Lesson plan Grade 11 English Language Arts
Harlow Springs' PFAS Report: An Informative Writing Lesson
A grade 11 lesson where students translate a dense PFAS drinking-water regulation into a clear public FAQ paragraph for a fictional utility.
Objectives
- Students will convey the requirements of a real PFAS drinking-water regulation clearly and accurately in an original paragraph.
- Students will select and organize technical details for a general public audience rather than a technical one.
- Students will state the real regulatory limit for PFOA and PFOS and explain its significance to a lay reader.
Vocabulary
- PFAS
- A large family of human-made chemicals used in things like nonstick pans, waterproof fabric, and firefighting foam. They are called forever chemicals because they take a very long time to break down.
- Maximum contaminant level (MCL)
- A maximum contaminant level, or MCL, is the highest amount of a certain substance that federal rules allow in drinking water. Water systems test regularly to prove their water stays under each limit.
Also: compliance deadline, informative writing
Teacher overview
Federal drinking-water rules are written in a register few residents can parse on a first read, yet utilities are increasingly required to explain those same rules to the public in plain language. This lesson gives students a dense, regulation-style paragraph about PFAS limits and asks them to rewrite it as a short FAQ entry for a fictional utility's website. A common misconception this lesson addresses directly is that "simplifying" a technical text means deleting the hard parts; the lesson instead asks students to keep every essential fact while reorganizing and re-explaining it for a different audience, which is a harder and more valuable skill.
Procedure
Hook (5 min): Project the dense excerpt below and give students sixty seconds to read it silently. Ask: "If a neighbor asked you what this means for their tap water, what would you say?" Collect a few attempts on the board without correcting them yet.
Dense excerpt (written for this lesson in a deliberately technical register, not a direct quotation of any regulation): "Public water systems subject to the National Primary Drinking Water Regulation for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances shall achieve and maintain compliance with the applicable maximum contaminant levels for the regulated analytes, inclusive of perfluorooctanoic acid and perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, each individually subject to a maximum contaminant level of four parts per trillion, within the compliance timeline established by the promulgating rule."
Direct instruction (10 min): Reveal the real regulation in plain terms: the maximum contaminant level, or MCL, for PFOA and PFOS is 4.0 parts per trillion each, under a rule finalized in April 2024. Note that water systems must meet that limit by April 2029, and that in May 2026 EPA proposed letting eligible systems apply for a two-year exemption, to April 2031. The proposal would not give every system an automatic extension, it would not change the 4.0 parts-per-trillion limits, and it was not yet final as of September 2026, so this is a regulation still in motion rather than a fully settled deadline. Model identifying which facts in the dense excerpt a general reader actually needs (the two chemical names in plain terms, the 4.0 parts-per-trillion limit, and the general timeline) versus which are regulatory scaffolding a lay reader does not need (the exact legal phrase "National Primary Drinking Water Regulation").
Guided practice (15 min): In pairs, students draft a public FAQ paragraph for the fictional Harlow Springs water utility, answering the question "What is PFAS, and what is my utility required to do about it?" using only the facts named in direct instruction, written for a resident with no chemistry background.
Independent practice (15 min): Each student writes their own version of the FAQ paragraph individually, adding one sentence explaining why a proposed exemption that could give some systems more time to comply matters to a resident reading the utility's website today.
Closure / exit ticket (5 min): Students answer one question on an index card: "What is the real 2024 regulatory limit, in parts per trillion, for PFOA and for PFOS individually?" Collect and scan for the correct figure before dismissal.
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Answer Key
- Exit ticket answer: 4.0 parts per trillion each. The April 2024 rule sets the maximum contaminant level for PFOA and for PFOS individually at 4.0 parts per trillion, meaning each chemical is held to that limit on its own rather than a combined total.
Differentiation
Support
Provide a two-column translation chart with the dense excerpt's phrases on the left ("maximum contaminant level," "compliance timeline") and plain-language equivalents on the right for students to reference while drafting, and allow the FAQ paragraph to be built from three provided sentence frames instead of drafted from scratch.
Extension
Ask students to add a second FAQ paragraph explaining why a rule can have both a "final" limit and a "proposed" exemption from its deadline at the same time, using only the facts presented in direct instruction rather than outside research.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "contaminant," "compliance," and "deadline" with simple definitions and a visual timeline showing "rule finalized (2024)," "deadline (April 2029)," and "proposed exemption for eligible systems (to April 2031)" before the hook. Allow the independent-practice paragraph to be drafted first as a bulleted list of facts, then combined into sentences.