Writing prompt Grade 9 English Language Arts
Should Marrowdale Remove the Quillon Mill Dam? An Argument Prompt
A grade 9 argument writing prompt on a fictional town's choice between repairing an old mill dam and removing it, with a planning organizer, exemplar, and rubric.
Objectives
- Students will state a precise claim about a contested local decision.
- Students will support each reason with specific evidence from the supplied background.
- Students will name an opposing claim and answer it rather than restating their own position.
Vocabulary
- Spillway
- A dam's overflow channel, giving extra water a safe path around or over the dam when the reservoir gets too full. It protects the dam from being damaged in floods.
Also: claim, counterclaim, rebuttal, millpond, fish passage
Teacher overview
Many American towns own an old mill dam that no longer does the job it was built for, which means the town eventually has to decide whether to pay to keep it standing. This prompt gives students a fictional version of that decision, with a repair cost, a removal cost, a fish run, and a well-liked pond all on the table. The question is genuinely contested, because the cheaper option is also the one that erases something residents use every summer. Students write a formal argument to a town council, which gives their claim a real audience and a real deadline.
Prompt
Background. Everything below describes Marrowdale, a fictional town on the Nedder River, and every figure was written for this assignment.
The Quillon Mill Dam was built in 1893 to power a grist mill. The mill burned in 1946 and was never rebuilt. The dam is still there. It is 14 feet high and about 90 feet across, and the town owns it. It produces no electricity and serves no water supply.
Last spring the state dam safety office inspected the dam and rated its condition poor. The office gave Marrowdale five years to either repair the dam or remove it. Doing nothing is not one of the choices.
Repairing the dam means a new spillway, new gates, and grouting of the old stone. The town engineer estimates that work at about 2.4 million dollars, with routine inspections and upkeep after that. Removing the dam would cost about 1.1 million dollars, plus about 300 thousand dollars to plant and stabilize the banks. After removal, the town would own no dam and would pay nothing to maintain one.
Behind the dam is the millpond, 11 acres of shallow, slow water. Riverbend Park sits on its north shore. The town canoe launch, the roped swimming area, and the August Millpond Festival are all there, and four houses have shoreline on the pond. If the dam comes out, the pond drains within days and the Nedder returns to a narrower channel with gravel bars and riffles.
Two other facts matter. First, the pond has grown thick mats of algae in August for three summers running, and the town closed the swimming area for nine days last year. Second, the dam has blocked river herring and shad since 1893. A fisheries biologist working for the state, in a report written for this scenario, estimates that removal would open about 14 miles of the Nedder to those fish for the first time in more than a century.
Residents are divided. A group calling itself Friends of the Millpond argues that the pond is part of what Marrowdale is, that the algae comes from lawn fertilizer and can be reduced without draining anything, and that a gravel-bottomed river will not draw families the way the pond does. A second group, the Nedder River Alliance, argues that the town should not spend more than twice the removal cost to keep a structure that produces nothing, and that a free-flowing river with a fish run is worth more to Marrowdale over fifty years than a pond that closes in August.
Your task. Write an argument essay addressed to the Marrowdale town council in which you claim either that the town should repair the Quillon Mill Dam or that the town should remove it. Support your claim with at least three specific pieces of evidence from the background. Name one claim the other side would make, and answer it. Close by telling the council what you want it to do. Your essay should run four to six paragraphs.
Planning Organizer
Fill in every row before you draft. Each row corresponds to a criterion on the rubric.
| Part of the essay | What you will write |
|---|---|
| My claim (one sentence, naming repair or removal) | |
| Reason 1 | |
| Evidence for reason 1 (quote or restate the background) | |
| Reason 2 | |
| Evidence for reason 2 | |
| Reason 3 | |
| Evidence for reason 3 | |
| The strongest claim the other side would make | |
| My answer to that claim, and the evidence behind it | |
| What I am asking the council to do |
Before drafting, check two things. Every reason should have evidence under it that a council member could verify in the background. Your answer to the other side should respond to their point rather than repeat your own.
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Exemplar & Rubric
A proficient grade 9 response to this fictional prompt might read as follows.
Members of the council, the Quillon Mill Dam should come out. The state has given Marrowdale five years and two choices, and removal is the option that costs less, ends a permanent obligation, and gives the Nedder back to the fish that used it before the mill was built.
Start with the money. Repair is estimated at about 2.4 million dollars. Removal is about 1.1 million dollars, and bank planting adds about 300 thousand dollars, for roughly 1.4 million dollars in total. That is a difference of about a million dollars for a structure that produces no power and supplies no drinking water. The difference is not the whole story either, because a repaired dam still has to be inspected and maintained every year afterward, while a removed dam never has to be paid for again.
The second reason is the river itself. The dam has blocked river herring and shad since 1893. The state biologist's report for this scenario estimates that removal would open about 14 miles of the Nedder to those fish for the first time in more than a century. A fish run brings anglers to the river, feeds birds and larger fish, and is very difficult to restore once a town has voted to keep the barrier in place.
The third reason is that the pond we would be paying to keep is already failing. Algae mats have covered it every August for three years, and the swimming area was closed for nine days last summer. Spending 2.4 million dollars to preserve a swimming area that closes in the hottest part of the summer is a poor use of the town's money.
Friends of the Millpond make a fair point, and it deserves an answer. They argue that the pond is part of Marrowdale's identity, and they are right that the canoe launch, the swimming area, and the August festival all sit on that shore. Losing them would be a real loss. Yet the group also argues that the algae can be fixed by reducing lawn fertilizer, and that argument works against them. If the pond only stays usable when the whole watershed changes how it fertilizes, then the town is committing 2.4 million dollars to a pond it cannot control. A gravel-bottomed river with riffles will not be the same as the pond, but the park stays, the festival can move to the bank, and a canoe launch can be rebuilt for a fraction of the repair cost.
I ask the council to vote for removal, and to spend part of the savings rebuilding the launch and the festival grounds along the new channel. That choice meets the state's deadline, costs the town about a million dollars less, and leaves Marrowdale with nothing it has to keep repairing.
Rubric.
| Criterion | Emerging | Developing | Proficient | Advanced |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claim | Position is unclear or shifts between paragraphs | States a position but leaves the requested action vague | States a precise claim naming repair or removal and holds it throughout | States a precise claim and frames it around what the council must decide |
| Evidence and reasoning | Offers opinion with no evidence from the background | Uses one piece of evidence, or uses evidence without explaining it | Uses at least three specific pieces of evidence and explains how each supports a reason | Uses evidence precisely, including a comparison the background implies but does not state |
| Counterclaim and rebuttal | No opposing view appears | Mentions an opposing view but does not answer it | Names the opposing side's strongest point and answers it with evidence | Answers the strongest opposing point and turns one of its own details against it |
| Organization and conventions | Paragraphs are unordered and errors interrupt meaning | Some structure, with abrupt transitions or frequent errors | Clear introduction, ordered reasons, and a closing request, with few errors | Structure builds toward the request, transitions carry the logic, and prose is clean |
Differentiation
Support
Give these students a completed organizer for the side they did not choose, so they can see what a filled row looks like before writing their own. Provide the background with the cost sentences, the fish sentences, and the algae sentences highlighted in three colors, and allow the counterclaim paragraph to be drafted as two sentences using a supplied frame.
Extension
Ask these students to write a second closing paragraph proposing a third option the prompt does not offer, such as a partial breach that lowers the pond without draining it, and to explain in two sentences what evidence the council would need before it could consider that option.
ELL supports
Pre-teach claim, counterclaim, rebuttal, millpond, and spillway with one short definition and a simple side-view drawing of a dam, a pond, and a river below. Provide sentence frames for the claim and the rebuttal, such as "The council should ____ because ____" and "Friends of the Millpond argue ____, but the background shows ____." Allow students to plan orally with a partner before filling the organizer.
Extensions
Have students turn their essays into two-minute council testimony and deliver them to a panel of four classmates acting as council members. The panel asks one question of each speaker, and each speaker writes a one-paragraph reply afterward that either concedes the point or answers it with evidence.