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Worksheet Grade 10 English Language Arts

Which Summary Is Fair? The Ormsley Lagoon Report

A grade 10 ELA worksheet in which students judge four summaries of a fictional wastewater lagoon report for overstatement, scope error, and causal overreach.

Objectives

  1. Students will identify overstatement, scope error, and causal overreach in summaries of a technical text.
  2. Students will explain how a single dropped qualifier changes what a summary claims.
  3. Students will write a compressed summary that preserves the source's qualifiers and scope.

Vocabulary

Effluent
Effluent is the cleaned water that leaves a treatment plant at the end of the process. It is tested carefully before being released to a river, lake, or the ocean.

Also: qualifier, scope, overstatement, nutrient

Teacher overview

Summaries of technical documents fail in small ways that look like ordinary compression. A dropped "in cold months," a widened "all," or a sequence turned into a cause can change what a report claims without changing its subject. This worksheet gives students one short report from a fictional village lagoon system and four summaries of it, three of which fail in a different, nameable way.

Which Summary Is Fair? The Ormsley Lagoon Report — Grade 10 English Language Arts
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Worksheet

Read the report excerpt, then read the four summaries. All of them describe the fictional village of Ormsley. Answer the questions that follow.

Report excerpt: Ormsley Lagoon System, Annual Operations Report

Ormsley treats its wastewater in three lagoons in series. Bacteria and algae in the lagoons break down waste over several weeks before the treated water, called effluent, is released to Tarnbeck Creek. The village holds a discharge permit that limits monthly average effluent strength, and the federal secondary treatment standard for that measure is 30 mg/L or less.

The system met its permit in every month of the reporting year. Ammonia in the effluent, however, rose above the village's internal target of 3.0 mg/L during January and February, reaching 5.2 mg/L in early February. Ammonia is a nutrient. In cold water, the bacteria that convert ammonia work slowly, and the operator's log attributes the winter rise to water temperature rather than to any change in what the village sends to the lagoons.

Tarnbeck Creek was sampled upstream and downstream of the outfall four times during the year. Downstream ammonia was higher than upstream on all four dates. No fish kill was reported, and dissolved oxygen downstream stayed above 5 mg/L, the level most fish need. The report recommends a study of winter aeration and notes that a decision would require capital funding the village has not yet raised.

Summary A: Ormsley's lagoon system met its discharge permit every month last year. Ammonia rose above the village's internal target in January and February, which the operator attributes to cold water slowing the bacteria that convert it. Downstream ammonia exceeded upstream ammonia on all four sampling dates, though dissolved oxygen stayed above the level most fish need. The report recommends studying winter aeration, which the village has not funded.

Summary B: Ormsley's lagoons failed to control ammonia last year. Ammonia exceeded the target, the creek downstream was polluted on every sampling date, and the report calls for aeration. The village has refused to pay for it.

Summary C: Ormsley's lagoon system met its permit every month. Ammonia rose above the internal target in winter because the village sent more waste to the lagoons during those months. The report recommends a winter aeration study.

Summary D: Ormsley's lagoon system met all federal and state standards for water quality throughout the year, and no problems were found in Tarnbeck Creek. The report recommends a study of winter aeration.

  1. In one sentence, state the report's main finding.
  2. Which summary is the most accurate? Name it and give two reasons drawn from the report.
  3. Summary B says the creek "was polluted on every sampling date." Explain the difference between that statement and what the report says.
  4. Summary B also says the village "refused" to pay. Quote the line in the report that this distorts, and name what the distortion adds.
  5. Summary C states a cause the report does not state. Identify the cause it invents and the cause the report actually gives.
  6. Explain why an error like the one in Summary C is harder for a reader to catch than the errors in Summary B.
  7. Summary D widens the report's scope in two places. Identify both.
  8. The report says dissolved oxygen stayed above 5 mg/L. Explain why leaving that detail out, as Summary B does, changes the picture a reader forms.
  9. Choose one summary other than the most accurate one, and rewrite its worst sentence so that it is fair to the report.
  10. Write your own summary of the report in about one hundred words. Keep the report's qualifiers, keep its scope, and attribute the winter cause the way the report does.

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Answer Key
  1. Answer: The lagoon system met its permit all year, yet effluent ammonia rose above the village's internal target during the two coldest months, and the report recommends studying winter aeration. Accept any one-sentence version that pairs permit compliance with the winter ammonia rise.
  2. Answer: Summary A. It keeps the permit finding, keeps the seasonal limit on the ammonia rise, attributes the cause the way the operator's log does, and reports the downstream comparison without calling the creek polluted.
  3. Answer: The report states only that downstream ammonia was higher than upstream on four dates, with no fish kill and with dissolved oxygen above the level most fish need. Summary B converts a measured difference into a judgment about the creek's condition that the report never makes.
  4. Answer: It distorts the line saying a decision would require capital funding the village has not yet raised. The distortion adds intent, turning a funding gap into a deliberate refusal.
  5. Answer: Summary C invents an increase in the waste sent to the lagoons. The report attributes the rise to cold water slowing the bacteria that convert ammonia, and explicitly rules out a change in what the village sends.
  6. Answer: Because Summary C keeps the report's tone, structure, and outcome, and changes only the mechanism. Nothing in it sounds hostile, so a reader checking for bias rather than for accuracy will pass over it.
  7. Answer: It claims compliance with all federal and state water quality standards rather than with the village's discharge permit, and it claims no problems were found in the creek when the report documents higher downstream ammonia on all four dates.
  8. Answer: That detail is the report's main evidence that the elevated ammonia did not translate into harm the sampling could detect. Without it, a reader has a rise in a nutrient and a difference downstream with nothing to bound them.
  9. Answer: Answers will vary. A proficient rewrite keeps the sentence's subject, restores the missing qualifier or attribution, and adds nothing new, as in changing Summary D's opening to say the system met its discharge permit in every month of the year.
  10. Answer: Answers will vary. A proficient summary states permit compliance, limits the ammonia rise to January and February and to the internal target, attributes it to cold water slowing the converting bacteria, reports the downstream comparison together with the dissolved oxygen finding, and ends with the unfunded aeration study.

Differentiation

Support

Give these students the report with its qualifiers already highlighted, and a checklist of the three error types with one example of each. Assign items 1, 2, 3, 5, and 10, and shorten item 10 to sixty words.

Extension

Ask students to write a fifth summary that is accurate but written for a different audience, such as a village newsletter rather than a state agency, then explain in a short note which choices changed and which had to stay fixed.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "effluent," "permit," "qualifier," "scope," and "attribute" with a diagram of the three lagoons in series and an arrow to the creek. Provide a sorting card set with the three error names for use on items 3 through 7. Allow item 9 to be completed orally before it is written.

Extensions

Have students find a news summary of a technical or scientific report alongside the report's own abstract, then mark every qualifier the summary kept and every one it dropped. Students write a paragraph judging whether the dropped qualifiers changed the claim.