Worksheet Grade 11 English Language Arts
The Sturminster Overflow Interview: Writing Follow-Up Questions
A grade 11 worksheet on a transcript in which a student reporter questions a fictional public works director after a sewer overflow, then drafts follow-up questions.
Objectives
- Students will determine whether an interview answer supplied the information its question requested.
- Students will rewrite a leading question as a neutral one that seeks the same information.
- Students will draft follow-up questions that target a specific gap and narrow a broad assignment into an answerable question.
Vocabulary
- Inflow and infiltration
- Rainwater and groundwater that sneak into sewer pipes through cracks, bad joints, and improper connections. The extra water can overload sewers and treatment plants during storms.
- Sanitary sewer overflow (SSO)
- A sanitary sewer overflow happens when raw sewage escapes from a sewer pipe before it reaches the treatment plant, often because the pipe is blocked, broken, or overwhelmed by too much water getting in. It is different from a combined sewer overflow because it involves a system meant to carry only sewage, not stormwater.
Also: responsive answer, leading question, agentless passive
Teacher overview
An interview answer can be polite, fluent, and completely unresponsive, and telling the difference is a reading skill before it is a reporting skill. This worksheet supplies a transcript from the fictional town of Sturminster, where storm water entered the sanitary sewer and untreated wastewater reached Cawston Brook, and asks students to sort responsive answers from deflections. The misconception the worksheet is built to correct is the assumption that an evasive-sounding answer is always the least useful one; students tend to mark the director's honest refusal to guess at a number as evasion, while accepting the vague reassurance about testing because it sounds cooperative.
Student Worksheet
The fictional Sturminster Ledger, a high school newspaper, sent a student reporter to interview the town's director of public works two weeks after a sewer overflow during a heavy storm. The transcript below is lightly edited for length. Read it, then answer the questions that follow.
Exchange A.
Reporter: How much untreated wastewater reached Cawston Brook on the night of the storm?
Director Tamm: A relatively small volume reached the brook, and the collection system performed as it was designed to perform under extreme rainfall.
Exchange B.
Reporter: The state's report lists the overflow as lasting four hours. Is that accurate?
Director Tamm: The report speaks for itself. I would not want to characterize a document I did not write.
Exchange C.
Reporter: Were residents downstream notified that night?
Director Tamm: Notification protocols were followed.
Exchange D.
Reporter: Isn't it true that this town has ignored its sewers for a decade?
Director Tamm: I reject the premise of that question. We have replaced two miles of sewer main in the past three years.
Exchange E.
Reporter: What caused the overflow?
Director Tamm: Rain reached the sanitary sewer through cracked pipe joints and through roof drains that were connected to it years ago without a permit. Once that water fills the line past its capacity, the excess has to go somewhere. We call it inflow and infiltration, and it is the problem we are working on.
Exchange F.
Reporter: How many homes have roof drains connected to the sanitary sewer?
Director Tamm: We have surveyed part of the older district and not the rest. I do not have a town-wide figure tonight. I would rather give you the number when the survey is done than give you a guess you would have to print.
Exchange G.
Reporter: Will this happen again?
Director Tamm: Any collection system can be overwhelmed by enough rain in a short enough time. What I can tell you is that this year's budget funds the next phase of pipe lining in the older district.
Exchange H.
Reporter: Is the brook safe now?
Director Tamm: Testing showed no lasting effect.
Questions
- In Exchange A the reporter asked for a quantity. State what the director supplied in place of one.
- Quote the phrase in Exchange A that stands where a number would go, and explain what a reader still does not know after reading it.
- Exchange C uses the passive voice and names no actor. State two things the answer leaves unsettled.
- The question in Exchange D is leading. Rewrite it as a neutral question that seeks the same information.
- The answer in Exchange D contains one checkable fact. Quote it and explain how a reporter could verify it.
- Which exchange contains the most responsive answer? Justify your choice by naming what the answer supplied that the question had asked for.
- Exchange F is also a refusal to give a number. Explain why it serves a reader better than the refusal in Exchange B.
- In Exchange G the director answers a question that was not asked. State the question that was asked and the question that was answered.
- Write a follow-up question for Exchange A that would produce a number the reporter could publish.
- Write a follow-up question for Exchange H that names the record or the standard the answer would have to cite.
- The reporter's assignment began as "write about the sewer overflow." Narrow it into one question this interview shows can be answered, and name the single document you would request in order to answer it.
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: A characterization of the volume and a statement about how the system performed, neither of which is the quantity the reporter asked for.
- Answer: "A relatively small volume." The reader does not learn how many gallons reached the brook, what it is small relative to, or who decided that description was accurate.
- Answer: Accept any two of: who carried out the notification, when it happened, which residents received it, and what the protocols require. The passive construction removes the actor, so none of these can be checked.
- Answer: Accept any neutral rewrite seeking the same record, such as: "How much has the town spent on sewer repair over the past ten years, and how does that compare with what the system needs?" The rewrite must not build the accusation into the question.
- Answer: "We have replaced two miles of sewer main in the past three years." A reporter could verify it through the public works department's construction records, the town's capital budget documents, or the council minutes approving those contracts.
- Answer: Exchange E. The reporter asked for a cause and the director named two specific pathways, cracked pipe joints and unpermitted roof drain connections, and then explained the mechanism by which they produce an overflow.
- Answer: In Exchange F the director explains why the number does not yet exist, states what would produce it, and commits to supplying it, so the reader learns the state of the evidence. Exchange B declines to engage with a figure that already exists in a public document and leaves the reader with nothing.
- Answer: The question asked was whether an overflow will happen again. The question answered was what the town is spending money on this year.
- Answer: Accept any question that requests a specific figure and a source, such as: "What volume did the town report to the state for that overflow, and on what page of the report does it appear?"
- Answer: Accept any question that names a record or a benchmark, such as: "Which agency tested the brook, on what dates, and against which water quality standard were the results compared?"
- Answer: Accept any narrowed question the interview shows is answerable together with a document that would answer it. A strong response asks how many properties have roof drains connected to the sanitary sewer in the surveyed district and requests the completed portion of the town's inflow and infiltration survey.
Differentiation
Support
Provide the transcript with each exchange already labeled "asked for a number," "asked for an action," or "asked for a judgment," so students can concentrate on whether the answer matched. Give item 4 as a frame beginning "How much has the town ___ and how does that compare with ___," and allow items 1 through 3 to be answered with quoted phrases rather than full sentences.
Extension
Ask students to write the two-paragraph article the reporter could responsibly publish from this transcript alone, attributing every statement and marking clearly what the interview did not establish. The constraint is that no sentence may assert a figure the transcript does not supply.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "overflow," "notification," "infiltration," and "premise" with a simple diagram showing rain entering a cracked sewer pipe and a roof drain feeding the same line. Provide question stems for items 9 and 10, such as "What number did ___ report to ___?" and "Which agency tested ___, and on what dates?" Allow students to mark responsive and unresponsive answers with a two-color highlight before writing.
Extensions
Have pairs stage the follow-up interview, with one student as the reporter asking only the questions written for items 9 and 10 and the other answering in the director's voice. Afterward, the class decides which follow-ups were hard to deflect and what made them so, which is usually the presence of a named record inside the question itself.