Lesson plan Grade 4 English Language Arts
Rewriting Ferrisbrook's Boil Notice: A Grade 4 Word Choice Lesson
A 45-minute grade 4 lesson in which students turn a stiff notice from a fictional water utility into plain directions a neighbor could follow in a minute.
Objectives
- Students will locate stated facts in an official notice about tap water.
- Students will replace formal wording with everyday words that keep the same meaning.
- Students will write a short notice for a family audience using a heading.
Vocabulary
Key words: advisory, notice, audience, boil, sample
Teacher overview
When a water main breaks and pressure drops, a utility mails or posts a boil notice, and the wording of that notice affects whether families follow it. This lesson gives students a notice from a fictional utility written in the stiff style such notices often use, then asks them to rewrite it for a family audience without changing a single fact. The teaching point is that plain words are a choice a writer makes for a particular reader, and that a plain sentence can carry every fact the formal one carried. Students often assume that longer words make writing sound more correct, so the mini-lesson compares two sentences that say the same thing and asks which one a neighbor could act on.
Procedure
Hook (5 min): Read this sentence aloud twice: "Customers are advised that consumption should be discontinued pending further notification." Ask students to say in their own words what a family is supposed to do. Collect answers, including the wrong ones, and write them on the board. Point out that the class produced several different meanings from one sentence.
Reading the notice (8 min): Distribute the handout. Read the Ferrisbrook notice aloud while students follow. Students draw a box around every word they would not use when talking to a friend.
Mini-lesson on audience and word choice (10 min): On chart paper, build a two-column chart headed "What the notice says" and "What a family needs to do." Fill in two rows together, working from the boxed words. Model swapping utilized for used and prior to use for before you drink it, and say aloud why the shorter version is not less accurate. Add one row where the plain wording loses a fact, and fix it in front of the class.
Rewriting (14 min): Students answer handout items 1 through 8. Items 1 through 3 are answered from stated details, items 4 through 7 ask for sentence-level rewrites, and item 8 is the full rewrite for a family audience.
Partner test (5 min): Partners trade item 8 and read the rewrite once, at normal speed. The reader then says aloud what a family must do, what it may still do, and when the advisory ends. Any fact the reader cannot state gets marked, and the writer repairs it.
Formative check and close (3 min): On an index card, each student writes a plain replacement for the sentence "The advisory shall remain in effect pending receipt of two consecutive satisfactory sample results." Collect the cards and sort them into two piles, those that keep the two clean tests and those that drop them. If more than a third of the class drops that fact, reteach the chart row where plain wording lost a fact.
Student Handout
Notice from Ferrisbrook Water, a fictional water utility
Subject: precautionary boil water advisory, Zone 3
Due to a main break on Ottleby Lane, a pressure loss event occurred in Zone 3 at approximately 6:15 in the morning. In accordance with utility procedure, a precautionary advisory has been issued for all service connections in the affected zone. Customers are advised that water utilized for drinking, food preparation, ice, and oral hygiene should be brought to a rolling boil and maintained at a rolling boil for one minute prior to use. Water may be utilized for bathing and laundry without additional treatment, provided that bathers avoid swallowing it. This advisory shall remain in effect pending receipt of two consecutive satisfactory sample results. Notification of rescission will be provided by the same means as this notice.
Answer items 1 through 8. Use the notice.
- Which part of Ferrisbrook does this notice apply to?
- According to the notice, what caused the problem?
- How long should the water stay at a rolling boil?
- Rewrite this sentence so a second grader could follow it: "Water may be utilized for bathing and laundry without additional treatment, provided that bathers avoid swallowing it."
- Write a shorter word that could replace utilized in this notice without changing the meaning.
- Rewrite this sentence in plain words: "This advisory shall remain in effect pending receipt of two consecutive satisfactory sample results."
- A neighbor asks whether she can brush her teeth with tap water this morning. Use a detail from the notice to answer her.
- Rewrite the whole notice as a short message for families. Give it a heading. Use four or five sentences and everyday words. Keep every fact the same.
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: Zone 3. The subject line and the first sentence both name Zone 3 as the affected area.
- Answer: A water main break on Ottleby Lane, which caused a loss of pressure. The first sentence states both the break and the pressure loss.
- Answer: One minute at a rolling boil. The third sentence states this.
- Answer: Accept any plain rewrite that keeps the meaning, such as "You can still use tap water for baths and washing clothes, but do not swallow bath water." A rewrite that drops bathing, laundry, or the warning not to swallow the water is incomplete.
- Answer: Used. Accept any everyday synonym that fits both places in the notice.
- Answer: Accept any plain rewrite that keeps both facts, such as "Keep boiling until two water tests in a row come back clean." A rewrite that says only "until the water is safe" has dropped the two clean tests.
- Answer: She should boil the water first. The notice lists oral hygiene, which includes brushing teeth, among the uses that need boiled water.
- Answer: Accept any four-to-five-sentence notice with a heading that keeps every fact: the break on Ottleby Lane, that Zone 3 is affected, boiling for one minute for drinking, cooking, ice, and teeth, that bathing (without swallowing the water) and laundry are fine, and that the advisory ends after two clean tests in a row.
Differentiation
Support
Give these students the notice already broken into six numbered sentences on separate lines, so the rewrite work happens one sentence at a time. Provide a word-swap bank pairing formal words with everyday ones, such as utilized with used and prior to with before. Accept item 8 as four sentences with the heading supplied.
Extension
Ask students to write a second version of item 8 for a different audience, such as a sign taped to a drinking fountain at school, and to explain in two sentences what they cut for that audience and why. Have them mark the one fact that neither version can leave out.
ELL supports
Pre-teach advisory, boil, and sample with a teacher-run demonstration of a pot reaching a rolling boil, watched by students from a safe distance, and a labeled sketch of a sample bottle. Provide the notice with home-language glosses in the margin for the four longest words. Allow items 4 through 7 to be answered orally to a partner before writing, and give this sentence frame for item 8: "Boil your water before you ___."