Lesson plan Grade 11 English Language Arts
Where Kingsmere's Missing Water Went: A Source-Evaluation Lesson
Students weigh a water audit table, a council newsletter, an anonymous forum post, and an engineer's memo to explain a fictional city's unbilled water.
Objectives
- Students will evaluate four sources on one question for purpose, expertise, and the evidence each actually supplies.
- Students will distinguish a claim the water audit supports from a claim it cannot support.
- Students will write a synthesis paragraph that answers a narrowed question and attributes each piece of evidence.
Vocabulary
- Water audit
- A careful check of where water goes, either in a home or across a whole water system. Audits find leaks and waste so they can be fixed.
Also: nonrevenue water, apparent loss, real loss, corroboration, synthesis
Teacher overview
Every water utility pumps more water than it bills, and the gap has a technical name: nonrevenue water. This lesson gives students four sources that all address the same question about the fictional city of Kingsmere, where the gap is large enough that residents have started arguing about it in public. The misconception this lesson is built to correct is the belief that the most confident-sounding source is the most reliable one; students often rank a blunt newsletter claim above a hedged engineering memo, even though the memo is the document that explains how the audit's numbers were produced. A second misconception worth naming aloud is that all unbilled water is stolen or leaked, when a large share of it is water that was delivered and used but measured badly.
Procedure
Hook (5 min): Project only one line from the Kingsmere audit: the city produced 1,120 million gallons and billed 918 million gallons. Ask students to write, without discussion, one sentence explaining where the difference went. Collect two or three sentences aloud and note on the board how confident each explanation sounds compared with how much the students actually know.
Framing the research question (8 min): Distribute the source packet. Explain that a broad question such as "where does the water go" cannot be answered from four documents, and model narrowing it to a question the packet can address: which of the proposed explanations for Kingsmere's unbilled water does the audit record actually support? Have students copy the narrowed question at the top of their evaluation grid.
Modeling with Source A (10 min): Work through the audit table as a class. Name each row's origin: produced water and billed water come from meters, metered-but-unbilled use comes from records of hydrant testing and park irrigation, and the last two rows are estimates. Model the annotation students will use, writing "measured" or "estimated" beside each row and stating what a reader may conclude from each.
Small-group evaluation of Sources B, C, and D (14 min): In groups of three, students complete the evaluation grid for the newsletter, the forum post, and the engineer's memo, recording each source's purpose, the writer's position and expertise, the evidence offered, and one limit. Circulate and press groups that write "biased" as an evaluation to say instead what the bias would predict the source to leave out.
Whole-class ranking and formative check (8 min): Groups post their ranking of the four sources for usefulness. Discuss disagreements, then run the check: each student writes on an index card the source they would cite first and one sentence of justification. Scan the cards before students begin writing; if fewer than three-quarters name Source A or Source D, pause and reread the memo's paragraph on how the real-loss figure was obtained before releasing students to write.
Independent synthesis paragraph (10 min): Students draft handout item 8, the synthesis paragraph answering the narrowed question with attributed evidence from at least two sources. Collect drafts at the end of the period.
Student Handout
Source A. Kingsmere Municipal Water, annual water audit summary (fictional).
| Category | Million gallons | How the figure was obtained |
|---|---|---|
| Water produced at the treatment plant | 1,120 | Plant master meter |
| Water billed to customers | 918 | Customer meters |
| Metered but unbilled (hydrant testing, park irrigation) | 22 | Utility work records |
| Estimated meter under-registration (apparent loss) | 61 | Sample testing of 40 old meters |
| Unaccounted for, assumed leakage (real loss) | 119 | Remainder after subtraction |
Source B. From a Kingsmere council member's monthly newsletter.
"Residents keep asking me where our water goes, and I will give you the plain answer the utility will not. Most of that missing water is being taken from our hydrants by contractors who never buy a permit. I have seen it myself on Dunley Street. Until the utility locks its hydrants, every household in this city is paying for water someone else took."
Source C. From an anonymous post on the Kingsmere neighborhood forum.
"My cousin used to work for the water department. He says there has been a broken main under Dunley Street for two years and they are keeping it quiet because fixing it would cost more than the budget allows. That is your missing water right there. Nobody wants to say it out loud."
Source D. From a memo by a consulting engineer retained by the utility.
"Two cautions on the audit. First, the real-loss figure is not measured. It is what remains after billed use, metered-but-unbilled use, and estimated meter error are subtracted from production, so every error in the other rows lands in that row. Second, roughly a third of the customer meters in this system are more than fifteen years old, and worn meters typically under-register. The sample tested this year supports the apparent-loss estimate shown, though a larger sample would narrow it. I recommend a meter-replacement pilot on the oldest routes before the city commits to a leak-detection survey of the entire distribution system."
Questions
- State, in one sentence, the narrowed question this packet can actually answer.
- According to Source A, how much water did Kingsmere produce and how much did it bill? State the difference.
- Which row of Source A was obtained by subtraction rather than by measurement, and which source tells you so?
- Source B claims most of the missing water is taken from hydrants. Explain where in Source A water taken that way would have to appear, and why the audit does not support the claim.
- Source C raises a broken main under Dunley Street. Explain why the post cannot support a conclusion on its own, and state one thing that would have to be true for it to count as evidence.
- Rank the four sources from most to least useful for the narrowed question. Justify your first and last placements.
- Source D recommends a meter-replacement pilot. Which figures in Source A give that recommendation its support?
- Write a synthesis paragraph of five to seven sentences answering the narrowed question. Attribute every piece of evidence to the source it came from.
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: Which explanations for Kingsmere's unbilled water does the audit record support? Accept any narrowing that keeps the question inside what four documents about one city's audit can settle.
- Answer: Kingsmere produced 1,120 million gallons and billed 918 million gallons, a difference of 202 million gallons.
- Answer: The unaccounted-for row, listed at 119 million gallons, is the remainder after subtraction. Source A's own "How the figure was obtained" column says so, and Source D states it directly and warns that errors in the other rows collect in that row. Accept either source.
- Answer: Authorized hydrant use is already accounted for in the metered-but-unbilled row, which records 22 million gallons for hydrant testing and park irrigation together. Water taken without a permit would not appear in that row at all, so it could only sit inside the unaccounted-for row of 119 million gallons, which Source D describes as a remainder left after subtraction rather than a measurement of anything. The audit therefore holds no figure that supports Source B, whose only evidence is what its writer says he saw on one street.
- Answer: The post is anonymous, reports a secondhand account, and offers no record anyone could check. For it to count as evidence, the break would have to be confirmed by something verifiable, such as a repair order, a pressure record, or a leak survey of that street.
- Answer: Accept any defensible ranking that places Source A or Source D first and Source C last. Source A supplies the measured record the question turns on and Source D explains how each figure was produced; Source C offers no checkable evidence at all.
- Answer: The apparent-loss row of 61 million gallons, drawn from a sample of 40 old meters, together with Source D's statement that about a third of the system's meters are more than fifteen years old. Under-registering meters would show up as water produced but never billed.
- Answer: Accept a paragraph that answers the narrowed question, uses at least two sources, and attributes each. A strong response holds that the audit supports meter under-registration as a substantial and documented part of the gap, treats the 119 million gallon leakage figure as an estimate rather than a measurement because Source D explains how it was derived, and rejects Source B's hydrant claim because no row of the audit measures unauthorized hydrant use at all.
Differentiation
Support
Give these students a partially completed evaluation grid with the purpose column already filled for Sources B and C, so their work concentrates on evidence and limits. Provide a two-column sorting card labeled "measured" and "estimated" for the audit rows before they attempt handout item 3, and allow item 6 to be answered as a ranked list with one justification instead of two.
Extension
Ask students to write the memo Source D would send if the meter-replacement pilot came back showing that under-registration was twice what the sample suggested. The memo must state what the new result would do to the unaccounted-for row and what it would not settle, in the hedged register the original memo uses.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "audit," "unbilled," "under-register," and "remainder" with a labeled diagram showing water leaving a plant meter, passing a customer meter, and arriving at a house. Provide sentence frames for the evaluation grid, such as "This source was written in order to ___" and "This source cannot tell us ___." Allow items 2 and 3 to be answered with figures and short phrases before students write full sentences.
Extensions
Have students request, in a short formal letter, the one document that would most improve the packet, naming what it would show and why the four sources cannot substitute for it. Strong letters ask for the leak-detection survey results or the full meter-testing dataset rather than for a general explanation.