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Lesson plan Grade 10 English Language Arts

Metering the Willow Bench Wells: Analyzing Two Letters

A 55-minute grade 10 lesson in which students analyze two letters to a county board about metering irrigation wells and write an evaluation of the reasoning.

Objectives

  1. Students will identify the claim, evidence, and reasoning in two opposing letters about groundwater metering.
  2. Students will explain why a measurement can establish that a change occurred without establishing its cause.
  3. Students will write an evaluative paragraph that supports a claim with quoted textual evidence.

Vocabulary

Aquifer
An aquifer is an underground layer of rock, sand, or gravel that holds water in the tiny spaces between its grains. Wells reach down into aquifers to bring water up to the surface.
Drawdown
Drawdown is how far the water level in a well drops when a pump pulls water out. The harder and longer you pump, the bigger the drawdown gets.

Also: claim, counterclaim, concession, warrant

Teacher overview

Groundwater disputes produce some of the plainest argument writing a community generates, because the people writing have money and property at stake and they write in ordinary sentences. This lesson uses two fictional letters to a county board about whether irrigation wells over a shared aquifer should be metered. The misconception this lesson is built to correct is the belief that a letter containing numbers is automatically the better-reasoned letter; tenth graders routinely rank a text as stronger because it cites a measurement, without asking whether the measurement supports the specific conclusion drawn from it. Both letters here cite figures, and in both cases the figure leaves a gap that the writer does not close.

Procedure

Hook (5 min): Write this sentence on the board: "The monitoring well has dropped eleven feet in ten years, so irrigation must be cut." Ask students to name, without discussion, one thing the sentence claims and one thing it assumes. Take three responses and leave them posted for the rest of the period.

Direct instruction (10 min): Define claim, evidence, and warrant, using the posted sentence as the example. The claim is that irrigation must be cut, the evidence is the eleven-foot decline, and the warrant is the unstated assumption that irrigation pumping caused the decline. Tell students that in this fictional dispute their job is to test warrants rather than to pick a side they agree with.

Guided practice (15 min): Distribute the handout. Read Letter A aloud while students highlight claims in one color and evidence in another. Work question 1 together as a class, then have pairs complete question 3 and share two responses with the room.

Independent practice (20 min): Students work through handout questions 2, 4, 5, and 6 on their own. Circulate and check that the paragraph in question 6 states a claim in its first sentence rather than narrating what each letter says.

Closure and formative check (5 min): Collect the handouts and ask every student to hold up one finger if they judged Letter A the sounder argument and two fingers if they judged Letter B. If more than about three-quarters of the class chooses the same letter, plan to open the next class by reading two paragraphs from the minority side, because a lopsided split usually means students scored the letters on agreement rather than on reasoning.

Metering the Willow Bench Wells: Analyzing Two Letters — Grade 10 English Language Arts
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Handout

The county, the aquifer, the growers, and both letters below are fictional. No real utility, farm, or person is described. Read both letters, then answer questions 1 through 6.

Letter A: from Tobin Reyes, owner of Delvin Orchards, to the Stannard County Board

I am writing against the proposed order that would require a meter on every irrigation well drawing from the Willow Bench aquifer. I own ninety acres of pear and apple ground and three wells. A meter sized for my pumps costs about $3,200 installed, and the order would require all three of mine within one season. That is money that comes out of the same account that pays for the drip conversion the county asked us to make two years ago.

Some of my neighbors will tell you that meters are a small price for good information. I understand the appeal of that argument, and I do not oppose measurement in principle. My objection is to the sequence. A meter does not add a single gallon to the aquifer. What it adds is a number, and once the county holds that number, nothing in the proposed order requires a hearing before those numbers are used to set allocations. Growers here already fallow ground in dry years without being ordered to, because we live on the same water everyone else does.

I ask the board to start with two years of voluntary reporting, paid for by the district, and to return to a mandatory order only if participation falls below half of the irrigated acreage.

Letter B: from Ana Petrosian, chair of the Willow Bench Domestic Well Association, to the Stannard County Board

Our association speaks for roughly four hundred households whose only water comes from shallow wells over the same aquifer. We support the metering order and we ask the board to adopt it this fall.

Last August, three of our member households lost water entirely and paid to have their wells deepened. The county's own monitoring well at Wickfield Road has dropped eleven feet in the past ten years. Two neighboring districts have metered irrigation wells for more than a decade, and in both places the reported use turned out to be lower than the estimates the districts had been using, so metering is not automatically a prelude to cuts.

We recognize that meters cost money, and we would support phasing the requirement over three years for growers with more than one well. What we cannot support is another decade of arguing from estimates. The board cannot manage what no one measures, and our members are the ones who run out of water first when the estimates are wrong.

Questions

  1. State the claim of Letter A in one sentence of your own words.
  2. State the claim of Letter B in one sentence of your own words.
  3. Letter A anticipates an objection and answers it. Quote the sentence where the writer names that objection, and explain in one sentence what the writer concedes.
  4. Letter B offers three pieces of evidence. List them, and label each one as a direct measurement, a personal observation, or a comparison to another place.
  5. Letter B states that the monitoring well has dropped eleven feet in ten years. Explain in two or three sentences why that figure by itself does not prove that irrigation pumping caused the decline.
  6. Write a paragraph of five to eight sentences evaluating which letter reasons more soundly. Begin with a claim, quote at least two pieces of evidence from the letters, and explain how each quoted piece supports your claim. You may judge a letter to reason well even if you disagree with its position.

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 county should not adopt a mandatory metering order yet. Reyes argues for voluntary reporting first, with a mandatory order held in reserve if participation is low.
  2. Answer: The county should adopt the metering order this fall. Petrosian argues that the board cannot manage the aquifer responsibly using estimates.
  3. Answer: "Some of my neighbors will tell you that meters are a small price for good information." The writer concedes that measurement itself is reasonable and narrows the objection to the timing and the absence of a hearing requirement, which is a concession that makes the rest of the letter harder to dismiss.
  4. Answer: Three dry household wells last August (personal observation), the eleven-foot decline at the Wickfield Road monitoring well (direct measurement), and the experience of two neighboring metered districts (comparison to another place). Accept "reported use came in lower than estimates" as part of the third item rather than a fourth.
  5. Answer: The decline shows that water levels fell, not what caused them to fall. A decade of below-average precipitation, growth in domestic pumping, a change in stream levels that once recharged the aquifer, or a problem with the monitoring well itself could each produce the same reading. Petrosian needs pumping records to connect the decline to irrigation, which is the information the metering order would produce, so the gap in her evidence is also her strongest reason for wanting meters.
  6. Answer: Accept either judgment when the paragraph opens with a claim, quotes two pieces of evidence, and explains the connection. A proficient response might claim that Letter B reasons more soundly because it distinguishes measurement from estimate and offers a phased compromise, while quoting the neighboring-district comparison and the phased-requirement offer. An equally proficient response might claim Letter A reasons more soundly because it identifies a specific procedural gap, quoting the observation that nothing in the order requires a hearing before the numbers are used to set allocations. Do not credit paragraphs that summarize both letters without stating a claim.

Differentiation

Support

Give these students a version of the handout with the claim sentence of each letter already underlined so that questions 1 and 2 become paraphrase tasks. Provide a three-column chart labeled Evidence, Type, and What It Proves for question 4, and a sentence frame for question 6: "Letter ___ reasons more soundly because ___, as shown when the writer states ___."

Extension

Ask these students to write the reply Reyes would send after reading Letter B. The reply must concede one point, rebut one piece of evidence on its reasoning rather than its politics, and end with a revised proposal that differs from both letters.

ELL supports

Pre-teach aquifer, meter, allocation, fallow, and phased with a labeled cross-section sketch of a shallow domestic well and a deeper irrigation well drawing from the same layer. Pair each student with a partner for the read-aloud of Letter A, and allow question 5 to be answered orally before it is written.

Extensions

Invite a county planner, an extension agent, or a utility water resources staff member to read a sample of the student paragraphs and describe how measurement disputes actually get resolved in their work. Water resources planning is reached through several education paths, including two-year technical programs, four-year degrees in geology or environmental science, and graduate study in hydrogeology, and a visitor can describe the route they took.