Writing prompt Grade 11 English Language Arts
Should Brindmere Publish Its Water Tests as They Come In?
A grade 11 argument prompt on live publication of a fictional utility's turbidity monitoring, with a one-day log students use as evidence on both sides.
Objectives
- Students will write an argument that states a claim about a disclosure policy and supports it with supplied evidence.
- Students will develop a counterclaim drawn from the data rather than from general opinion.
- Students will distinguish an instantaneous reading from a compliance measure and use that distinction in reasoning.
Vocabulary
- Turbidity
- Turbidity is a measure of how cloudy or murky water looks because of tiny particles floating in it. Clear water has low turbidity, and muddy water has high turbidity.
Also: excursion, compliance, counterclaim, disclosure, calibration
Teacher overview
A water utility's monitors run continuously, while its public reports appear monthly, and the gap between those two rhythms is a genuine policy question. This prompt places students inside the fictional town of Brindmere, where a residents' group has petitioned for a live feed of the treatment plant's turbidity readings and the district has resisted. The misconception the prompt is built to correct is the assumption that any reading above a numerical standard is a violation; students who carry that assumption into the essay will misread the log's one spike and produce an argument that collapses under the district's strongest objection. The background supplies both the rule and the day's readings so that a student can argue either side without inventing facts.
Prompt
Background.
The Brindmere Water District is a fictional utility serving about nine thousand people from a conventional filtration plant. Its filters are monitored continuously, and a reading is recorded every few minutes around the clock. Under federal drinking water rules, a plant of this kind must keep finished-water turbidity at or below 0.3 NTU in ninety-five percent of the samples reported each month, and it may never exceed 1 NTU. Turbidity is a measure of cloudiness, and it matters because particles can shelter microorganisms from disinfection.
Brindmere currently posts a summary of its results once a month, after a supervisor has reviewed the readings and flagged any instrument faults. A residents' group called Brindmere Tap Watch has petitioned the district to publish the monitor readings on a public dashboard as they are recorded, with no review step and no delay. The petition follows an unrelated incident three years ago in which the district waited eight days to tell residents about a positive bacteria sample.
The district's operations manager submitted the following log to the town council to explain her objection. It covers one ordinary Thursday at the filter that serves the north side of town.
| Time | Filter effluent turbidity (NTU) | Plant note |
|---|---|---|
| 6:00 a.m. | 0.05 | Normal operation |
| 9:00 a.m. | 0.06 | Normal operation |
| 11:15 a.m. | 0.42 | Filter returned to service after backwash |
| 11:45 a.m. | 0.11 | Filter ripening complete |
| 2:00 p.m. | 0.05 | Normal operation |
In her cover note she explained that a filter is briefly cloudy when it returns to service after being washed, that operators send that water to waste rather than to customers until the reading settles, and that a monthly compliance figure is calculated from reported samples rather than from every instantaneous reading. Tap Watch replied that residents can be told all of this on the same page as the numbers, and that a district which decides on its own what the public is ready to see has already lost the argument about trust.
Writing task.
The Brindmere town council will vote on the petition next month. Write an argument essay taking a position on whether the district should publish its monitor readings live and unreviewed. State a clear claim, support it with at least two pieces of evidence from the background and the log, develop the strongest counterclaim the other side would raise, and answer that counterclaim directly. Address the council as your audience and assume they have read the log.
Planning Organizer
| Category | Your notes |
|---|---|
| Claim: should the district publish live and unreviewed? | |
| Reason 1, with evidence from the background or the log | |
| Reason 2, with evidence from the background or the log | |
| Counterclaim: the strongest point the other side would make | |
| Rebuttal: why your position survives that point | |
| Conclusion: what you are asking the council to do |
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Exemplar & Rubric
Exemplar response.
The Brindmere Water District should publish its monitor readings as they are recorded, with an explanatory note attached to the page rather than a supervisor standing between the reading and the public. The district's own log makes the case better than the petition does. On the Thursday submitted to the council, the north filter read 0.05 NTU in the morning, rose to 0.42 after a backwash, and returned to 0.11 within half an hour. Every one of those numbers is defensible, and the plant's handling of the spike was correct. A district confident enough to hand that log to the council is confident enough to hand it to the public.
The stronger reason is the district's own history. Three years ago it waited eight days to disclose a positive bacteria sample, and that delay is why a residents' group exists at all. A review step that the public cannot observe will always look like the mechanism that produced the eight days, whatever its actual purpose. Publishing continuously removes the discretion that made the earlier delay possible, which is worth more to the district's standing than any single month of clean numbers.
The operations manager's objection deserves a serious answer. She argues that an unreviewed feed will show readings like the 0.42 result and that residents will read them as violations, when the rule requires the plant to stay at or below 0.3 NTU in ninety-five percent of reported monthly samples and never to exceed 1 NTU. She is right that a raw number invites that mistake, and she is right that a fouled or uncalibrated instrument can report a problem that does not exist. The answer is not to withhold the reading but to publish the plant note beside it, exactly as the log already does. The council should require that every reading appear with its operating context and that instrument faults be labeled within the hour, which is a narrower and more defensible policy than either side proposed.
Brindmere should adopt the dashboard with mandatory context. Doing so gives residents the same information the operations staff already have, on the same schedule, and it removes an unobservable review step whose only visible product so far has been an eight-day silence.
Rubric.
| Criterion | Emerging | Developing | Proficient | Advanced |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claim | No position stated, or the position changes across the essay | States a position but leaves its scope vague | States one clear, consistent position on the petition | States a precise position, including any condition attached to it, and holds it throughout |
| Evidence and reasoning | Uses no evidence from the background or log | Restates one figure without explaining what it shows | Uses at least two pieces of supplied evidence and explains what each establishes | Uses supplied evidence precisely, distinguishes the instantaneous reading from the monthly compliance measure, and reasons from that distinction |
| Counterclaim and rebuttal | No opposing view acknowledged | Names an opposing view without answering it | States the strongest opposing point accurately and answers it with evidence | States the opposing point in its strongest form, concedes what is true in it, and answers the remainder without misrepresenting the other side |
| Organization and conventions | Ideas are disconnected; errors interfere with meaning | Some structure; errors are noticeable but do not block meaning | Clear paragraphs with purposeful transitions; few errors | Structure builds the argument step by step toward a specific request to the council; virtually error-free |
Differentiation
Support
Give these students the Planning Organizer with the counterclaim row already filled in, so their work concentrates on the rebuttal. Provide a two-column card separating "what the rule measures" from "what the monitor reports" and let them consult it while drafting. Sentence frames for the rebuttal row, such as "The district is right that ___, but that concern is answered by ___," keep the concession visible.
Extension
Ask students to draft the two-sentence explanatory note that would appear beside every reading on the dashboard, written for a resident with no technical background, and then to argue in one paragraph whether that note is sufficient protection against misreading or whether the district's objection survives it.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "turbidity," "backwash," "excursion," and "compliance" with a simple visual sequence showing a filter being washed, briefly releasing cloudy water, and settling. Provide a claim frame and a concession frame for the organizer. Allow students to complete the organizer in phrases and to rehearse the counterclaim aloud with a partner before drafting.
Extensions
Have the class hold a five-minute council hearing in which two students present the essays' opposing positions and the rest of the class, acting as council members, may ask only questions that name a specific figure from the log. The constraint forces the discussion onto the evidence and shows students how quickly an argument that skipped the compliance distinction runs out of answers.