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Maple Sugaring Then and Now: Two Texts

Read two short articles about maple sugaring, then combine facts from both texts to explain how maple syrup and sugar are made.

Grade 5ELAInteractive · Printable

Aligned toRI.5.9

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What’s included

Single worksheet
Auto-graded online
1 Common Core standard
Printable answer key
10 questions
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Details

Format: Interactive · Printable
Grade: Grade 5
Subject: ELA
Question types: Fill in the blank, Multiple choice, Matching, Circle the answer, Sorting, Short answer

About this worksheet

What students practice

Students combine information from two informational texts on the same topic.
Students tell whether a detail comes from one text or from both texts.
Students write about a topic knowledgeably using details from two texts.

How to use

Have students read both texts and mark details that appear in both. Then let them answer on their own and read their paragraphs from the last question aloud to a partner.

Curriculum

Common Core standard covered

RI.5.9

Combine information from several texts on the same topic to write or speak about the subject knowledgeably.

Preview

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Maple Sugaring Then and Now: Two Texts

Combine facts from two texts about making maple syrup.

Read two texts

Both texts are about making sweet foods from maple sap. Read them both before you answer the questions.

Text 1: From Sap to Syrup

1Every year in late winter, sugar makers head into the woods to gather sap from maple trees. Sap is a watery liquid that carries food through a tree. Sugar maples are a favorite because their sap is sweeter than the sap of many other trees, though it tastes only a little sweet.

2Sap flows best when the weather swings back and forth. On cold nights, the temperature drops below freezing. On sunny days, it climbs above freezing. These changes build pressure inside the tree, and the pressure pushes sap out of any small opening in the trunk. This kind of weather usually lasts only a few weeks, so the sugaring season is short.

3To collect sap, a sugar maker drills a small hole, called a tap hole, into the trunk. A spout fits into the hole, and sap drips out into a bucket. Many large sugar farms now use long plastic tubes instead of buckets. The tubes carry sap from hundreds of trees downhill to one big tank. A healthy tree can heal around a small tap hole, so the same tree can be tapped year after year.

4Fresh sap is mostly water. To turn it into syrup, sugar makers boil it in wide, flat pans inside a building called a sugarhouse. As the sap boils, water rises away as steam, and the sap grows thicker, sweeter and darker. It takes about forty gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup, so sugar makers often boil sap late into the night during the busy season.

Text 2: Sugar Makers Long Ago

1Maple syrup is not a new invention. Long before European settlers arrived in North America, Native American peoples of the northeastern woodlands were making sweet foods from maple sap. For many of these communities, the end of winter was the time to gather sap in the maple forests.

2Sugar makers cut a slanted slash in the bark of a maple tree and pushed a thin piece of wood into the cut to guide the sap. The sap dripped into containers that were often made of birch bark. Some groups heated stones in a fire and dropped them into wooden troughs full of sap. The hot stones made the sap boil, and slowly the water cooked away.

3Often, sugar makers did not stop at syrup. They kept cooking the sap until it became grains of sugar or hard cakes of sugar. Sugar was easier to carry and store than syrup, and it could last for many months. Families used it to flavor foods all year long.

4When European settlers arrived, Native American sugar makers shared their way of turning sap into sugar. Over time, settlers began to use metal buckets and large iron kettles. In many farm homes in the Northeast, maple sugar was used more often than white sugar from stores, which had to travel a long way and cost more.

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