Text Structures in Informational Text

Kids invent device to prevent flash floods Last spring, heavy rains flooded streets in southern Florida. The waters made cars sink and turned roads into brown rivers. Problems with flooding are common in the area. However, a team of local middle school students has a plan to stop this ongoing problem.Alyssa Neuber, Bianca Verri and Jose Pirela are sixth-graders in Doral, Florida. Their group was one of five grand prize-winners of the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow Contest. The contest asked students to solve the biggest challenges facing their communities. Their solutions had to rely on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). The group from Doral designed a device to help prevent floods."I've been living here my entire life, and all of us have encountered problems with flooding," says Bianca. "We knew that was the problem we were going to tackle."Almost all cities have drainage systems to handle heavy rains. Normally, the water runs into a storm drain and flows a safe distance away. However, flash flooding can happen when storm drains get plugged up and overflow into streets. This is especially common during hurricanes. Flash floods can happen without warning. They are the leading cause of weather-related deaths in the United States.Inventing Device To Detect Backed-Up Storm DrainsTo prevent flash floods, the students built a device to detect backed-up storm drains. Their device uses a system called lidar. It stands for "light detection and ranging." A lidar system sends out laser pulses that bounce off objects. It then measures the time it takes for the signal to come back. Based on the reflection time, the system can calculate the distance between itself and its target. It scans every inch of the object and produces a 3-dimensional "map" of what it sees.The students' device uses lidar to scan storm drains. The system can detect when a drain is in danger of clogging. When this happens, the device would alert city officials, who would send someone to clean the drain.The whole class helped the students find information about using lidar, says Jose. Then, the three STEM whizzes started to work more closely with their science teacher, Rebeca Martinez. They figured out what each of them is good at. Jose was in charge of exposing the problem and coding. Alyssa was responsible for calculating costs, and Bianca was tasked with understanding how lidar works.Some students in the class had parents who were engineers or website coders. These parents helped the group figure out the details of their project.Starting in March, the school was closed due to COVID-19. Team meetings went virtual after that. Luckily, says Bianca, "We already had a prototype device, and we just had to tweak it some more." A prototype is a basic version of a device that is used for testing purposes.Pitching Their Idea VirtuallyThe group also had to pitch their idea virtually to contest judges. Twenty finalist teams were whittled down to the five grand-prize-winning teams.A team from California made a wildfire alert. Students from Ohio built an app to help prevent deaths of kids left in hot cars. Students from North Carolina designed an app that helps people recycle. Kids in Wisconsin created a sensor. It tells ice fishers when it's safe to walk on frozen lakes.Team Wins $100,00 For Science ClassroomEach of the five teams won $100,000 for their science classrooms. The money will go to technology and supplies. The Doral students plan to continue working with the city after the months they spent on the project. The city government is looking at ways to use the students' invention. If approved, one device may be attached to each of Doral's 2,575 storm and manhole drains."We put in a lot of effort," says Alyssa. Each group member had to trust the others to do their part and be knowledgeable about their own specialty. Martinez says figuring out how to build the drain sensor was overwhelming at the beginning. "I'm not an engineer," she explains. "But I learned the kids can actually do this, working together as a team." Vocabulary To mark a word click its first letter then click its last. ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY FLOODING CONTEST SCIENCE MATH Which text structure are we talking about with this passage? Compare and Contrast Cause and Effect Problem and Solution Sequence of events Description of a topic How do you know what your answer to the above question was correct? Identify key words from the passage that helped you to determine your answer. What problems do you think we could help to resolve in Las Vegas? Those kids are just a year or two older than you and they have worked to resolve this issue during this school year.