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Debate kit Grade 8 English Language Arts

Should Crowmarsh Meter Every Home? A Grade 8 Debate Kit

A grade 8 debate kit on whether a fictional town should replace its flat water charge with meters, with two-sided evidence, role notes, and a rubric.

Objectives

  1. Students will build an argument on a water billing question using evidence from a shared file.
  2. Students will separate sourced facts from clearly labeled fictional testimony.
  3. Students will deliver a rebuttal that answers the opposing team's strongest point.

Vocabulary

Water meter
A device that measures how much water a home or business uses so the utility can bill fairly. Reading the meter can also reveal hidden leaks.

Also: flat rate, conservation, affordability, rebuttal

Teacher overview

This kit runs as a two-team structured debate across two class periods, with one period for preparation and one for the rounds. The town of Crowmarsh is fictional, and its flat monthly water charge stands in for a billing arrangement that some small systems still use. The resolution is genuinely contested: metering gives households a reason to fix leaks and a bill that matches their own use, and it also raises costs, shifts the burden toward large families, and cannot recover the water a town loses before it reaches any home.

Should Crowmarsh Meter Every Home? A Grade 8 Debate Kit — Grade 8 English Language Arts
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Resolution & Background

Resolution: Crowmarsh should replace its flat monthly water charge with a meter on every home and bills based on the water each household actually uses.

Background: Crowmarsh is a fictional town of about 5,500 people. Every household pays the same water charge each month, whatever it uses. The town has never installed meters. The council is now considering a plan to meter all 2,100 homes over three years and to bill by the gallon after that.

Two facts frame the debate. Nationally, the average household uses about 300 gallons of water a day, and roughly 70 percent of that is used indoors. Household leaks waste an average of about 180 gallons a week, close to 9,400 gallons a year, most of it from running toilets and dripping faucets. Under a flat charge, none of that shows up on a bill.

Roles: Divide the class into an affirmative team and a negative team of four to six students each, plus a moderator and two timekeepers. Each team prepares a two-minute opening, two cross-examination questions for the other side, a two-minute rebuttal, and a one-minute closing. Every speaker must name the evidence item they are using. Students not on a team serve as judges and score with the rubric.

Evidence File

Items marked as sourced come from published material. Items marked as fictional were written for this debate and must be introduced that way in any speech.

Case for metering:

  1. Under a flat charge, a household that repairs a running toilet pays the same as one that ignores it. Federal estimates put household leaks at about 180 gallons a week, nearly 9,400 gallons a year. A meter turns that loss into a number on a bill the family can see. (Source: EPA WaterSense Fix a Leak Week.)
  2. Metering gives a household a way to check its own habits. The average household uses about 300 gallons a day, and about 70 percent of that is indoor use, so changes inside the house show up in the reading. (Source: EPA WaterSense.)
  3. A fictional Crowmarsh council memo prepared for this debate reports that 340 of the town's 2,100 homes have in-ground sprinkler systems, and that all 2,100 pay the same charge. Under the current arrangement, a household of two without a lawn system pays the same as a household watering an acre in July. (Illustrative figures created for this debate.)
  4. Meters also measure the town's own system. If the water sold to homes is far less than the water pumped into the pipes, the difference points to leaks the town can repair. Without meters, no one can calculate that difference. (Reasoning offered for this debate.)

Case against metering:

  1. Meters, installation, billing software, and the staff to run it all are paid for by ratepayers. A widely used rule of thumb, built by adding two EPA benchmarks, treats combined water and sewer costs above about 4.5 percent of a household's income as a high burden, so a project that raises every bill deserves careful review. (Source: EPA affordability benchmarks; EPA Water Affordability Needs Assessment, 2024.)
  2. A metered bill charges by the gallon, which means a household of six pays more than a household of two for the same careful use. Families with a member who needs extra water for a medical condition have no way to use less. (Reasoning offered for this debate, not a documented figure.)
  3. The fictional Crowmarsh Fair Billing Committee argues in testimony written for this debate that the town should repair its own mains first. Water that leaks out of a pipe under the street never reaches a meter, so metering homes cannot recover it. (Illustrative testimony created for this debate.)
  4. A flat charge is predictable. Households on a fixed income know the amount every month, while a metered bill rises in summer, when other costs are also high. (Reasoning offered for this debate.)

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 Makes claims with no evidence from the file Names one item without explaining what it shows Uses at least two items and explains how each supports the team's position Uses several items accurately, explains how they fit together, and anticipates how the other team will read them
Handling of sources Treats fictional testimony as documented fact Names sources unevenly Identifies each item as sourced or fictional when using it Identifies sources consistently and explains why a sourced item carries more weight than illustrative testimony
Rebuttal quality Does not answer the other team Responds to a point without evidence Answers a specific opposing point using an item from the file Answers the opposing team's strongest point and explains why the team's own evidence outweighs it
Delivery and organization Hard to follow, no clear structure Structure is present but transitions are unclear Follows a claim, evidence, conclusion structure and stays within time Clearly structured, well paced, responsive to the round, and finishes on time

Differentiation

Support

Give these students a one-page card with the two strongest items from their team's side, each rewritten in two sentences, and rebuttal frames such as "The other team says ___, but item ___ shows ___." Allow rebuttals to be read from notes.

Extension

Ask students to prepare a third position for the fictional council, such as metering only new construction or charging a flat rate plus a summer surcharge, and to defend it against the strongest item on both sides of the file.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "meter," "flat rate," "ratepayer," and "rebuttal" with a labeled drawing of a fictional household meter and two sample bills. Provide the evidence file with key sentences highlighted, and allow a written closing statement in place of a spoken one.

Extensions

After the debate, students write a short letter to the fictional council stating the position they personally hold, which may differ from the side they argued, and naming the one item from the file that moved them.