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Lesson plan Grade 1 English Language Arts

Cedar Bend's Rain Story: A Grade 1 Water Cycle Narrative Lesson

A 35-minute grade 1 lesson where students retell a read-aloud rain story in order, then write two sequenced sentences about a raindrop using first and next.

Objectives

  1. Students will retell the events of a read-aloud rain story in the order they happened.
  2. Students will use the words first, next, and then to describe what happens to rain.
  3. Students will write two sentences that recount, in order, what happens to a raindrop.

Vocabulary

Cloud
A cloud is a visible mass of tiny water droplets or ice crystals floating in the sky. Clouds form when water vapor cools and condenses onto tiny particles of dust or salt in the air.

Also: puddle, first, next, then

Teacher overview

Cedar Bend is a fictional street with a small dip in the sidewalk where rain always pools into the same puddle. This lesson uses a short original story about that puddle to give grade 1 writers a real, physical event they can picture: rain falls, a puddle forms, the sun comes out, and the puddle slowly disappears. Because grade 1 science standards say little about water directly, this lesson stays focused on language arts skills. Students practice retelling events in order and then write their own short narrative using the temporal words first, next, and then, exactly the skill W.1.3 asks first graders to build.

No special materials are needed beyond four picture cards a teacher can sketch in a few minutes. The story is short enough to read twice in one sitting, once for enjoyment and once for the retelling work.

Procedure

Hook (5 min): Ask students, "Have you ever seen a puddle disappear after it stops raining? Where do you think the water goes?" Take two or three guesses without correcting them yet. Write the guesses on the board.

Read-aloud (10 min): Read this short story aloud: "It rained all morning on Cedar Bend. A puddle formed by the front steps. Boots splashed in it at recess. Then the sun came out. The puddle got smaller. By the end of the day, the puddle was gone. Up above, a small cloud drifted by." Read it a second time, pointing to the matching picture card (Rain, Puddle, Sun, Cloud) each time that part of the story is read.

Guided retell (10 min): Hold up the four picture cards out of order. As a class, put them back in story order on the board ledge. Model the sentence frame: "First it rained. Next the puddle formed. Then the sun came out. Last the puddle was gone." Have three volunteers each say one part of the retell using first, next, or then.

Independent writing (7 min): Students write two sentences in their journals that recount part of the story in order, using at least one of the words first, next, or then. Circulate to support students who need a sentence starter.

Closure and exit ticket (3 min): Ask each student to hold up one or two fingers to show how many of the four story events (rain, puddle, sun, cloud) they can name from memory. Call on a student holding up two fingers to share aloud before dismissal.

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Answer Key
  1. Exit ticket answer: Any two of the four events in the correct relative order (rain before puddle, puddle before sun drying it, sun before the puddle disappearing, and the cloud drifting by last) counts as correct. A student who says "first it rained, then the puddle dried up" has met the goal even without naming all four events.

Differentiation

Support

Give students a strip with the four picture cards already in the correct order, taped in a row, so they only need to copy the matching sentence frame under each picture rather than build the sequence from scratch.

Extension

Ask confident writers to add a third sentence describing where they think the puddle's water went after it dried up, using the word after correctly in their sentence.

ELL supports

Pre-teach puddle, cloud, and sun with simple picture cards before the read-aloud, pairing each word with a small hand gesture (cupped hands for puddle, arms in a circle for sun). Allow students to complete the independent writing task by pointing to the picture cards in order instead of writing full sentences.

Extensions

Take the class outside after a real rain to look for a puddle on the school grounds, and have students check on it once more later in the day to see whether it has started to shrink, connecting the story directly to something they observed themselves.