Conserving Soil and Water on Farms

Conserving Soil and Water on Farms Worksheet (Grade 6 Science, TEKS 6.11B)

Farming feeds billions of people, but it can wash away soil, pollute rivers, and drain groundwater. This one-page sheet explains soil erosion, fertilizer runoff, water depletion, and habitat loss, then shows solutions such as cover crops, terraces, drip irrigation, and careful fertilizer use.

What's Inside

• A Big Question box: "How can farming change soil and water, and what can farmers do?"
• Four impact cards with doodles and a short solutions reading
• Activity 1: Students match four farm problems to solutions
• Activity 2: Students complete the resource, activity, impact, solution chain for a farm
• A visual answer key with answers marked in red

How Teachers Use It

Use it as practice for TEKS 6.11B. The sheet takes about 10 to 15 minutes, needs no prior knowledge beyond the 6.11A sheets, and prints clearly in black and white.

This worksheet is part of the Reading in Science series for grade 6. It supports TEKS 6.11B: explain how conservation, increased efficiency, and technology can help manage air, water, soil, and energy resources. It is one of eight connected TEKS 6.11B sheets that build on the 6.11A resource sheets. Every case study uses the same four questions: resource, human activity, impact, and solution. The unit big idea is that human activities can change how quickly resources are used, replaced, or depleted, and conservation, efficiency, and technology can help manage them.

Why It Works

Each sheet opens with a Big Question, teaches the key terms in plain words with simple black-and-white doodles, and then asks students to use only what the page taught. The same four-question chain repeats across the unit, so students build one way of thinking about any resource problem, and the visual answer key lets teachers check work fast.