Writing prompt Grade 7 Science
Penmoor's Well Field: Argue for or Against the Truck Depot
A grade 7 science argument prompt on building a truck repair depot inside a fictional town's wellhead protection area, with background, organizer, exemplar, and rubric.
Objectives
- Students will write an argument essay with a claim, evidence, a counterclaim, and a rebuttal.
- Students will use aquifer evidence to explain why pollution can reach a well quickly in sand and gravel.
- Students will address a real audience, a town planning board, in the register that audience expects.
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.
- Recharge
- Recharge is water soaking down through the ground to refill an aquifer, the way rain refills an underground sponge. Aquifers stay healthy only if recharge keeps up with pumping.
- Wellhead protection area
- A wellhead protection area is the land around a drinking-water well that communities protect extra carefully, because anything spilled or dumped there could seep down and pollute the well. Protecting this zone helps keep the water supply safe before it ever needs treatment.
Also: glacial outwash, counterclaim, rebuttal
Teacher overview
Towns that drink from wells have to decide what may be built on the land where their water soaks in, and a town planning board usually makes that decision at a regular meeting. This prompt puts students in front of one such board in the fictional town of Penmoor, where a truck repair depot has applied to build inside the area that recharges the town wells. The argument is genuinely contested, because the depot brings jobs and tax revenue and has offered real protections, while the aquifer's coarse sand and gravel move water, and anything spilled into it, faster than finer soils would.
Prompt
Background. Penmoor is a fictional town of about 7,000 people. Its drinking water comes from three wells at the south edge of town. The wells pump from an aquifer made of sand and gravel. That sand and gravel was dropped there by meltwater streams at the end of the last ice age, when a glacier melted back across the region. Meltwater sorted the material and left coarse layers with large spaces between the grains. Those spaces are why the wells produce so much water. They are also why water moves through the aquifer quickly.
Rain and snowmelt soak into the ground across a 1,400-acre area north of the wells. That soaking in is called recharge. Hydrologists call the area itself the wellhead protection area, because water that enters the ground there ends up in the wells. Penmoor's town rules limit certain uses inside that area.
Ellerby Truck Service has applied to build a repair depot on 6 acres inside the protection area. The company says the depot would employ 24 people and pay property taxes to the town. It has offered three protections: a sealed concrete floor with no drains to the ground, double-walled tanks for fuel and waste oil, and a written spill response plan.
The town's water superintendent has raised three concerns. First, sand and gravel let a spill travel to the wells in weeks rather than years. Second, some fuel additives are difficult and costly to remove once they reach a well. Third, the nearest alternative well site the town has tested is 9 miles away, and connecting it would mean new pipes and a new pump station.
The planning board meets next month. It has asked residents to submit written arguments.
Your task. Write an argument essay to the Penmoor Planning Board. Take a position for or against allowing the depot inside the wellhead protection area. Your essay must include a clear claim, at least three pieces of evidence from the background, one counterclaim that names the strongest point on the other side, a rebuttal that answers it, and a conclusion. Your essay must also explain why the sand and gravel left by glacial meltwater matters to this decision. Write 350 to 500 words in a formal voice for adults on a board.
Planning Organizer
Fill in every row before you draft. Each row matches one part of the rubric.
| Part of the essay | What to write here | My notes |
|---|---|---|
| Claim | One sentence stating whether the board should approve or deny the depot. | |
| Reason 1 and evidence | Your first reason, plus the fact from the background that supports it. | |
| Reason 2 and evidence | Your second reason, plus the fact from the background that supports it. | |
| Reason 3 and evidence | Your third reason, plus the fact from the background that supports it. | |
| Aquifer explanation | Two sentences on how the sand and gravel got there and why that affects how fast water moves. | |
| Counterclaim | The strongest point the other side would make, stated fairly. | |
| Rebuttal | Why your position still holds, using evidence rather than opinion. | |
| Conclusion | What you want the board to do, in one or two sentences. |
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 (grade 7 level, 402 words)
The Penmoor Planning Board should deny Ellerby Truck Service permission to build inside the wellhead protection area. The risk to the town's only water supply is larger than the benefit of one depot, and the reason has to do with what is under the ground.
Penmoor's wells pump from sand and gravel that meltwater streams left behind when the last glacier melted back. Moving water sorted that material and stacked it in coarse layers with wide spaces between the grains. Those wide spaces are the reason the wells give the town so much water. They are also the reason the water superintendent says a spill could reach the wells in weeks rather than years. In finer soils, a spill has years to be caught, diluted, or cleaned up. Penmoor does not have that time.
The second reason is the cost of failure. The superintendent reported that some fuel additives are difficult and expensive to remove once they are in a well. That means a single spill is not something the town can simply pump out and forget. The third reason is that Penmoor has no easy backup. The nearest tested well site is 9 miles away and would need new pipes and a new pump station before it could deliver a drop of water. A town with a spare supply nearby could take a risk that Penmoor cannot.
Supporters of the depot would say the company has already answered these worries. Ellerby has offered a sealed concrete floor with no drains to the ground, double-walled fuel tanks, and a written spill plan. Those are serious protections, and 24 jobs and new property taxes would help the town budget. This is the strongest argument on the other side, and it deserves a straight answer.
The answer is that every one of those protections depends on people and equipment working correctly for decades. Floors crack, tanks age, and spills happen during deliveries in the yard, outside the sealed building entirely. The protections lower the chance of a spill, but they cannot lower it to zero, and in this location the result of one failure falls on all 7,000 residents at once.
The board should deny the application inside the protection area and offer to help Ellerby find a site outside it. That decision keeps the jobs in reach and keeps the aquifer that supplies the whole town out of the path of fuel and waste oil.
Rubric
| Criterion | Emerging | Developing | Proficient | Advanced |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claim | No clear position, or the position shifts | States a position but leaves it vague | States a clear position on the depot in one sentence | States a clear position and previews the reasons that follow |
| Evidence and scientific reasoning | Uses no evidence from the background | Uses one piece of evidence without explaining it | Uses at least three pieces of evidence and explains each | Uses evidence and explains how the aquifer's material controls the speed of contamination |
| Counterclaim and rebuttal | No counterclaim appears | Names an opposing point but does not answer it | States the strongest opposing point fairly and answers it with evidence | States the opposing point fairly, answers it, and explains what would change the writer's mind |
| Organization and conventions | Ideas are out of order and errors block meaning | Some structure, with errors that distract | Clear paragraphs, formal voice, few errors | Clear structure, formal voice suited to a board, and clean conventions throughout |
Differentiation
Support
Provide the organizer with the claim row completed for both possible positions so students choose one and fill the rest. Supply a paragraph frame for the counterclaim and rebuttal: "Supporters of the depot would say ___. That point matters because ___. Still, ___."
Extension
Ask students to write a second, shorter argument from the company's point of view, addressed to the same board, and then to explain in a paragraph which of the two arguments a board would find harder to answer and why.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "aquifer," "recharge," "spill," and "counterclaim" with a labeled cross-section showing rain soaking through sand and gravel to a well. Allow students to complete the organizer in short phrases and to dictate their draft before writing it.