Graphic organizer Grade 9 English Language Arts
Four Voices at the Ostrey Dam Relicensing Hearing
A grade 9 organizer sorting four fictional hearing statements by speaker, audience, appeal, and loaded wording, then building a claim and the counterclaim to answer.
Objectives
- Students will identify the audience and the purpose behind each of four hearing statements.
- Students will name the main appeal in a statement and the wording that carries it.
- Students will state a claim and the counterclaim their claim must answer.
Vocabulary
Key words: appeal, audience, loaded language, counterclaim, relicensing
Teacher overview
Four people speak at a public hearing about the same dam, and the organizer holds their statements side by side so students can see how differently the same facts can be arranged. Each row moves from the speaker and what that speaker wants, through the audience and the main appeal, to the two words doing the most work in the statement. The misconception this organizer addresses is the belief that an appeal to feeling is a trick and an appeal to reason is honest. A hearing statement about a place people swam in as children is not dishonest for saying so, and the useful question is not whether a speaker used feeling but whether the statement would still stand if the feeling were removed.
Organizer
The situation. Quarrymount, the Ostrey Dam, the Vellow River, and all four statements below are fictional and were written for this organizer. The Ostrey Dam has produced electricity for a long time, and its federal license is up for renewal. The dam blocks a stretch of the Vellow River that once carried migrating fish. Renewing the license would require the owner to build a fish passage. Removing the dam would end the electricity and drain the reservoir behind it. A hearing is held in the Quarrymount school gym.
Statement 1. Operations manager for the fictional utility that owns the dam. "This plant has run without a serious failure for decades. It supplies power that this valley uses. A fish passage is an expense, and we can build one, but the board needs to hear that the cost lands on the same ratepayers sitting in this room tonight."
Statement 2. Retired teacher who has lived in Quarrymount since childhood. "I learned to swim in that reservoir. My father learned to swim there. You are asking whether to drain the place where three generations of this town spent their summers, and I have not heard one person on that panel say the word summer."
Statement 3. Fisheries biologist with the state agency. "Our surveys upstream of the dam have found no returning adults for as long as we have counted. Below the dam we find them every year. The pattern is consistent, and it points to the barrier. A passage would let us test whether the run recovers."
Statement 4. Owner of a machine shop on the river road. "My shop employs people from this town. Our power comes from that plant, and our rates matter to whether we stay. I have nothing against fish. I have something against a decision made by people who will not be here when the shop closes."
Directions. Fill every empty cell. Use one sentence in each cell. Then complete the last row.
| Statement | Speaker, and what the speaker wants | Who the speaker is really addressing | Main appeal: reason, feeling, or authority | Two words doing the most work | One thing the statement leaves out |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Operations manager | |||||
| 2. Retired teacher | |||||
| 3. Fisheries biologist | |||||
| 4. Machine shop owner | |||||
| My argument | What should happen to the Ostrey Dam? | Which statement is the strongest against you? | What wording carries its force? | What can you concede? | What reason still holds after the concession? |
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Completed Exemplar
| Statement | Speaker, and what the speaker wants | Who the speaker is really addressing | Main appeal: reason, feeling, or authority | Two words doing the most work | One thing the statement leaves out |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Operations manager | The utility wants the license renewed on terms it can afford | The licensing panel, and through it the ratepayers in the room | Reason, supported by the speaker's authority over plant records | "ratepayers" and "expense," which move the cost from a company to the audience | What the passage would actually cost, and how that cost compares with the dam's earnings |
| 2. Retired teacher | The teacher wants the reservoir kept | The panel, and the neighbors who share the memory | Feeling, built on shared local history | "generations" and "summer," which turn a reservoir into a family place | Whether the swimming the teacher describes would be possible in a free-flowing river instead |
| 3. Fisheries biologist | The biologist wants a passage built so the run can be tested | The panel, as the body that can require a passage | Reason, resting on a counted record and on agency authority | "consistent" and "barrier," which name a pattern and assign it a cause | How long a recovery would take, and what would happen if the run did not return |
| 4. Machine shop owner | The owner wants the plant kept running and rates held down | The panel, and any official who might leave town later | Feeling, framed as a practical interest in jobs | "employs" and "closes," which place the risk on named neighbors | Whether the shop's power actually comes from this plant rather than from the wider grid |
| My argument | The license should be renewed with a fish passage required | Statement 1, the operations manager, because the cost objection is real | "the cost lands on the same ratepayers sitting in this room" | The passage will raise bills, and the utility is right to say so plainly | The record shows no returning adults above the dam and returning adults below it every year, so the barrier is the one cause the town can act on |
Differentiation
Support
Give these students the appeal column already filled in and ask them to find the wording that carries each appeal. Provide a short list of appeal definitions with one example sentence each. Allow the last row to be completed in phrases, and let the concession be chosen from three options the teacher supplies.
Extension
Ask these students to rewrite Statement 2 so that it keeps the same request but rests on reason rather than feeling, then to write a paragraph on what the rewrite gained and what it lost. They may also add a fifth row for a speaker nobody has invited, such as a resident downstream of the dam.
ELL supports
Pre-teach appeal, audience, and counterclaim using one short example for each, drawn from the statements themselves. Provide a two-column glossary for hearing words such as relicensing, panel, passage, and ratepayer. Allow students to underline the loaded wording in each statement before writing any cell.
Extensions
Ask students to read all four statements aloud in a different order and to note which one now sounds strongest. A short discussion of why order changed their judgment leads into how a hearing agenda, or the order of paragraphs in an essay, can do part of the arguing on its own.