Graphic organizer Grade 4 Social Studies & Civics
Ondura and Grindlow: An Organizer Comparing Two Dry Towns
A grade 4 compare-and-contrast organizer on two fictional dry towns, a desert valley and a mountain valley, and the different ways each stores and shares its water.
Objectives
- Students will compare how two dry towns get and store their water.
- Students will name one water rule each town made because of its own setting.
- Students will explain one thing both towns do the same way.
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.
Also: desert, snowmelt, reuse, adapt
Teacher overview
This organizer is a two-column compare-and-contrast frame with a shared bottom row for what the two places have in common. It maps how two fictional dry towns, Ondura in a desert valley and Grindlow in a mountain valley, take different paths to the same goal of having water in late summer. The frame rests on a point worth making first. Dry places are easy to lump together, as though every one of them answered dryness the same way by asking people to use less. Dryness is only part of the picture, and where the water arrives from matters just as much. Grindlow can store water because melting snow fills a creek each spring, while Ondura has no snow to wait for and instead cleans and reuses water it has already used once. The bottom row keeps the comparison from ending with two towns that have nothing in common.
Organizer
Fill in each box. Use the last row for what is true in both towns.
| Question | Ondura, in a desert valley | Grindlow, in a mountain valley |
|---|---|---|
| Where does the water come from? | ||
| Where does the town store water? | ||
| What is one water rule the town made? | ||
| What do yards and roofs look like? | ||
| What does the town do in a dry year? | ||
| True in both towns |
Under the frame, answer in one sentence: Why does Grindlow store water in a different way than Ondura?
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Completed Exemplar
| Question | Ondura, in a desert valley | Grindlow, in a mountain valley |
|---|---|---|
| Where does the water come from? | A deep well under the valley floor, plus cleaned water that the town uses again on parks and ball fields | A creek fed by snow that melts on the mountains each spring |
| Where does the town store water? | In a covered tank on a low hill, kept covered so the hot sun does not dry it up | In a small lake behind a dam above the town |
| What is one water rule the town made? | Yards may be watered on two days each week, and only before the sun is high | No one may build a house in the low ground where the creek floods in spring |
| What do yards and roofs look like? | Gravel yards with desert plants, and flat roofs | Grass yards, steep roofs that shed snow, and rain barrels at the corners |
| What does the town do in a dry year? | Buys extra water from a nearby town and asks families to skip washing cars | Measures how deep the snow is in winter, then saves lake water for late summer |
| True in both towns | Both towns test their water, both teach children how to save water, and both plan ahead for the driest month of the year | Both towns test their water, both teach children how to save water, and both plan ahead for the driest month of the year |
Under the frame: Grindlow stores water in a lake behind a dam because snow melts and fills the creek fast in spring, so the town holds that spring water for later, while Ondura has no spring melt and must save and reuse what it pumps.
Differentiation
Support
Give these students the frame with the Ondura column already filled in, so they build only the Grindlow column and the shared row. Provide a small picture bank of a gravel yard, a rain barrel, a covered tank, a dam, and a snowy ridge, and let students place each picture in the correct column before writing.
Extension
Ask students to add a third column for a fictional coastal town that gets rain all winter and none in summer, and to fill in every row for that place. Students can then mark which of the three towns would have the hardest time in a year with no snow and explain the reason in two sentences.
ELL supports
Pre-teach desert, snowmelt, reservoir, and reuse with a picture card and a one-word home-language label for each. Allow short phrases in the boxes, and provide the frame "Ondura ___, but Grindlow ___." for the sentence under the organizer.
Extensions
Have students look up the water rules posted by a real utility in a dry part of the country, such as a watering schedule or a rebate for replacing grass, and add a fourth column to the frame for that place. Students can also write a short letter from a child in one fictional town to a child in the other, explaining one water habit that would seem strange in the other place.