own weather before it decides where to keep water. On a rainy coast a pond behind a dam can hold enough. On dry plains the water is under the ground, so wells reach down for it. In cold mountains the snow itself is the store, and it does not melt until spring.

Questions

  1. Which town gets its water from a pond behind a dam?
  2. How much rain falls in Lambourne in a year?
  3. Where does the water in Cragmoor Creek come from in the spring?
  4. Why does Lambourne set watering rules every summer? Use the passage.
  5. Rushden and Cragmoor both store water. Tell one way their stores are different.
  6. The passage uses the word reservoir. Use the passage to tell what a reservoir is.
  7. A new town gets heavy snow in winter and almost no rain in summer. Which of the three towns is it most like? Tell why.

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: Rushden. The passage says Rushden built a low dam across a creek and that water backs up behind the dam to form a pond.
  2. Answer: About 12 inches. The passage states that only about 12 inches of rain fall in Lambourne in a year.
  3. Answer: Melting snow. The passage says the snow piles up all winter, melts slowly in the spring, and runs down into Cragmoor Creek.
  4. Answer: So the wells can keep up. Accept any answer built on the passage details that Lambourne gets little rain, that its creeks run dry by July, and that the summers are hot, so the rules stretch the well water through the dry season.
  5. Answer: Accept any real difference drawn from the passage. Rushden holds water in an open pond behind a dam and rain refills it in most months, while Cragmoor's store is the winter snow, which melts into the creek only once a year, in the spring, and some of it is pumped into a steel tank.
  6. Answer: A pond held back by a dam. The passage says water backs up behind the dam, forms a pond, and that people call that pond a reservoir.
  7. Answer: Cragmoor. Accept any answer naming Cragmoor and citing the deep winter snow and the dry summer, which match the new town. A student who names Rushden should be asked what the passage says about rain falling there in most months.

Differentiation

Support

Read the passage aloud once while students follow along, then reread one town paragraph at a time and stop for questions 1 through 3 before moving on. Give these students a three-column chart labeled with the town names and the headings weather and water source, filled in for Rushden as a model. Allow questions 5 and 7 to be answered orally.

Extension

Ask students to write a fourth paragraph in the same style about a made-up town in a place with a wet season and a dry season, naming its rainfall, its water source, and one rule it might set. Have them explain which of the three towns in the passage their new town is most like and where it differs.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "climate," "reservoir," and "well" with three simple drawings posted in a row. Highlight the first sentence of each town paragraph so students can find the topic quickly. Provide the frames "___ gets its water from " and " is most like ___ because ___," and allow question 3 to be answered by pointing to the sentence.

Extensions

Have students find the yearly rainfall for their own town from a printed weather almanac or a page the teacher supplies, then decide which of the three fictional towns it sits closest to. Ask them to write two sentences comparing their own town's storage, whether that is a reservoir, a well, or a tank, with the town they chose.