Worksheet Grade 9 English Language Arts

Hedged and Unhedged Claims in the Yarrowmead Well Advisory

A grade 9 ELA worksheet on hedged and unhedged claims, using a fictional county advisory about nitrate in private wells and its own sampling record.

Grade: Grade 9
Subject: English Language Arts
Material: Worksheet
Time: 40 min
Prep: No prep
Materials: Printed worksheet

Standards

W.9-10.2 Common Core ELA

Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.

How this material aligns: Items 9 and 10 require students to revise an overstated sentence and an over-hedged sentence so the advisory conveys its information accurately to a general reader.

All materials for W.9-10.2 →

W.9-10.1 Common Core ELA

Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.

How this material aligns: Item 11 asks for a two-sentence claim qualified to what the June sampling record supports, with one reason stated from that same record.

All materials for W.9-10.1 →

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This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely, without attribution. Updated 2026-09-04.

Objectives

Students will identify hedging words and explain what each one limits in a claim.
Students will judge whether a sentence claims more than a sampling record supports.
Students will write a qualified claim with a reason drawn from the record.

Vocabulary

Nitrate: Nitrate is a form of nitrogen that plants use as food. It gets into water from fertilizer, animal waste, and septic systems, and too much of it is unhealthy for both people and streams.

Also: hedge, qualifier, overstatement, advisory

Teacher overview

Hedging is often taught as a fault, with "seems" and "may" struck out of a draft to make it sound confident. Public health writing runs the other way, because a sentence that claims more than the sampling behind it can support will be quoted back to the writer. This worksheet gives students a fictional county advisory in which some sentences hedge, some do not, and a few hedge in the wrong places. The misconception it addresses is the belief that a strong sentence is an unhedged one; the advisory's flattest, most confident sentence is the one about boiling, and it earns that flatness because the chemistry does not vary.

Hedged and Unhedged Claims in the Yarrowmead Well Advisory — Grade 9 English Language Arts

Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Worksheet

Yarrowmead County, the Coldbrook valley, the advisory, and the sampling record below are all fictional and were written for this worksheet.

Sampling record, June. The county sampled sixty private wells in the Coldbrook valley. Eight wells were above the state limit for nitrate. Fourteen more were between half the limit and the limit. The remaining thirty-eight were below half the limit. The wells above the limit were all shallow and within a quarter mile of cropland.

Advisory from the Yarrowmead County Health Department.

(a) Nitrate in this valley comes from fertilizer.
(b) Nitrate levels appear to rise in wells that are shallow and close to cropland.
(c) Boiling does not remove nitrate. Boiling makes it worse.
(d) A household with an infant under six months old must not use water above the limit to mix formula.
(e) Wells that tested below half the limit are safe.
(f) It is possible that levels may potentially change from season to season.
(g) The department will sample these wells again in the autumn.
(h) Every well in the valley is at risk.

Answer every item in complete sentences.

Sentence (b) contains a hedge. Quote the hedge and explain what it stops the sentence from claiming.
Sentence (f) hedges three times. Quote all three hedges and explain what a reader can do with that sentence.
Sentence (a) states a cause with no hedge at all. Does the June record support a cause that flat? Explain your answer using the record.
Sentence (e) calls a group of wells safe with no limit on the word. State what the record actually supports about those wells.
Sentence (h) uses the word "every." Name the part of the record that does not support it.
Sentence (c) is the flattest sentence in the advisory. Explain why the department was right not to hedge it.
Sentence (d) uses "must not" rather than "should avoid." Explain what changes for the reader when the department chooses "must not."
Rewrite sentence (d) using the hedge "may wish to consider." Then explain in one sentence what that hedge costs a parent reading the advisory at midnight.
Rewrite sentence (a) so that it claims only what the June record supports. Keep it to one sentence.
Rewrite sentence (f) so that it gives a reader something to act on. Remove the stacked hedges and keep one honest qualifier.
Write the two-sentence claim the department should open its autumn advisory with. Sentence one states the claim, qualified to what the June record supports. Sentence two gives one reason from that record.
Explain why one advisory needs both hedged and unhedged sentences. Use one example of each from this advisory.

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: "appear to rise" is the hedge. It keeps the sentence from claiming that shallow wells near cropland always have higher nitrate, and limits it to a pattern the sampling suggests. Accept any answer quoting "appear to" and naming the claim the hedge holds back.
Answer: "It is possible," "may," and "potentially" are the three hedges. Stacked together they leave the reader with no idea whether to test again in the autumn, so the sentence gives no basis for action. Credit any answer that quotes all three and names the loss of usable guidance.
Answer: No. The record shows that the wells above the limit were shallow and near cropland, which is consistent with fertilizer as a source, yet the sampling tested water and not sources, so it cannot rule out manure, septic systems, or another origin. Accept any answer using the record to show the claim outruns it.
Answer: The record supports only that those thirty-eight wells were below half the limit in June. It does not support a general claim of safety, because nitrate can change between sampling rounds and because a single round describes one moment.
Answer: Every well above the limit was shallow and within a quarter mile of cropland, which suggests the risk is concentrated in wells like those rather than spread across the whole valley. Also accept the thirty-eight wells that tested below half the limit, if the student limits the point to the June results.
Answer: Boiling removes water as steam and leaves the nitrate behind, so the concentration rises. That is chemistry rather than a pattern in samples, and it holds for every household, so a hedge would suggest a doubt that does not exist.
Answer: "Must not" states a rule the reader is expected to follow, while "should avoid" states advice the reader may weigh. For a household with an infant, the department wants no room for weighing, so it chooses the stronger form.
Answer: The rewrite reads roughly: "A household with an infant under six months old may wish to consider not using water above the limit to mix formula." The hedge shifts a safety instruction into a suggestion, so a tired parent scanning the page can read past it and believe the choice is open.
Answer: Accept any single sentence limited to the record, such as: "In this valley, wells above the limit were shallow and close to cropland, which points to fertilizer as a likely source." The rewrite must name the pattern and stop short of naming a proven cause.
Answer: Accept any rewrite with one qualifier and a usable statement, such as: "Nitrate levels can change between seasons, so a well tested once should be tested again in the autumn." One hedge remains, and the reader is left with an action.
Answer: Accept any two sentences that qualify the claim and give a record-based reason, such as: "Most sampled wells in the Coldbrook valley were below half the state limit in June, although eight were above it. Every well above the limit was shallow and within a quarter mile of cropland, so those two conditions mark the wells we most want retested." The claim must be limited to June and to the sampled wells.
Answer: Accept any answer that pairs one example of each with a reason. A strong answer notes that sentence (c) needs no hedge because it rests on chemistry that does not vary, while sentence (b) needs one because it rests on a pattern in sixty samples that could change with more data.

Differentiation

Support

Give these students a hedge list, containing appears, may, possible, potentially, suggests, and likely, and have them highlight every hedge in the advisory before starting item 1. Provide the rewrite for item 9 in scrambled word order. Allow items 11 and 12 to be answered orally to a partner first.

Extension

Ask these students to rank all eight advisory sentences from most to least certain and to defend the two hardest placements in writing. They may then rewrite the whole advisory at a single level of certainty and explain, in one paragraph, why no real department would send it.

ELL supports

Pre-teach hedge, qualifier, and advisory with one example each from the advisory itself. Provide a two-column chart pairing hedged and unhedged versions of the same sentence, so students can hear the difference before naming it. Allow the rewrites in items 9 and 10 to reuse the wording of the original sentence with one phrase changed.

Extensions

Ask students to find one hedged sentence and one unhedged sentence in a real public notice from a utility, a school district, or a health agency, and to bring both to class. A short comparison usually shows that agencies hedge about causes and predictions and stop hedging about instructions, which is the same pattern this advisory follows.