Writing prompt Grade 9 English Language Arts
Should Ryehope Valley Meter Every Irrigation Well? Grade 9 Prompt
A grade 9 argument writing prompt on a fictional district's proposal to meter all irrigation wells, with background, a planning organizer, an exemplar, and a rubric.
Objectives
- Students will write an argument with a precise claim about a local water policy and evidence drawn from provided background.
- Students will develop one counterclaim fairly and answer it with reasoning rather than dismissal.
Vocabulary
- Aquifer
- An aquifer is an underground layer of rock, sand, or gravel that holds water in the tiny spaces between its grains. Wells reach down into aquifers to bring water up to the surface.
- Monitoring well
- A monitoring well is a well drilled specifically to check on groundwater, not to supply drinking water. Scientists use monitoring wells to measure how high the water table is and to test for pollution before it can spread.
Also: claim, counterclaim, ordinance
Teacher overview
The question behind this prompt is a real one for many farming regions, since a district cannot manage groundwater it has never measured, while the cost of the measuring falls on the well owners. The metering side can look obviously correct at first, so the background here gives the opposing case genuine support rather than a straw version of it. The scenario is fictional, and the organizer categories follow the rubric criteria closely, so a student who fills the organizer has already built most of what the rubric scores.
Prompt
Background. Ryehope Valley is a fictional farming region built on the Ryehope Flats aquifer. Farms there grow hay, onions, and orchard fruit, and nearly all of that water comes from wells rather than from a river. By FAO and UN Water estimates, agriculture accounts for roughly 70 percent of freshwater withdrawals worldwide, so what farms pump matters to any water supply. In the imagined Ryehope Valley Irrigation District, there are about 640 registered irrigation wells. Only 90 of them have meters, because state law requires a meter only on wells drilled after 2010.
Without meters, the district does not know how much water leaves the aquifer each year. Its staff estimates pumping from crop acreage and weather, which is an educated guess and nothing more. The district does have 12 monitoring wells, and those wells show that the water level under the valley has fallen in eight of the last ten years.
The district board has proposed an ordinance. Every irrigation well would need a meter within three years, and every owner would report a yearly total. A meter costs about nine hundred dollars installed in this scenario, and the board has offered to pay half for farms under 200 acres.
Supporters say the district cannot manage what it cannot measure, and that a fair rule needs real numbers rather than estimates. They add that a farm using less than its share has no way to prove it today.
Opponents say the ordinance costs money without producing a drop of water. Small farms would pay the most per acre, even with the district's help. Some growers also expect that once meters exist, pumping limits will follow, and they would rather argue about limits directly than accept them one step at a time.
Writing task. Should the Ryehope Valley Irrigation District require a meter on every irrigation well? Write an argument essay that states a clear claim and supports it with at least two pieces of evidence from the background. Develop one counterclaim a thoughtful person on the other side would raise, answer that counterclaim with reasoning, and end with a concluding statement that follows from your argument.
Planning Organizer
| Category | Your notes |
|---|---|
| Claim (should every well be metered?) | |
| Reason 1 and the evidence from the background that supports it | |
| Reason 2 and the evidence from the background that supports it | |
| Counterclaim a thoughtful opponent would raise | |
| Your answer to the counterclaim, with reasoning | |
| Concluding statement |
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Exemplar & Rubric
Exemplar response:
The Ryehope Valley Irrigation District should require a meter on every irrigation well. The district is currently making decisions about a falling aquifer using estimates rather than measurements, and no fair rule can be built on a guess.
The first reason is that the district's own monitoring shows a problem it cannot describe. Water levels under the valley have fallen in eight of the last ten years, and the district has 12 monitoring wells that record it. What those wells cannot report is how much water anyone actually pumped. Staff estimate the total from crop acreage and weather, which means every number in a district plan carries an unknown error inside it. A district that wants to act on a decade of falling levels needs to know what left the aquifer, not what probably left it.
The second reason is that measurement protects the growers who use water carefully. Today a farm that irrigates efficiently looks the same on paper as a farm that floods a field. With 640 wells and only 90 meters, most of the valley is invisible in the record. If the district ever does set limits, the growers with meters will be the ones who can prove what they used, and everyone else will be arguing from memory.
Opponents make a serious point when they say the ordinance costs money without producing a drop of water. That is true, and for a small farm the cost is real even with the district paying half. The answer is that the purpose of measurement is to give the district's next decision an honest basis. Buying a meter is cheaper than the alternative, which is a district-wide limit written from estimates, applied to everyone equally, and defended by nobody's data. The growers who fear future pumping caps have the strongest reason of all to want accurate numbers before those caps are written.
Ryehope Valley should adopt the ordinance. The aquifer is falling, the district cannot say by how much anyone is drawing it down, and the growers who use water carefully have no way to show it. A meter is a small price for an argument based on facts.
Rubric:
| Criterion | Emerging | Developing | Proficient | Advanced |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claim | No clear position on the ordinance | States a position that shifts or stays vague | States one clear position and holds it throughout | States a clear position and previews the reasoning that will support it |
| Evidence and reasoning | No evidence from the background | Restates one detail without explaining its relevance | Uses at least two specific details and explains how each supports the claim | Uses two or more details, explains each, and shows how they fit together |
| Counterclaim | No opposing view mentioned | Names an opposing view but does not answer it | States a counterclaim fairly and answers it with reasoning | States the strongest counterclaim fairly, answers it, and ties the answer back to the claim |
| Organization and conventions | Ideas are disconnected and errors block meaning | Some paragraph structure, with errors that distract | Clear paragraphs, purposeful transitions, few errors | Purposeful structure with a conclusion that follows from the argument, nearly error-free |
Differentiation
Support
Give these students the organizer with the claim row offering two checkbox options and the evidence rows listing four background details to choose from. Provide a counterclaim frame: "Some growers argue that ____. That concern matters because ____. Still, ____."
Extension
Ask students to write a second, shorter argument taking the opposite position, then to compare the two drafts and explain in a paragraph which evidence in the background was harder to argue against. This forces attention to the strength of the material rather than the strength of the writer's preference.
ELL supports
Pre-teach claim, counterclaim, aquifer, monitoring well, and ordinance with a one-sentence definition and an example for each. Allow students to talk through the organizer with a partner before writing, and supply a bank of transitions for the counterclaim paragraph, such as "some growers argue," "that concern matters because," and "even so."
Extensions
Have students write a one-paragraph letter to the district board from the point of view of a grower who farms 80 acres, then trade letters and mark which sentences are evidence and which are appeals to fairness. A discussion of the difference prepares students for the rhetorical analysis they will do later in the year.