Lesson plan Grade 9 English Language Arts
Two Op-Eds on the Banwell Plant Upgrade: A Grade 9 Analysis Lesson
A 50-minute grade 9 lesson where students analyze two fictional op-eds about a wastewater plant upgrade and judge which one supports its claim better.
Objectives
- Students will separate a writer's claim from the evidence offered for it in a short opinion piece.
- Students will explain how word choice shapes a reader's response without treating strong feeling as strong evidence.
- Students will write an analytical paragraph comparing how two writers support the same kind of claim.
Vocabulary
Key words: claim, evidence, reasoning, connotation, op-ed
Teacher overview
The common misconception this lesson addresses is that the more forceful writer is the better supported one, because certainty of tone is easy to mistake for weight of evidence. The two fictional op-eds here are built to test that habit, since the calmer piece carries more verifiable support while the heated piece carries more memorable phrasing. Students learn to mark claim, evidence, and reasoning separately before they judge anything. The subject, a wastewater plant upgrade that would raise monthly bills, is a decision real councils face and one on which reasonable neighbors disagree.
Procedure
Warm-up on the three terms (7 min): Post three sentences about an unrelated school matter and have students label each as claim, evidence, or reasoning. Confirm the working definitions: a claim is a position, evidence is something a reader could check, and reasoning is the sentence that connects the two. Note that a word can carry a strong feeling without carrying any evidence.
First reading of Op-Ed A (8 min): Students read the engineer's piece on the handout and underline every sentence a reader could verify. Ask for a show of hands on how many underlines each student made, and record the range on the board without comment.
First reading of Op-Ed B (8 min): Students read the second piece and underline verifiable sentences again. Then have them circle three words in Op-Ed B that carry a strong feeling, such as reckless or gouging, and write next to each what feeling it produces.
Guided T-chart (10 min): Build a class T-chart with columns for Op-Ed A and Op-Ed B and rows for claim, strongest evidence, weakest support, and one word choice that shapes the reader. Fill the first row together, then release students to complete the rest in pairs. Stop the pairs once to correct the most common error, which is listing an emotional sentence in the evidence row.
Independent writing (12 min): Students complete handout questions 1 through 5. Question 4 asks for an analytical paragraph and question 5 asks for a defended judgment, so remind students that those two tasks are different.
Exit check (5 min): Each student writes on an index card the single strongest piece of evidence in either op-ed and names which piece it came from. If more than a quarter of the cards name an emotionally worded sentence rather than a checkable one, reteach the evidence row of the T-chart before the next analysis task.
Student Handout
Both op-eds below are fictional, written for this lesson, and set in the imagined city of Banwell.
Op-Ed A. The upgrade should be built on schedule. By Dana Ruel, city engineer, in the Banwell Ledger.
The Banwell Water Reclamation Facility treats what leaves every sink and toilet in this city, then returns it to the Fenwold River. Federal secondary treatment standards require the plant's monthly average for oxygen-demanding waste and suspended solids to stay at or below 30 milligrams per liter. Our plant met that limit in every month of the last three years, and the record is public. The problem is not today's performance. Three of the four aeration blowers were installed when the plant was built, and the manufacturer no longer makes parts for them. Our maintenance staff has kept the blowers running by machining replacements. If a blower fails in July, when flows are highest, the plant loses roughly a third of its treatment capacity for the weeks a rebuild takes. The council's own consultant priced the upgrade, and phasing it over eight years would add about nine dollars a month to the average bill in the final years rather than about six dollars a month starting now. I understand that any increase is a burden. I am asking the council to weigh that burden against the cost of an emergency it can see coming.
Op-Ed B. Slow down before you raise our bills. By Terrance Wick, resident, in the Banwell Ledger.
The city wants to hand a contractor a fortune for equipment most of us will never see. This is a reckless plan, pushed by the same officials who told us last year that the streets budget was fixed. Water bills in this city have climbed for years while wages have not, and now the council wants to gouge families again for blowers. Nobody has explained why the plant cannot keep running the way it has been running. If our maintenance crew is good enough to build parts by hand, that sounds like a crew doing its job. My neighbor on a fixed income already chooses between the pharmacy and the utility bill. I say the council should wait, put the question on the ballot, and let the people who pay the bills decide. Banwell does not need a monument. It needs officials who respect the household budget.
Questions
- State the claim of Op-Ed A in one sentence, using your own words.
- State the claim of Op-Ed B in one sentence, using your own words.
- Copy one sentence from Op-Ed A that a reader could check, and one sentence from Op-Ed B that carries strong feeling but offers nothing to check. Label each.
- Write an analytical paragraph of four to six sentences explaining how each writer builds a case. Describe the kind of support each one uses, and quote briefly from both.
- Which op-ed supports its claim better? State your judgment and defend it with two reasons drawn from the texts, not from your own opinion about the upgrade.
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: Banwell should build the plant upgrade on the current schedule because aging blowers are likely to fail and phasing the work costs more later. Students may word this differently while keeping the position and the timing.
- Answer: Banwell should delay the upgrade and put the decision to a public vote because the bill increase burdens households. Accept wording that keeps both the delay and the reason.
- Answer: Checkable examples from Op-Ed A include the statement that the plant met the 30 milligrams per liter monthly average in every month of the last three years, or that three of four blowers date to the original plant. Feeling-heavy examples from Op-Ed B include the claim that the council wants to gouge families again, or that Banwell does not need a monument.
- Answer: Accept any paragraph that describes both patterns of support with brief quotations. A strong response notes that Op-Ed A relies on records, equipment history, and a priced comparison of two schedules, while Op-Ed B relies on loaded words such as reckless and gouge, on a single neighbor's situation, and on distrust of past city statements.
- Answer: Accept either judgment when it is defended from the texts. The stronger case is that Op-Ed A supports its claim better, since its statements about the compliance record, the blower age, and the two cost paths can be checked, while Op-Ed B offers one unnamed neighbor and several judgments. A defensible answer for Op-Ed B notes that it raises the affordability question Op-Ed A never answers directly.
Differentiation
Support
Provide a partially completed T-chart with the claim row filled in for both op-eds and the evidence row started for Op-Ed A. Let these students answer question 4 with three sentence frames: "Op-Ed A supports its claim mostly by ____." "Op-Ed B supports its claim mostly by ____." "The clearest example is when the writer says ____."
Extension
Ask students to rewrite the weakest paragraph of Op-Ed B so that it keeps the same position but replaces feeling with checkable support, then to list what information the writer would need to gather to make that rewrite honest.
ELL supports
Pre-teach claim, evidence, reasoning, connotation, and op-ed with a short chart giving one example sentence for each. Provide a two-column glossary of the loaded words in Op-Ed B with a neutral synonym beside each, so students can hear the difference between reckless and unplanned, or between gouge and increase.
Extensions
Invite a local reporter or a member of a utility board to read both pieces and describe, in ten minutes, how an editor decides which opinion pieces to print. Students then revise their question 5 answer to address one point the visitor raised.