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Debate kit Grade 6 English Language Arts

Driftwood Hills' Lawn Watering Rule: A Grade 6 Debate Kit

A grade 6 debate kit on whether a fictional town should limit outdoor lawn watering during summer, with two-sided evidence on conservation and resident hardship.

Objectives

  1. Students will evaluate evidence on both sides of a water-conservation policy resolution.
  2. Students will construct an argument using a claim, at least one reason, and cited evidence.

Vocabulary

Drought
A long stretch of drier-than-normal weather that leaves too little water for people, farms, and nature. Droughts build slowly and can last for years.

Also: conservation, outdoor water use, ordinance

Teacher overview

This is a two-team structured debate for a fifty- to sixty-minute block, with additional argument-building time built into a second session. Students argue for or against the fictional town of Driftwood Hills adopting a rule that limits outdoor lawn watering to two mornings a week during the summer, a resolution with genuine tension between conserving water during a dry season and the cost and effort that falls on individual residents.

Driftwood Hills' Lawn Watering Rule: A Grade 6 Debate Kit — Grade 6 English Language Arts
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Resolution & Background

Resolution: "Driftwood Hills should limit outdoor lawn watering to two mornings a week during the summer, even though this rule will make lawn care harder for some residents."

Background: Driftwood Hills is a fictional town used for this debate. Its water use rises a lot each summer, like in many towns. Residents water lawns and gardens more often. Nationally, a household uses about 300 gallons of water each day. About 70 percent of that is used indoors. The other 30 percent is used outdoors, and outdoor use rises in summer when lawns are watered more. Some towns respond to shortages or drought by limiting when people may water lawns. Other towns instead fix leaks, add better fixtures, or build new water supplies.

Evidence File

Case for the watering rule:

  1. Nationally, a household uses about 300 gallons of water each day. About 70 percent of that is used indoors. The other 30 percent is used outdoors, and that share grows in summer. A watering rule could cut that use. (Source: EPA WaterSense.)
  2. A fictional water planner wrote a report for this debate. It says a two-day watering rule could lower Driftwood Hills' summer water use by a good amount. The idea is based on rules used in other towns during dry spells. (Illustrative estimate created for this debate, not a documented figure.)
  3. Big water projects take years to build. One example, in Orange County, produces about 130 million gallons of reused water each day. Another, the Carlsbad plant, produces about 50 million gallons of drinking water each day from the sea. Both show that new water supply costs a lot and takes time. A quick step like a watering rule can act faster in a dry summer. (Source: Orange County Water District; Carlsbad Desalination Plant.)

Case against the watering rule:

  1. A fictional lawn business group wrote testimony for this debate. It is called the Driftwood Hills Green Spaces Group. The group says a strict watering rule could hurt lawns and gardens. Many residents use lawns to keep yards cool and to stop soil loss. The group wants the town to try asking for less water use first. (Illustrative testimony created for this debate.)
  2. Home leaks waste about 9,400 gallons of water a year, on average. Opponents of the rule argue that helping people fix leaks could save more water than limiting healthy lawn care. (Source: EPA WaterSense Fix a Leak Week.)
  3. A watering rule treats every home the same way. It does not matter how much water a home already uses. Some fictional neighbors on Birchwood Lane raised this point at a town meeting written for this debate. They said the rule was unfair to homes that had already switched to low-water plants.

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Rubric
Criterion Emerging Developing Proficient Advanced
Evidence use Repeats a claim with no cited evidence Cites one piece of evidence without explaining its relevance Cites at least two pieces of evidence and explains how each supports the team's position Cites multiple pieces of evidence, explains their relevance, and anticipates the opposing side's likely response
Rebuttal quality Does not respond to the opposing team's points Responds to an opposing point but without new evidence Directly rebuts a specific opposing point using evidence from the file Rebuts multiple opposing points and explains why the team's evidence outweighs them
Organization & delivery Argument is difficult to follow; no clear structure Argument has a structure but transitions are unclear Argument follows a clear claim-reason-evidence structure Argument is clearly structured, confidently delivered, and directly responsive to the resolution

Differentiation

Support (below grade level)

Provide a simplified evidence card for each side listing only the single strongest point, and give sentence starters for rebuttals, such as "Our opponents claim ___, but the evidence shows ___."

Extension (above grade level)

Ask students to research, using only the Evidence File provided and not outside sources, what a voluntary conservation request mentioned in the "against" case might look like, and incorporate that reasoning into a stronger rebuttal.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "conservation," "outdoor water use," "ordinance," and "drought" with simple definitions and a labeled picture of a lawn sprinkler next to a calendar showing two watering days marked. Allow students to deliver rebuttals from written notes rather than extemporaneously.