Reading passage Grade 6 Science
Where the Rain Goes: Pebble Lane's New Rain Gardens
A grade 6 science reading passage about a fictional street's flooding, tracing how storm drains, rain gardens, and permeable pavement move and soak up rainwater.
Objectives
- Students will trace how rainwater moves from hard surfaces into storm drains and creeks.
- Students will explain how green infrastructure soaks up runoff and lowers flooding and pollution.
Vocabulary
- Storm drain
- A storm drain is the grate at the edge of a street that swallows rainwater and sends it through pipes to the nearest creek or river. That water is usually not treated, so only rain belongs down the drain.
- Green infrastructure
- Green infrastructure uses soil and plants, like rain gardens, green roofs, and street trees, to soak up rainwater where it falls instead of piping it away. It copies the way nature handles rain.
- Rain garden
- A rain garden is a shallow planted dip in the ground that catches rain running off a roof or driveway and lets it soak slowly into the soil. Its deep-rooted plants help clean the water.
Also: runoff, permeable
Teacher overview
This passage follows one flooded street through a change that many real towns are making. It explains runoff, storm drains, and green infrastructure in plain terms, then shows how rain gardens and permeable pavement help. A teacher can assign it to introduce stormwater and to practice pulling evidence from an informational text.
Passage
Pebble Lane is a low street in the fictional town of Marsh Hollow. When a big storm comes, water pools at the bottom of the street. Yards turn to mud. Some basements take on water. The people who live there want to know where all that rain goes, and why it floods.
Rain that falls on a roof or a road cannot soak in. Roofs, roads, and parking lots are hard surfaces. Water runs right off them. This runoff flows downhill and gathers in the lowest spot. On Pebble Lane, that spot is the corner near the creek.
Long ago, most of Marsh Hollow was open soil and grass. Soil is soft and full of tiny spaces. Rain sinks into those spaces and moves down into the ground. Ground like this is called permeable, which means water can pass through it. But as the town grew, crews paved over much of the soil. Hard surfaces took the place of grass. With fewer soft spots to soak up rain, more water ran off, and the floods got worse.
To carry runoff away, towns build storm drains. A storm drain is an opening at the curb that leads to a pipe. The pipe carries the water to a creek or a river. Storm drains help, but in a heavy storm they can fill up faster than they empty. When that happens, water backs up into the street.
Storm drains have another problem. Runoff picks up oil, trash, and lawn chemicals as it flows. All of that washes straight into the creek, because most storm drains do not lead to a treatment plant. So the more runoff a town makes, the more pollution reaches its water.
Marsh Hollow tried a new plan for Pebble Lane. Instead of only building bigger pipes, the town added green infrastructure. Green infrastructure uses plants and soil to slow down and soak up rain, close to where it falls.
The biggest change was a set of rain gardens. A rain garden is a shallow dip in the ground, filled with loose soil and deep-rooted plants. Runoff flows into the dip and pools there for a short time. Then it slowly soaks into the soil instead of rushing to the creek. The plant roots also trap some of the dirt and chemicals before they reach the water.
The town also replaced part of a parking lot with permeable pavement. This pavement has tiny gaps that let water pass through into a bed of gravel below. From there the water soaks into the ground, just as it would in open soil.
After the changes, Pebble Lane flooded less. The rain gardens and permeable pavement held back a share of the runoff during each storm. Less water reached the low corner all at once. And because more rain soaked into the ground, less oil and trash washed into the creek.
Green infrastructure did not replace the storm drains. It worked alongside them. The pipes still carry water in the largest storms. But the rain gardens take the first, smaller flows, so the pipes are not overwhelmed as often. For Pebble Lane, the solution combined the existing pipes with many small places where rain could soak into the ground.
Questions
- What happens on Pebble Lane during a big storm?
- According to the passage, why does water run off roofs and roads instead of soaking in?
- The passage says soil is "permeable." Using the passage, explain what permeable means and why it matters for flooding.
- Why does more runoff lead to more pollution in the creek?
- How do a rain garden and permeable pavement both reduce flooding?
- The passage says green infrastructure "worked alongside" the storm drains rather than replacing them. What does that tell you about how the town solved the flooding problem?
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: Water pools and floods at the bottom of the street. The passage says a big storm makes water gather at the low corner near the creek, turning yards to mud and flooding some basements.
- Answer: Roofs and roads are hard surfaces, so water cannot soak in and runs off instead. The passage states that hard surfaces shed rain, which then flows downhill as runoff.
- Answer: Permeable means water can pass through it, like soft soil full of tiny spaces. It matters because permeable ground soaks up rain, so less water runs off and floods the street.
- Answer: Runoff picks up oil, trash, and lawn chemicals as it flows, and most storm drains carry it straight to the creek without treatment. So more runoff means more pollution reaches the water, as the passage explains.
- Answer: Both let water soak into the ground instead of rushing to the low corner. A rain garden holds runoff in a dip until it sinks in, and permeable pavement lets water pass through into gravel and soil below.
- Answer: It tells you the town used more than one solution together. Green infrastructure handled the smaller flows while the storm drains still carried the largest storms, so the problem was solved by combining methods rather than by one big pipe.
Differentiation
Support
Give students a simple flow diagram (Rain falls, then Hard surface, then Runoff, then Storm drain or Rain garden, then Creek or Soaks in) to follow while they read. Let them answer the literal questions 1 and 2 by pointing to the matching sentence before writing.
Extension
Ask students to explain, using only the passage, why a neighbor who paves over a grass yard might make flooding a little worse for everyone downhill, and to support the idea with details about hard surfaces and runoff.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "runoff," "permeable," "storm drain," and "rain garden" with a labeled picture of a street, a curb drain, and a planted dip. Allow short-phrase answers for questions 1 and 2, and provide the frame "A rain garden helps because it lets water ___."