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Lesson plan Grade 4 English Language Arts

The Summer Winnowby Reservoir Ran Low: A Grade 4 Narrative Lesson

Students read background on a fictional town's dry summer and recycled water for ball fields, then draft a narrative with dialogue, sensory detail, and event order.

Objectives

  1. Students will identify stated details about a drought and a recycled water program from a background text.
  2. Students will plan a narrative with a beginning, a middle, and an end using a three-box planner.
  3. Students will draft a narrative that includes at least two lines of dialogue and three sensory details.

Vocabulary

Reservoir
A human-made lake, usually created by a dam, that stores water for later. Reservoirs supply cities and farms and help control floods.
Drought
A long stretch of drier-than-normal weather that leaves too little water for people, farms, and nature. Droughts build slowly and can last for years.
Recycled water
Wastewater that has been cleaned and used again, often to water parks, golf courses, and crops instead of being thrown away. Purple pipes usually carry it.

Also: sprinkler, dialogue

Teacher overview

Winnowby is a fictional town whose reservoir dropped low during a rainless summer, and the town responded by watering its ball fields with recycled water instead of drinking water. The scenario gives fourth graders a narrative with real stakes and a natural sequence, which is what W.4.3 asks them to handle. The misconception to name aloud is that recycled water is simply dirty water reused; in this scenario the used water is cleaned at a plant, tested, and piped through purple sprinkler lines to the fields, while the drinking water stays separate. Students who understand that distinction have more to work with, because the disagreement in the story can then be about what the town should give up first rather than about whether the water is disgusting.

Procedure

Hook (5 min): Show the class a photograph or a quick sketch of a reservoir shoreline with a wide ring of dry, cracked mud between the water and the grass. Ask what that ring tells them about the summer, and record two or three answers on chart paper.

Reading the background (10 min): Read the handout background text aloud while students follow. Pause after each paragraph and ask one student to say what changed in Winnowby during that paragraph. Write the four changes on chart paper in order, which gives the class a shared timeline to write against.

Modeling narrative moves (12 min): On chart paper, draft the opening three sentences of your own Winnowby story. Show three moves as you write: name what a character sees or hears, put one short line of dialogue in quotation marks, and end with a sentence that makes the reader want the next part. Label each move in the margin so students can find it again.

Planning (10 min): Students complete the three-box planner on the handout, filling in a beginning, a middle, and an end. Circulate and require every planner to name one character and one problem before the student starts drafting.

Drafting (18 min): Students write their narratives. The draft must include at least two lines of dialogue in quotation marks and three details that tell what a character sees, hears, smells, or feels.

Sharing and formative check (5 min): Partners trade drafts and mark two things with a colored pencil: a circle around each line of dialogue, and a check mark beside each sensory detail. Collect drafts and scan the marks. Any draft with fewer than two circles goes into a small group for a dialogue minilesson the next day.

The Summer Winnowby Reservoir Ran Low: A Grade 4 Narrative Lesson — Grade 4 English Language Arts
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Handout

Read the background. Then answer questions 1 through 4 and write your narrative.

Background: a dry summer in Winnowby

Winnowby is a small town. It gets its drinking water from Winnowby Reservoir, a lake held back by an old stone dam. Most summers, rain refills the lake. Last summer, almost no rain fell for eleven weeks.

By July, the water in the reservoir had dropped far below its normal line. A wide ring of cracked mud showed all around the shore. Old tree stumps that nobody had seen in years stood up out of the water. The town asked families to skip washing their cars.

The ball fields were the next problem. Winnowby has four fields, and the grass on them turns brown and hard without water. A hard field is not safe to slide on. But nobody wanted to spray drinking water on grass during a drought.

So the town tried something else. Winnowby already had a plant that cleans the used water from sinks, showers, and drains. Workers at the plant clean that water and test it. In August, the town ran purple pipes from the plant to the ball fields. Purple pipes tell everyone that the water inside is recycled water, which is safe for grass but is not for drinking. The sprinklers came on at night, and the fields stayed green.

  1. How long did Winnowby go with almost no rain?
  2. Name two things people could see at the reservoir when the water dropped.
  3. Why did the town not want to water the ball fields with drinking water?
  4. What do purple pipes tell people in Winnowby?
  5. Write a narrative about the summer the reservoir ran low. Tell it from the point of view of a kid who lives in Winnowby. Include a beginning, a middle, and an end. Use at least two lines of dialogue in quotation marks. Use at least three details that tell what your character sees, hears, smells, or feels.

Three-box planner

Part What happens Who is there
Beginning
Middle
End

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. Answer: Eleven weeks. The background states that almost no rain fell for eleven weeks last summer.
  2. Answer: Any two of these: a wide ring of cracked mud around the shore, old tree stumps standing up out of the water, or the water sitting far below its normal line.
  3. Answer: Because the town was in a drought and did not want to spray drinking water on grass while the reservoir was low. Accept any answer naming the shortage of drinking water.
  4. Answer: That the water inside is recycled water, which is safe for grass but is not for drinking. The last paragraph states this directly.
  5. Answer: Accept any narrative with a clear beginning, middle, and end, two or more lines of dialogue in quotation marks, and three or more sensory details. A proficient response keeps the facts of the background straight, such as leaving the recycled water on the fields rather than in a drinking fountain.

Differentiation

Support

Give these students a planner with the beginning box already filled in with a starting situation, such as the first practice on a brown field, so their planning work begins at the middle box. Provide two dialogue starters they can adapt, and allow a shorter draft, as long as it still has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Extension

Ask students to rewrite their last paragraph from a second point of view, such as an operator at the water plant or a coach at the fields, keeping every event the same. Students then write two sentences explaining what the new narrator notices that the first narrator missed.

ELL supports

Pre-teach reservoir, drought, and recycled water with a labeled sketch showing the lake, the plant, and the purple pipe running to a field. Provide a sensory-word bank sorted by sense, and allow students to plan their three boxes with drawings before they write any sentences.