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Classroom activity Grade 10 English Language Arts

Writing the Yeldon Tap Sampling Result for Four Audiences

A grade 10 station rotation in which groups rewrite one fictional school sampling summary for four audiences, then audit each other's drafts for dropped facts.

Objectives

  1. Students will select which facts from a technical summary a named audience needs.
  2. Students will rewrite technical wording in plain language without changing its meaning.
  3. Students will audit another group's draft against the source document for accuracy.

Vocabulary

Action level
A trigger number in lead and copper testing. If too many homes test above this level, the utility must take steps like improving treatment and telling the public.

Also: audience, purpose, register, paraphrase, omission

Teacher overview

Groups of three or four rotate through four stations, each of which asks them to turn the same fictional school sampling summary into a different piece of writing: a text alert to families, a paragraph for a school board packet, an item for the student newspaper, and a work order for custodians. At every station after the first, a group reads what the previous group wrote and marks anything the draft dropped or added before writing its own. The rotation itself is the point of the lesson, because holding the source document constant while the audience changes is what makes register and selection visible. The misconception worth breaking is that writing for a general audience means writing simply, because the custodial work order is the plainest text in the set and also the most demanding about detail.

Activity Directions

  1. Before class, print the student handout for every student and set out four station cards, one at each table, with a sheet of chart paper. The sampling summary on the handout is fictional.
  2. Open with five minutes on the source document. Read the summary aloud and ask the class to name, without discussion, the three facts they think no audience could do without. Record the answers where everyone can see them and leave them up for the whole session.
  3. Assign each group to a starting station. Explain the two-part cycle: at a station, a group first audits the draft already on the chart paper against the summary, then writes its own draft underneath. The first group at each station skips the audit.
  4. Run round one for eight minutes. Groups write their draft on the chart paper, inside the word limit printed on the station card.
  5. Call the rotation. Groups move one station clockwise, spend three minutes auditing, and write for seven minutes. Auditing means underlining any statement the summary does not support and circling any fact the draft left out that its audience needed.
  6. Repeat the rotation twice more, so that every group writes at all four stations and audits three drafts. The rotation ends after four rounds; do not extend it.
  7. Hold a five-minute gallery walk. Each group returns to its starting station and reads the whole column of drafts and audit marks that accumulated there.
  8. Close with the debrief. Have students answer questions 1 through 7 on the handout individually, then take two of them up as a class. Question 3 is the one to spend time on, because it asks how one measurement can serve as evidence for one reader and as an instruction for another.
Writing the Yeldon Tap Sampling Result for Four Audiences — Grade 10 English Language Arts
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Handout

Yeldon Public Schools, Yeldon Middle School, and the sampling summary below are fictional, written for this activity.

Source document. Yeldon Public Schools, drinking water sampling summary, October 9

Samples were collected from 24 drinking water outlets at Yeldon Middle School on October 2, before the building opened. Twenty outlets measured below 5 parts per billion of lead. Three outlets measured between 5 and 15 parts per billion. One outlet, the second-floor art room sink, measured 21 parts per billion. The district compares its results with the federal action level for lead in public water systems, which is 15 parts per billion and drops to 10 parts per billion in 2027 under the Lead and Copper Rule Improvements. The art room sink and the three outlets above 5 parts per billion were taken out of service on October 3, pending filter installation and resampling. Bottled water is available at the main office. Resampling is scheduled for November 6.

Station A. Text alert to families. Forty words or fewer. Your reader is an adult checking a phone between other things and may not open a longer message.

Station B. Paragraph for the school board packet. One hundred and fifty words or fewer. Your readers will vote on whether to fund filters at every outlet in the building.

Station C. Item for the student newspaper. One hundred words or fewer. Your readers are seventh and eighth graders who use these sinks and fountains every day.

Station D. Monday work order for custodians. Eighty words or fewer. Your readers need to know exactly what to do, in what order, before students arrive.

Debrief questions

  1. Name the one fact from the sampling summary that all four audiences need.
  2. Name a fact that belongs in the board paragraph but not in the family text alert.
  3. Explain why the art room result means something different to the board than to the custodians.
  4. Rewrite "taken out of service pending filter installation and resampling" for the student newspaper audience.
  5. Name one statement you found in another group's draft that the sampling summary does not support.
  6. Name the sentence your group cut first when the word limit was tightest.
  7. State what made that sentence the first one to go.

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: That specific outlets were shut off and are not to be used, with the art room sink named. Accept the closely related answer that one outlet measured above the action level, provided the student explains that every audience needs to know which taps are affected.
  2. Answer: Accept any of these: the twenty outlets below 5 parts per billion; the November 6 resampling date; the drop in the action level to 10 parts per billion in 2027; or the full distribution of results across the 24 outlets. Each matters to a funding vote and would crowd a forty-word alert.
  3. Answer: For the board it is a number to compare against a limit and a reason to decide whether to fund filters throughout the building. For the custodians it is not a comparison at all; it identifies one fixture to keep shut off and clearly labeled before students arrive Monday. The same figure is evidence in one document and an instruction in the other.
  4. Answer: Accept any plain rewrite that keeps both the action and the condition, such as: "These sinks are shut off. They will stay off until filters go in and the water is tested again." Do not credit rewrites that drop the resampling, which turns a temporary closure into a permanent one.
  5. Answer: Accept any statement a student can show the summary does not support. Common ones include claims that the water is unsafe throughout the school, that the pipes are made of lead, that the district knew earlier, and that the problem is fixed. The summary reports outlet results, not the cause and not a resolution.
  6. Answer: Accept any sentence the group actually cut, quoted or paraphrased. Most groups cut the sentence about bottled water at the main office or the count of outlets below 5 parts per billion.
  7. Answer: Accept any reason tied to the audience rather than to length alone. Strong answers say the sentence served a different audience, repeated something the reader already knew, or gave context that did not change what the reader had to do next.

Differentiation

Support

Give these students a station card with the audience described in a single sentence and a checklist of four facts to consider including, rather than an open selection from the fictional summary. Assign them the same station twice in the rotation so that the second visit is a revision of familiar material, and let the audit step be done with a partner.

Extension

Ask these students to write a fifth draft after the rotation: a two-paragraph letter to the district from a family that read only the text alert and now has questions the alert did not answer. The letter must ask for information the summary contains but the alert omitted, which requires rereading both documents against each other.

ELL supports

Pre-teach outlet, action level, resampling, work order, and out of service with a photograph or sketch of a school fountain and sink. Provide a bilingual glossary and allow drafts to be composed orally into a phone or recorder before being written. Give the Station D group a numbered frame with one line per action so that the work order can be built step by step.

Extensions

Have students compare their four drafts with a real notice their own school or district has sent home, and write a paragraph naming one thing the real notice did better and one fact a reader would still have to ask for. Notices of this kind are usually written by facilities staff and communications staff together, which is worth pointing out when students ask who writes them.