Worksheet Grade 2 Social Studies & Civics
Acorn Lane's Water Helper: A Grade 2 Bar Graph Worksheet
A grade 2 social studies worksheet where students read a bar graph of water used by four homes on a fictional street and answer compare and total questions.
Objectives
- Students will read totals and compare values from a four-category bar graph.
- Students will explain why a town keeps track of how much water each home uses.
Vocabulary
Key words: bar graph, water helper, compare, total
Teacher overview
A water helper, also called a meter reader, walks a street and writes down how much water each home used. On the fictional Acorn Lane, the helper counted the buckets of water four homes used on Monday and made a bar graph. This worksheet has students read totals and compare the bars, which is the grade's key graphing skill, and then think about why a town wants someone to keep this count in the first place.
Print the page with a bar graph of the table drawn below it on a single-unit grid, with the four home names along the bottom and a scale numbered by ones to 10.
Student Worksheet
Acorn Lane is a fictional street. The table and the bar graph below show how many buckets of water each home used on Monday. Each square on the graph stands for one bucket.
| Home | Buckets used Monday |
|---|---|
| Rosa's home | 8 |
| Theo's home | 5 |
| Priya's home | 9 |
| Sam's home | 6 |
- How many buckets did Rosa's home use?
- Which home used the most water?
- How many buckets did Priya's home and Sam's home use in all?
- How many more buckets did Priya's home use than Theo's home?
- Which home used the fewest buckets?
- How many buckets did all four homes use together?
- Two homes used more than 7 buckets. Which two homes were they?
- The water helper counts the water at each home. Tell one reason the town wants someone to keep this count.
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: 8 buckets. The bar for Rosa's home reaches the 8 line on the graph.
- Answer: Priya's home. Its bar is the tallest at 9 buckets.
- Answer: 15 buckets. Priya's 9 plus Sam's 6 is 9 + 6 = 15.
- Answer: 4 buckets. Priya's 9 minus Theo's 5 is 9 - 5 = 4 more.
- Answer: Theo's home. Its bar is the shortest at 5 buckets.
- Answer: 28 buckets. Adding all four homes: 8 + 5 + 9 + 6 = 28.
- Answer: Rosa's home and Priya's home. Rosa used 8 and Priya used 9, and both are more than 7.
- Answer: Answers will vary. A good reason is that counting helps the town find leaks, make a fair bill, or see when a home should save water.
Differentiation
Support
Give these students a copy of the bars already drawn on grid paper so they can point and count each square. Let them use counters to model the add and subtract problems before writing the numbers.
Extension
Ask students to add a fifth home to the graph, choose how many buckets it used, and write one new compare question a partner can answer from the updated graph.
ELL supports
Read each question aloud and pair the words most, fewest, in all, and more with a hand motion. Allow spoken number answers first, and provide the sentence frame "___ home used ___ buckets."
Extensions
Have the class picture their own street as a graph. Each student draws a bar for a made-up home and writes one true sentence comparing two bars, practicing the same reading skill with their own data.