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Grade 5 Reading Worksheet
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The Share Table at Oakmont School
Every day after lunch, the trash bins at Oakmont Elementary filled to the top. Mr. Okafor's fifth graders wondered how much of that trash was food that no one had touched. In October, they decided to find out.
For two weeks, the class weighed the food thrown away at lunch. Students wore gloves and sorted the scraps into buckets. Then they set each bucket on a scale and wrote down the weight. Amira kept the records on a chart, and Diego turned them into graphs.
The first graph shows the total for each week. The second graph shows what was in the bin during the first week. The class was surprised by the results. Many students took an apple or a carton of milk because it came with lunch, then never opened it. Whole fruit made up the biggest part of the waste.
The students shared their numbers with the principal, Dr. Lindqvist. They proposed a share table. Students could leave unopened food on the table instead of throwing it away. Anyone still hungry could take something from it. At the end of lunch, the cafeteria staff would put the milk back in the cooler. Leftover fruit would go to the after-school program for snack time.
Dr. Lindqvist agreed to try the idea, starting in Week 3. Diego made posters, and Amira explained the rules on the morning announcements. The class kept weighing the waste every day to see whether the table made a difference.
It did. The weekly total dropped as soon as the table appeared, and it kept falling. By Week 5, the bins held only one third of what they had held in Week 1. Fewer bags of trash also meant fewer trips to the dumpster for the custodian, Mr. Reyes.
Not every problem was solved. By Week 5, vegetables were thrown away more than any other food, because few students wanted cooked carrots or green beans. The class has a new idea for that: a tasting day, when students can try a vegetable dish before it appears on the menu.
Mr. Okafor says the project taught his class an important lesson. Numbers can change a school's habits, but only when someone collects them carefully and shares them with the right people.
Look at the first graph. How many pounds of food were thrown away in Week 4?
- 45 pounds
- 60 pounds
- 40 pounds
- 50 pounds
The share table started in Week 3. How much less food was thrown away that week than in Week 2?
Use the picture in question 1.
- 15 pounds
- 90 pounds
- 60 pounds
- 30 pounds
The text says the bins held one third as much by Week 5. Which numbers on the graph show this?
Use the picture in question 1.
- 90 pounds in Week 1 and 30 in Week 5
- 60 pounds in Week 3 and 30 in Week 5
- 90 pounds in Week 2 and 45 in Week 4
- 90 pounds in Week 1 and 60 in Week 3
Look at the second graph. Which food was thrown away most in Week 1?
- bread
- fruit
- milk
- vegetables
How many pounds of milk and bread together went in the bin in Week 1?
Use the picture in question 4.
- 15 pounds
- 10 pounds
- 25 pounds
- 35 pounds
How does the second graph support what the text says about unopened food?
Use the picture in question 4.
- It shows the waste fell after Week 3.
- It shows bread was wasted more than milk.
- It shows fruit was the largest amount.
- It shows vegetables were the largest amount.