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How Electricity Gets to Your Home

4th grade nonfiction passage about energy and how things work: 165 words, seven questions, an answer key and vocabulary.

4th grade nonfiction energy and how things work 165 words

How Electricity Gets to Your Home

When you flip a switch, a light comes on. But the electricity did not start in the wall. It began at a power plant, sometimes many miles away.

At most power plants, a machine called a turbine spins. The spinning turbine turns a generator, which makes electricity. Some plants use heat to make steam that spins the turbine. Others use falling water or wind.

Electricity leaves the plant through thick wires. Tall towers hold the wires high above the ground, and the electricity travels long distances over these power lines.

Near your home, a device called a transformer changes the electricity so it is safe to use. Then smaller wires carry it to houses, schools, and stores. Inside the walls, wires reach every outlet and light.

Electricity flows only along a loop, called a circuit. When you switch on a lamp, you close the circuit, and the electricity can flow through the bulb. When you switch it off, the circuit opens and the flow stops.

Questions

  1. Where does the electricity in your home begin? in the text

  2. What does a generator do? in the text

  3. What are two things that can spin a turbine? in the text

  4. What does a transformer do? in the text

  5. What is a circuit? in the text

  6. What happens to the circuit when you switch a lamp off? think about it

  7. Why do you think power lines are held high on tall towers? think about it

Words to know

power plant
a place where electricity is made
turbine
a machine with blades that spins when steam, water, or wind pushes it
generator
a machine that makes electricity
transformer
a device that changes electricity so it is safe to use
circuit
a loop that electricity can flow around

How to use it

  1. Press Read it big (or B) to put the text on the projector, or Full screen (F) to fill the whole screen.
  2. Ask the questions one at a time and use Show answer when the class has decided. A shows or hides every answer.
  3. Print student copy for the class, or Print with answers for yourself.

Ideas for class

  • Before reading, put power plant, turbine, generator, transformer and circuit on the board with their meanings from the Words to know section and have students predict what the text will be about.
  • Read it aloud once while students follow along, then have them reread it alone or with a partner. At a calm 100 words a minute it takes about 2 minutes to read aloud.
  • Use the Read it big button (or B) to put the text on the projector, and Show answer on one question at a time so the class commits to an answer first.
  • Question 6 asks the reader to infer. Ask students to point to the words in the passage that led them to their answer.
  • Ask students to write one question the passage did not answer, then look for the answer in a book or on a classroom screen.
  • Print the student copy for independent work and keep the answer-key copy for yourself.

Related

Questions

What reading level is "How Electricity Gets to Your Home"?

It was written for 4th grade. It has 165 words and works out to a Flesch-Kincaid grade level of about 5.6. That is a formula's estimate from sentence length and syllables, and it is not a Lexile or a guided reading level, so check it against your students.

What do the questions ask?

There are seven. 5 ask for something the text says directly and 2 ask the reader to work something out from clues. Each has an answer in the key, and the answers are written as a teacher would accept them, not as the only possible wording.

How long does it take to read?

About 2 minutes read aloud at 100 words a minute. For a one-minute fluency check, paste it into the fluency timer and use the word count.

Can I print it?

Yes. Print student copy gives the passage, the questions with lines to write on, and the word meanings. Print with answers gives the same page with the answers filled in. Both are made in your browser.

Is this passage from a published book?

No. It was written for Peabody Teach, so there is no book to buy and no login to read it.

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