Worksheet Grade 11 English Language Arts
Reading Against the Chart: Bellingcote's Water-Use Claims
A grade 11 worksheet in which students test six claims from a town water report against the chart and notes the report itself supplies.
Objectives
- Students will identify where a text changes units, baselines, or denominators between claims.
- Students will test a written claim against the table the same document supplies.
- Students will rewrite an overstated claim so it says only what the data support.
Vocabulary
Key words: baseline, denominator, axis truncation, peak day, nonrevenue water, per capita
Teacher overview
This worksheet sets six claims from a town's annual water report against the chart and notes printed in the same report. The skill is narrow and transferable, since it asks students to test a sentence against the evidence its own author supplied. One misconception is worth correcting before students begin, because several items turn on it: a drop in the total water a system produces is commonly read as proof that residents changed their habits. A system's total includes commercial and industrial customers and the water lost through leaks before it reaches anyone, so a total can fall because a large customer closed or a crew repaired a broken main, with household behavior unchanged.
Student Worksheet
The town of Bellingcote is fictional, and so is every figure below. All of it comes from one document, the town's annual water report.
Chart, redrawn as a table. Water produced by the Bellingcote system, in million gallons per year.
| Year | Water produced |
|---|---|
| Year 1 | 1,486 |
| Year 2 | 1,402 |
| Year 3 | 1,455 |
| Year 4 | 1,398 |
| Year 5 | 1,321 |
| Year 6 | 1,340 |
Notes printed beneath the chart in small type.
- The vertical axis of the printed chart begins at 1,250 rather than at zero.
- Town population was 38,900 in Year 1 and 43,600 in Year 6.
- Commercial and industrial customers accounted for a little over a third of production in Year 6.
- The Marchbanks cannery, a large customer, closed during Year 4.
- Average day production in Year 6 was 3.7 million gallons. Peak day production in Year 6 was 5.9 million gallons. The plant is rated for 6 million gallons a day.
Claims from the report's opening page.
- Claim A. "Since Year 1, Bellingcote has cut its water use by about ten percent."
- Claim B. "That saving works out to roughly 40 gallons a day for every household in town."
- Claim C. "Last year the system produced 3.7 million gallons a day, down from 4.1."
- Claim D. "Use has fallen in five of the six years shown."
- Claim E. "The Ridgeway zone cut its use by 12 percent while downtown cut its use by 40 million gallons, so downtown carried the effort."
- Claim F. "Our plant handled the summer with room to spare."
Answer every item in complete sentences unless the item says otherwise.
- Claim A compares Year 1 with Year 6. Using the table, name the two years a writer would compare to make the decline look largest, and name the two that would make it look smallest.
- Claim A is arithmetically defensible, yet a reader following the chart would still be misled by it. State what the claim leaves out about the most recent year.
- Claim B divides a system-wide saving among households. Using the notes, name two reasons that division does not measure what households did.
- Claim C reports a daily figure while the chart reports a yearly one. Explain what a reader must do before Claim C can be checked against the chart, and say why the report might prefer the daily figure.
- Test Claim D against the table. State whether it holds, and give the year-to-year changes that decide the matter.
- Claim E sets a percent against a quantity of water. Name the single piece of information a reader needs about each zone before the comparison means anything.
- The first note says the printed chart's vertical axis begins at 1,250. Explain the effect of that choice on a reader who looks at the bars without reading the numbers.
- Claim F rests on the last note. Using the figures in that note, explain why "room to spare" is the wrong description, and name the figure the report should have led with.
- The report never uses the phrase "per person," yet the population note would support a stronger claim than Claim A makes. Explain why the report may have left that comparison out, and say what a reader should conclude from the omission.
- Write a two-sentence replacement for the report's opening page. It must be accurate, must use at most two figures, and must not repeat any error you identified above.
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Answer Key
- Answer: Year 1 compared with Year 5 makes the decline look largest; Year 2 compared with Year 3 makes it look smallest. Year 1 holds the highest production, 1,486, and Year 5 the lowest, 1,321, so that pair maximizes the apparent drop. Year 2 to Year 3 runs the other way, from 1,402 up to 1,455, so a writer choosing that pair would have to report an increase. Accept any answer naming Year 1 with Year 5 and any adjacent rising pair, provided the reasoning names the values. Also accept Year 2 with Year 4 (1,402 to 1,398, a drop of only 4 million gallons) from a student who reads the item as asking for the smallest decline that is still a decline.
- Answer: It hides the most recent increase. Production rose from 1,321 in Year 5 to 1,340 in Year 6, so the newest year in the record moved in the opposite direction from the trend the claim describes. A ten percent decline measured across the full span remains true while the direction of travel has changed, and the reader is not told.
- Answer: Commercial and industrial customers and the closure of a large customer. A little over a third of Year 6 production went to commercial and industrial customers, so a system-wide saving cannot be attributed to households. The Marchbanks cannery closed during Year 4, which removes demand without any household changing anything. Credit answers that also name leaks or water lost before delivery, since the report gives no figure separating that loss.
- Answer: The reader must convert one figure to the other's unit before comparing. A yearly total divided by the days in a year gives an average daily figure, so 1,340 million gallons per year corresponds to the 3.7 million gallons per day the claim reports. The daily figure is easier to state as a round change from 4.1, and a reader cannot check it against the chart without doing the conversion first.
- Answer: It does not hold. Production fell from Year 1 to Year 2, rose from Year 2 to Year 3, fell from Year 3 to Year 4, fell from Year 4 to Year 5, and rose from Year 5 to Year 6. Six years of data give five year-to-year changes, and three of the five are decreases, so the claim overstates the number of falls and treats six years as though they offered six comparisons.
- Answer: The size of each zone's use. A percent change and a quantity of water cannot be compared until the reader knows the base each is measured against, so the report would need each zone's total production in the starting year. Without those bases, 12 percent of a large zone could be far more water than 40 million gallons taken from a small one, or far less.
- Answer: It exaggerates the decline. Because the bars start at 1,250 rather than at zero, only the top portion of each column is drawn, so a change of about 150 million gallons out of roughly 1,400 occupies most of the visible bar height. A reader judging by bar height alone would take the decline for something close to a collapse in use.
- Answer: Because the plant is sized against the peak day, not the average day. Peak day production in Year 6 reached 5.9 million gallons against a plant rated for 6 million gallons a day, which leaves very little margin on the day that matters. The report should have led with the peak day figure, since a plant that meets its average comfortably can still be at its limit on the hottest afternoon.
- Answer: Because the per-person comparison would raise a question the report does not want to answer. Population grew from 38,900 to 43,600 while production fell, so use per person dropped by more than the ten percent Claim A reports, and a reader who noticed that would also notice that the town is serving more people with the same plant. Accept any answer that names the growth in population and reasons about why the report may prefer the simpler figure, so long as it does not assert that the report acted in bad faith without evidence.
- Answer: Accept any two accurate sentences using at most two figures. A strong response reads: Bellingcote produced 1,340 million gallons in Year 6, about ten percent less than in Year 1, though production rose slightly from Year 5. Part of the decline follows the closing of a large industrial customer rather than any change in household use. Credit responses that substitute the peak day framing or the per-person framing, provided the figures are drawn from the table or the notes and no claim exceeds them.
Differentiation
Support
Give these students items 1, 2, 5, 7, and 10, which are the items answerable from the table and the first note alone. Provide the year-to-year changes already computed as a second table, so item 5 becomes a counting task. Model item 1 aloud with the class before students begin.
Extension
Ask these students to redraw the chart with the axis beginning at zero and to write a short paragraph on whether the honest chart makes the town's record look better or worse, and for whom. Then have them find the one claim in the list that would survive every correction on this worksheet and explain what makes it durable.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "baseline," "denominator," "peak day," and "axis" with a labeled sketch of two bar charts drawn from the same numbers, one starting at zero and one starting at 1,250. Allow items 1, 5, and 6 to be answered in phrases or with arrows drawn on the table. Provide the sentence frame "This claim is true or false because the table shows" for the testing items.
Extensions
Have students bring in one chart from a school, city, or utility publication and write a one-paragraph audit of it using the four moves named on this worksheet: the baseline choice, the unit change, the missing denominator, and the truncated axis. Ask each student to name which of the four is hardest to catch when a reader agrees with the conclusion.