Lesson plan Grade 3 English Language Arts
The Gates at Tumbleford Dam: A Grade 3 Informative Lesson
A grade 3 informative writing lesson set at a fictional dam, where students read a gate-house fact sheet and draft a grouped-facts paragraph about it.
Objectives
- Students will answer questions about a fact sheet by pointing to the sentence that gives the answer.
- Students will write an informative paragraph with a topic sentence, three grouped facts, and a closing sentence.
Vocabulary
- Dam
- A strong wall built across a river to hold back water. Dams store water for people and farms, help prevent floods, and can make electricity.
Also: gate, gauge, melt, topic sentence
Teacher overview
Tumbleford Dam is a fictional concrete dam on an invented river, built to hold spring snowmelt back from the town below it. The fact sheet in this lesson gives students a small, tightly grouped set of facts about the dam's gates, which is what an informative paragraph needs. Third graders often picture a dam as a solid wall that stops a river for good, so the fact sheet is written to show that water leaves the dam every day, through gates that a crew opens and closes on purpose. Correcting that idea is worth a minute of discussion before students begin drafting.
Procedure
Hook (5 min): Draw a simple side view of a dam on chart paper: a wall, a lake behind it, and a river below it. Ask students where the water goes once the lake is full. Record two or three answers without correcting them, and tell the class that the fact sheet will settle the question.
Direct instruction (12 min): Hand out the fact sheet and read it aloud once while students follow along. Then reread the middle part and stop after each sentence to ask which of three labels it belongs under: What the gates are, What the crew does in spring, and What the crew does in dry months. Write the three labels on chart paper and list student answers beneath them, which builds the grouping an informative paragraph needs.
Guided practice (10 min): Model writing a topic sentence for the paragraph, thinking aloud about naming the subject and the main idea in one sentence. Write two possible topic sentences on the board and take a thumbs-up vote on which one names the main idea better. If fewer than two-thirds of the class picks the stronger sentence, model a third one before moving on. Then have students answer questions 1 through 6 on the handout in pairs.
Independent writing (13 min): Students write an informative paragraph about the gates at Tumbleford Dam. The paragraph needs a topic sentence, three facts taken from the chart-paper groups, and a closing sentence. Circulate and read first sentences aloud quietly to their writers, which helps students hear whether the topic sentence names the subject.
Closure and check (5 min): Collect the paragraphs and the handouts. Sort the paragraphs into two piles: those with a topic sentence and at least two grouped facts, and those without. Any student in the second pile joins a small group at the start of the next writing block.
Student Handout
Facts About Tumbleford Dam
Tumbleford Dam sits on the Ossel River. It is made of thick concrete. Behind the dam is a long lake called Ossel Lake. The town of Tumbleford is down the river from the dam.
Water does not spill over the top of the dam. It leaves through four gates near the bottom. A crew works in a small room called the gate house. The crew can open one gate a little or a lot.
Snow melts on the hills each spring. The melt runs down into Ossel Lake. The lake rises fast. When the lake rises, the crew opens the gates wider. They let the extra water out over many days. The river below the dam rises a little but does not flood.
In dry months the crew closes the gates most of the way. The lake holds its water. The town uses that water in summer.
A gauge on the dam wall shows how high the lake is. The crew writes the number down every morning. If the lake climbs more than one foot in a day, the crew calls the town office.
Answer each question. Use the fact sheet.
- What river is Tumbleford Dam built on?
- Where does water leave the dam?
- What makes Ossel Lake rise fast each spring?
- What does the crew do when the lake rises?
- Why does the crew close the gates in dry months?
- One morning the gauge shows that the lake climbed two feet in one day. What should the crew do? Tell how you know.
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: The Ossel River. The first sentence of the fact sheet names the river.
- Answer: Through four gates near the bottom of the dam. The fact sheet says water does not spill over the top.
- Answer: Snow melts on the hills and the melt runs down into the lake.
- Answer: The crew opens the gates wider and lets the extra water out over many days, which keeps the river below the dam from flooding.
- Answer: So the lake holds its water for the town to use in summer.
- Answer: Call the town office. The fact sheet says the crew calls the town office when the lake climbs more than one foot in a day, and two feet is more than one foot.
Differentiation
Support
Give these students a copy of the fact sheet with the three group labels already written in the margin beside the matching paragraphs. Provide a paragraph frame with the topic sentence started ("The gates at Tumbleford Dam...") and three blank lines marked "fact," so the writing task is choosing and copying facts rather than organizing from scratch.
Extension
Ask students to add a fourth sentence to the fact sheet that a reader would need if a gate broke, then explain in one sentence which part of the existing fact sheet made them think of it.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "dam," "gate," "melt," and "gauge" with a labeled sketch and, if one is available, a photograph of a gate on a real dam. Offer sentence frames for questions 4 and 5: "When the lake rises, the crew ___," and "They close the gates because ___."
Extensions
Students can write a short set of directions for a new crew member, listing what to check on the gauge each morning and when to call the town office. Comparing those directions with the fact sheet shows the class how the same facts change shape when the purpose of the writing changes.