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Worksheet Grade 8 English Language Arts

Judging the Reasons at the Thornlea PFAS Filter Hearing

Grade 8 students read eight public comments about a fictional town's PFAS filter vote and judge which reasons are relevant, supported, and strongest.

Objectives

  1. Students will distinguish a relevant reason from an irrelevant one in public comments on a water decision.
  2. Students will identify unsupported figures and rewrite them with an attribution or a stated limit.
  3. Students will write a counterclaim and a response that concedes one point before holding the claim.

Vocabulary

Key words: claim, reason, relevant evidence, counterclaim, concession, attribution

Teacher overview

This worksheet puts eight short public comments from a fictional council hearing in front of students and asks them to judge the quality of each reason rather than agree or disagree with it. The town of Thornlea is invented, and every number in the comments belongs to that invented scenario except the federal limit for PFOA and PFOS, which is 4.0 parts per trillion each. Water systems have until April 2029 to meet that limit, and in May 2026 EPA proposed letting eligible systems apply for up to two more years; that proposal was not final as of September 2026, which is useful context when discussing Comment H and item 8. One misconception is common here: eighth graders often treat a sentence as strong evidence simply because it contains a number, even when the number has no stated source and no connection to the claim. A second misconception is that the number of people who hold an opinion counts as support for it. Comments C and F are written to surface both errors, so plan to spend the debrief there.

Judging the Reasons at the Thornlea PFAS Filter Hearing — Grade 8 English Language Arts
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Worksheet

The situation. The town of Thornlea draws its water from three wells. In April, a sample from Well 2 came back at 9.6 parts per trillion for PFOA. The federal limit is 4.0 parts per trillion. The water district can build a granular activated carbon filter, which is a tank of treated carbon that traps PFAS as water passes through. It can also shut Well 2 and buy water from the nearby town of Draycombe. The council held a hearing. Eight comments are printed below.

Comment A. "The April sample from Well 2 came back at 9.6 parts per trillion for PFOA. The federal limit is 4.0. Thornlea should build the carbon filter this year."

Comment B. "My cousin lives two towns over, and her water tastes fine. I do not see a problem here."

Comment C. "Everyone I know is worried about this. That is reason enough to act."

Comment D. "The district engineer reported that a carbon filter would take about 14 months to design and build. If the council votes in June, Well 2 stays over the limit for more than a year. Shutting Well 2 now and buying water from Draycombe would fix the problem sooner."

Comment E. "Mr. Dabney has voted against every project for ten years, so nothing he says about this filter matters."

Comment F. "Filters like this cost a fortune. Ours will probably run $80 a month per house."

Comment G. "I agree that the bill increase is real, and the district estimates it at $4.10 a month. Even so, Well 2 serves the elementary school, and the April sample was more than twice the limit. I still think Thornlea should build the filter."

Comment H. "The state has not fined us, so the water must be safe enough."

Answer every item in complete sentences.

  1. Write the claim that Comment A supports, in your own words.
  2. Comment A gives a measurement as evidence. Copy the measurement and name what it measures.
  3. Comment B talks about how water tastes in another town. Explain why taste is not relevant to the claim about Well 2.
  4. Comment C says that everyone the speaker knows is worried. Explain why that is a weak reason even if the statement is true.
  5. Comment E answers a person instead of a reason. Rewrite Comment E in one or two sentences so that it answers a reason instead.
  6. Comment F gives a dollar figure with no source. Rewrite the sentence so the figure is either attributed to a source or marked as a guess.
  7. Comment G makes a move that no other comment makes. Name the move and copy the sentence that shows it.
  8. Comment H treats the lack of a state fine as proof that the water is safe. Explain the problem with that reasoning in two sentences.
  9. Comment D argues for a different plan than Comment A does. State Comment D's claim and copy the sentence that gives its strongest support.
  10. Rank Comments A, C, and F from strongest to weakest support for the claim "Thornlea should build the carbon filter this year." Explain your first choice in one sentence.
  11. Write one counterclaim that a careful reader could raise against Comment A's claim. Draw the counterclaim from the printed comments.
  12. Write a two-sentence response to the counterclaim you wrote in item 11. Concede one point in the first sentence, then hold the claim in the second.

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

Answer Key
  1. Answer: Thornlea should build the granular activated carbon filter this year. Accept any restatement that keeps both the action and the timing.
  2. Answer: 9.6 parts per trillion of PFOA in the April sample from Well 2. The measurement reports how much PFOA is in the water from that one well.
  3. Answer: Taste does not indicate PFOA. PFOA has no taste at these levels, and the cousin's water comes from a different system, so the comparison says nothing about Well 2. Credit any answer that names both the wrong measure and the wrong system.
  4. Answer: It counts people rather than evidence. How many neighbors feel worried does not tell the council how much PFOA is in the water or whether a filter would remove it.
  5. Answer: Accept any rewrite that responds to a stated reason instead of to Mr. Dabney's voting record. A model rewrite: "Mr. Dabney says the filter costs too much, so I want to hear the district's cost estimate before the council votes."
  6. Answer: Accept any rewrite that either names a source or marks the number as an estimate. A model rewrite: "I have not seen a cost estimate for Thornlea, so my $80 figure is a guess and should not be used."
  7. Answer: Comment G concedes a point to the other side and still holds its claim. The sentence is "I agree that the bill increase is real, and the district estimates it at $4.10 a month."
  8. Answer: A fine is a record of enforcement, not a measurement of the water. Thornlea could be over the limit and not yet fined, so the absence of a fine does not answer the question the sample already answered.
  9. Answer: Comment D claims that Thornlea should shut Well 2 now and buy water from Draycombe. The strongest supporting sentence is "The district engineer reported that a carbon filter would take about 14 months to design and build."
  10. Answer: A, then C, then F. Comment A is strongest because it gives a measured value and the limit it is compared against. Comment F ranks last because its unsourced cost figure argues against building the filter rather than for it, while C at least supports acting, though only with a head count.
  11. Answer: Accept any counterclaim grounded in the printed comments. The strongest one comes from Comment D: building the filter leaves Well 2 over the limit for more than a year, so shutting the well now would protect the school sooner.
  12. Answer: Accept any two-sentence response with a real concession first. A model response: "It is true that a filter takes about 14 months, so Well 2 would stay over the limit during construction. Thornlea should still build it, because buying water from Draycombe is a temporary fix and the town needs its own long-term supply."

Differentiation

Support

Give students a three-column chart labeled "What the comment claims," "What it offers as support," and "Is that support about Well 2?" and have them fill it in for Comments A through D before writing any full sentences. Work item 1 aloud as a class so the difference between a claim and a reason is settled before students continue.

Extension

Ask students to write a ninth comment that uses a real reason but places it under the wrong claim, then trade papers and have a partner explain exactly where the reasoning breaks down.

ELL supports

Provide a bilingual term card for claim, reason, evidence, counterclaim, and concession, each with a one-line example drawn from the comments on this page. Allow students to annotate the comments in their first language before writing item responses in English, and accept sentence frames such as "This reason is weak because it does not tell us ..." for items 3, 4, and 8.

Extensions

Have students find a public notice or meeting summary from any local government body, mark one relevant reason and one irrelevant reason in it, and explain in a short paragraph which sentence they would ask the writer to attribute to a source.