Classroom activity Grade 12 English Language Arts
Testifying at Elm Fork's Stormwater Fee Hearing
A grade 12 role-play activity where students testify for or against a fictional town's proposed stormwater utility fee, then vote and debrief as a mock council.
Objectives
- Students will draft and deliver a 90-second testimony statement that states a claim and supports it with evidence.
- Students will address a counterclaim raised by an opposing stakeholder role during the hearing.
- Students will evaluate classmates' testimony for the presence of claim, evidence, and counterclaim.
Vocabulary
- Impervious surface
- An impervious surface is any hard surface, like a road, roof, or parking lot, that rain cannot soak through. The more impervious surface a town has, the more stormwater rushes off it.
Also: stormwater utility fee, testimony, counterclaim, moderator
Teacher overview
Real stormwater fees are proposed and debated in public hearings where a handful of two-minute testimonies can shape how a council votes, and each stakeholder in that room genuinely has different evidence and different interests. This role-play activity assigns groups of four students the roles of a homeowner, a store owner, an environmental advocate, and a hearing moderator, gives each group a shared fact sheet on how stormwater fees are calculated, and has them stage a mock hearing on a proposed fee for Elm Fork, a fictional town used for this activity. The activity maps directly onto the concept it teaches: each role's testimony has to use the same shared facts differently, exactly as real stakeholders build different arguments from the same underlying evidence.
Activity Directions
Explain the scenario to the whole class: Elm Fork's town council has proposed an annual stormwater utility fee, charged to every property based on the amount of impervious surface (roofs, driveways, parking lots) it has, to fund storm-drain upgrades and green infrastructure after several recent storms overwhelmed the town's aging drains.
Divide the class into groups of four and assign each student one role: Homeowner, Store Owner, Environmental Advocate, or Moderator. Distribute the shared fact sheet and the role-specific card (see Student Handout) to each group.
Give groups 15 minutes to read their materials and draft a 90-second testimony statement for their role, using the sentence frame: a claim (support or oppose the fee, or propose a change to it), at least one piece of evidence from the fact sheet, and one sentence addressing what another role in the group is likely to argue.
Run the mock hearing. In each group, the Moderator calls each of the other three roles to testify in turn, timing each testimony at 90 seconds with the stopwatch. While one student testifies, the other two complete the scoring sheet, checking whether the speaker's testimony included a claim, at least one piece of evidence, and an acknowledgment of another viewpoint.
After all three roles have testified in a group, the Moderator leads a 3-minute group vote and discussion: should Elm Fork adopt the fee as proposed, adopt it with changes, or reject it? The Moderator records the group's decision and one sentence of reasoning.
End the activity once every group has completed all three testimonies, the scoring sheets, and the group vote. Reconvene as a whole class for the debrief.
Student Handout
Shared fact sheet (all roles): Elm Fork is a fictional town used for this activity. Stormwater fees are typically calculated using a property's impervious surface area, the paved or roofed area that does not absorb rain, because more impervious surface produces more runoff during a storm. One standard estimate holds that one inch of rain falling on one acre (43,560 square feet) of impervious surface produces roughly 27,140 gallons of runoff, water that has nowhere to soak in and must instead be carried away by storm drains. A large parking lot or big-box store roof can cover several acres, producing many times the runoff of a typical house.
Homeowner role card: Your house and driveway together cover about 2,500 square feet of impervious surface, a small fraction of a big-box store's footprint. You are concerned that a flat annual fee, rather than one scaled to surface area, would charge you a similar amount to what much larger properties pay.
Store Owner role card: Your store's building and parking lot together cover about 4 acres of impervious surface, more than 60 times a typical home's footprint. You support funding storm-drain improvements but are concerned about the size of the fee your large paved area would generate compared to the flat fees some other town programs use.
Environmental Advocate role card: You support the fee because it is scaled to impervious surface area, meaning the properties producing the most runoff pay the most toward fixing the problem. You argue that fee revenue should fund green infrastructure, such as permeable pavement and rain gardens, that reduces runoff at its source rather than only enlarging storm drains.
Moderator role card: You call each witness to testify, enforce the 90-second limit, and lead your group's 3-minute vote and discussion after all testimony is complete. You do not testify yourself, but you should ask one clarifying question of at least one witness.
Scoring sheet (all roles use this to evaluate each other): For each speaker, check: Claim stated? Evidence used? Addressed another viewpoint?
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Answer Key
Debrief question 1: "Which role's testimony used the fact sheet's numbers most effectively, and why?"
Answer: Answers will vary, but the strongest responses typically point to the Environmental Advocate or Store Owner, since both roles can use the acre-versus-square-footage comparison directly to support a specific claim about who should pay more, rather than simply asserting a fee is fair or unfair.
Debrief question 2: "The Homeowner and Store Owner roles share a fact sheet but reach different conclusions. What does that show about how evidence and interest interact in a real hearing?"
Answer: It shows that the same shared facts can support different, even opposing, claims depending on which stakeholder's interests are at stake, which is exactly why real hearings require a council to weigh multiple testimonies rather than accept any single one as the full picture.
Debrief question 3: "What is one counterclaim you had to respond to in your own testimony, and how did you respond to it?"
Answer: Answers will vary by role and group; a complete answer names a specific opposing point (for example, the Store Owner anticipating the Advocate's argument that large properties should pay proportionally more) and states the specific sentence used to respond to it.
Differentiation
Support
Provide a filled-in sentence frame for the 90-second testimony ("I [support/oppose/want changes to] this fee because ___, which the fact sheet shows by ___. I understand [another role] may argue ___, but ___.") for students to adapt rather than draft from scratch.
Extension
Ask the Moderator role (or an additional student) to draft one follow-up question for each witness that pushes back on their strongest piece of evidence, and have witnesses respond to that question live during the hearing before the group vote.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "impervious surface," "testimony," and "moderator" with simple visuals (a paved parking lot versus a grass lawn for "impervious surface"). Allow the 90-second testimony to be read from a fully written script rather than delivered from notes.