Writing prompt Grade 6 Health & Consumer Science
Fountains or a Filling Station at Pemberwick Middle School
A grade 6 argument writing prompt with fictional usage counts, survey results, and costs for replacing a school drinking fountain with a filtered filling station.
Objectives
- Students will write an argument with a clear claim and at least two supported reasons.
- Students will convert survey counts into percents and use them as evidence.
- Students will organize reasons and evidence in a planning chart before drafting.
Vocabulary
Key words: claim, reason, evidence, filling station
Teacher overview
Schools replacing old hallway fountains with filtered bottle-filling stations face a real tradeoff between cost, use, and how much water students actually drink during the day. This prompt hands students three small tables from a fictional middle school and asks for an argument aimed at the school board. Grade 6 is the first grade in which students are expected to move from opinion writing to claim-and-evidence argument. Teachers should watch for one misconception in particular: students treat a survey result as proof of what everyone in the school thinks, rather than as evidence from fifty students that has to be described honestly as a sample.
Prompt
Background. Pemberwick Middle School has 620 students. Two drinking fountains stand in the hallway outside the gym. Fountain A was installed six years ago and works well. Fountain B is much older, runs slowly, and the water comes out warm. In this fictional scenario, the school board has asked sixth graders to weigh in before it votes.
Table 1. Fountain use over five school days
| Fountain | Times used in five days |
|---|---|
| A (newer) | 214 |
| B (older) | 96 |
Table 2. Survey of 50 sixth graders
| Question asked | Number who said yes |
|---|---|
| I would drink more water at school if I could fill a bottle. | 37 |
| I already bring a water bottle to school. | 41 |
| I have skipped a drink because the line was too long. | 23 |
Table 3. What each choice costs the school
| Choice | Cost now | Cost each year after |
|---|---|---|
| Repair fountain B | $380 | $25 |
| Replace fountain B with a filtered filling station | $1,450 | $60 |
| Replace both fountains with filling stations | $2,900 | $120 |
The building has $3,000 in its repair budget this year.
Your task. Write an argument essay for the Pemberwick school board. Tell the board which choice it should make. Support your claim with at least two clear reasons. Back each reason with evidence from the tables, and include at least one percent you work out yourself from the survey numbers. Finish with a short paragraph that restates your claim and tells the board what you want it to do.
Planning Organizer
Fill in every row before you start your draft.
| Part of my argument | What I will write |
|---|---|
| My claim (which choice the board should make) | |
| Reason 1 | |
| Evidence for reason 1 (name the table) | |
| Reason 2 | |
| Evidence for reason 2 (name the table) | |
| The percent I worked out, and what it shows | |
| What I want the board to do |
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 Pemberwick school board should replace fountain B with a filtered filling station and leave fountain A the way it is. That choice fixes the fountain students avoid, it fits the budget, and it gives the school a place to fill bottles without spending everything the building has.
My first reason is that students say a filling station would change how much water they drink. In the survey of fifty sixth graders, 37 said they would drink more water at school if they could fill a bottle. That is 74 percent of the students who answered, because 37 divided by 50 equals 0.74. Those fifty students are only a sample of the 620 students in the building, so the board cannot say every student feels that way. Still, when almost three out of four students in a sample say the same thing, that is worth listening to.
My second reason is that fountain B is already the one students walk past. Table 1 shows fountain A was used 214 times in five school days while fountain B was used only 96 times. Fountain B sits in the same hallway, so the difference is not about where it is. It runs slowly and the water is warm, and the counts show students choosing the other fountain instead. Repairing fountain B for $380 would fix the slow flow, but it would not give the 41 students out of 50 who already carry a bottle any faster way to fill it.
Cost is the reason I am not asking for two filling stations. Replacing both would cost $2,900 out of a $3,000 budget, which would leave the building with almost nothing for the rest of the year. Replacing only fountain B costs $1,450 now and $60 each year for filters. That leaves over half the repair budget for other problems in the building.
The board should approve one filtered filling station in place of fountain B. It answers what students in the survey asked for, it replaces the fountain the use counts show is being skipped, and it leaves money in the budget.
Rubric
| Criterion | 1 Emerging | 2 Developing | 3 Proficient | 4 Advanced |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claim | No clear claim, or the writer names more than one choice without settling on one. | A claim appears but is vague about which choice the board should make. | A clear claim names one choice and stays the same through the essay. | The claim is clear, specific, and restated at the end as a direct request to the board. |
| Reasons | Fewer than two reasons, or reasons repeat the claim. | Two reasons appear but one is not really different from the other. | Two or more distinct reasons each support the claim. | Reasons are distinct and ordered so the strongest one lands where it does the most work. |
| Evidence | No evidence from the tables. | Evidence appears but the table is not named or the numbers are copied incorrectly. | Each reason is backed by evidence from a named table, and at least one percent is worked out correctly. | Evidence is accurate and the writer explains what each number means rather than only quoting it, including that the survey covers a sample. |
| Organization and conventions | Paragraphs run together and errors make sentences hard to follow. | Some paragraph structure, with errors that slow the reader down. | Clear paragraphs, a closing that restates the claim, and few errors. | Clear paragraphs with smooth transitions between reasons, and clean conventions throughout. |
Differentiation
Support
Give these students the claim sentence already written for one of the three choices and ask them to fill only the reason and evidence rows of the organizer. Provide the survey division already set up as 37 over 50 so the percent work starts from a completed fraction.
Extension
Ask students to write a second short paragraph explaining what other information they would want before the vote, such as how many of the 620 students the survey missed, and why that information would change how much weight the board should give it.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "claim," "reason," "evidence," and "budget" with a labeled example argument about a different school decision. Provide sentence frames: "The board should ___ because ___." and "Table ___ shows that ___, which means ___."
Extensions
Have students turn their finished essay into a one-minute spoken statement for a mock board meeting, keeping the claim and one piece of evidence, and compare which version they think a board would find more convincing.