Lesson plan Grade 4 English Language Arts
A Dry June on the Lammerly Ditch: A Grade 4 Narrative Lesson
A 60-minute grade 4 narrative lesson in which students plan and draft a story about a farm family waiting for its night turn on a fictional irrigation ditch.
Objectives
- Students will explain how a turn on an irrigation ditch works, using the note.
- Students will plan a narrative with a clear order of events and a problem.
- Students will draft a narrative that uses dialogue and sensory description.
Vocabulary
- Headgate
- The gate at the entrance of an irrigation canal or ditch that opens and closes to control how much water flows toward the fields.
Also: irrigation, ditch, turn, ditch rider
Teacher overview
Kirkbride Farm is a fictional orchard on a fictional canal called the Lammerly Ditch, where each farm is allowed to open its headgate only during an assigned block of hours called a turn. Students read a short background note from the ditch company, then plan and draft a narrative about the night the family's turn was moved to four in the morning. The setting supplies what a narrative needs, because a turn has a fixed beginning and end, a person in charge, and a reason to hurry. Students who have never seen irrigation often assume a farmer can water whenever the trees look dry, so the note is written to correct that before drafting begins.
Procedure
Hook (5 min): Ask students to picture waiting for a turn at something they cannot start early, such as a turn on a court or a turn in a game. Collect two or three answers. Tell them that farms on one canal in this lesson wait the same way for water, and that the wait is measured in hours.
Shared reading (10 min): Distribute the handout and read the background note aloud while students follow. Students underline the sentence that says who decides when each turn starts, and circle the sentence that says what changed in June.
Comprehension check (5 min): Students answer handout items 1 through 3 independently. Walk the room and read three papers at random. If any of those three cannot say who sets the turns, reread that sentence with the whole class before moving on.
Story mountain modeling (10 min): On chart paper, sketch a four-box story map labeled Beginning, Problem, Turning point, and Ending. Fill in the Beginning box aloud with a sample opening set at the kitchen table the night before the turn. Model one line of dialogue and one sensory detail, saying why the smell of wet dust does more work than the word "nice."
Planning (10 min): Students answer handout items 4 through 6, which fill the Beginning and Problem boxes of their own story maps and supply two sensory details. Ask students to place a sticky note on their desk when the Problem box is filled, so the room can be scanned at a glance.
Drafting (15 min): Students draft their narratives on handout item 7. Remind them of the three requirements written into the item: events in order, two sensory details at the headgate, and at least one line of dialogue.
Share and close (5 min): Three volunteers read only their opening two sentences. After each one, ask the class which word told them the time of day or the place.
Student Handout
Background note from the Lammerly Ditch Company
The Lammerly Ditch is a canal that carries river water past twelve farms. The farms sit in the fictional valley below Sutterly Gap. No farm may take water whenever it wants. Each farm gets a turn.
A turn is a block of hours when one farm may open its headgate. A headgate is a small metal door in the side of the ditch. When it is open, water runs into the farm's rows. When it is shut, the water keeps moving down the ditch to the next farm.
A worker called the ditch rider sets the turns. The ditch rider drives the whole ditch each day, writes down the water level, and tells each farm when its turn will start. A farm that opens its headgate early takes water from a neighbor.
In most Junes, Kirkbride Farm gets a six-hour turn in the afternoon. This June the river ran low. The ditch rider cut every turn to four hours and moved some of them to the night. Kirkbride Farm's turn now starts at four in the morning.
Answer items 1 through 7.
- What is a turn on the Lammerly Ditch?
- Who sets the turns for the farms?
- What two changes did the ditch rider make this June?
- Where and when does your story begin? Write one sentence that names the place and the time of day.
- Write two details a person could hear, smell, or feel while standing at the headgate at four in the morning.
- What problem will your narrator face during the turn? Write one sentence.
- Write your narrative about the night turn at Kirkbride Farm. Tell the events in order. Use the two sensory details from item 5. Include at least one line of dialogue.
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: A block of hours when one farm may open its headgate and let water into its rows. The note gives this definition in the second paragraph.
- Answer: The ditch rider. The third paragraph states that the ditch rider sets the turns and tells each farm when its turn starts.
- Answer: The ditch rider cut every turn to four hours and moved some turns to the night. Both changes appear in the last paragraph.
- Answer: Accept any sentence that names both a place and a time of day, such as a kitchen at nine in the evening or a truck seat at half past three in the morning.
- Answer: Accept any two details tied to what a person could sense at the headgate, such as the rush of water against metal, the smell of wet dust, cold air on bare arms, or the beam of a flashlight on the ditch bank.
- Answer: Accept any problem that could happen during a four-hour night turn, such as a headgate that sticks, an alarm clock that fails, a row that floods, or a turn that runs out before the last rows are watered.
- Answer: Accept any narrative that meets the three stated requirements. A proficient draft puts the events in a clear order, uses both sensory details from item 5 at the headgate, and includes at least one line of dialogue with quotation marks.
Differentiation
Support
Give these students a four-box story map with the Beginning box already written, so planning starts from a shared opening. Provide a word bank of setting and sensory words, such as headgate, gravel, cold, and rushing. Allow the draft to be six sentences rather than a full page, as long as the order, the two details, and the dialogue line are present.
Extension
Ask students to write the same night from the ditch rider's point of view, keeping every event the same and changing only what the narrator can see and know. Have them mark one place where the two versions disagree about what happened and explain why the two narrators would tell it differently.
ELL supports
Pre-teach ditch, headgate, and turn with a sketch on the board showing a canal, a small metal door, and rows of trees. Provide sentence frames for the draft: "At four in the morning, I ," and "Dad said, '.'" Allow students to tell the story aloud to a partner before writing, and accept a labeled drawing beside the draft.