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Classroom activity Grade 5 English Language Arts

Describing the Quillmarsh Creek Watershed: A Map Talk Activity

A grade 5 ELA activity in which partners sit back to back, describe a labeled watershed map in exact words, then write the description as a grouped paragraph.

Objectives

  1. Students will describe a labeled map using exact position and direction words.
  2. Students will write an informative paragraph that groups map information in a logical order.
  3. Students will explain that a watershed is the land that drains to a creek, not the creek itself.

Vocabulary

Watershed
A watershed is all the land where rain that falls will drain to the same stream, river, or lake. Everyone lives in a watershed, no matter how far from the water they live.

Also: boundary, ridge, drains, downstream

Teacher overview

Partners sit back to back with a screen between them. One student holds a labeled map of a fictional creek watershed and describes it out loud; the other draws what the words describe, without seeing the card and without asking yes-or-no questions. The pair then compares the drawing to the card, and the describer writes the same description as a grouped paragraph. The mechanic makes vague language visible: a drawing that lands in the wrong place is nearly always traceable to a sentence that left out a direction, a landmark, or a boundary.

Teaching note: a widespread misconception is that a watershed is a body of water, so students describe "the watershed" when they mean the creek, and they draw the boundary along the water instead of along the high ground. Both map cards put the dashed boundary line on hilltops and ridges specifically so that a describer who says "the line goes along the creek" produces a visibly wrong drawing, which gives the debrief something concrete to fix.

Activity Directions

  1. Before class, print Map Card 1 and Map Card 2 from the Student Handout, at least one of each per pair, and cut them apart so a describer can hold one card without the partner seeing it. Both towns are fictional, so students need no local knowledge.
  2. Seat students in pairs, back to back or with a folder standing between them. Give the describer Map Card 1 and give the drawer blank paper divided into nine boxes, three across and three down.
  3. State the two rules before the first round: the describer may not use gestures, and the drawer may ask only one question during the whole round.
  4. Round 1 runs six minutes on the timer. The describer works across the map in an order of their choosing and names what belongs in each box.
  5. Stop the timer and have pairs compare the drawing with Map Card 1 side by side. Each pair circles every place where the drawing and the card disagree and writes the sentence that would have prevented it, which is item 5 on the question page.
  6. Swap roles for Round 2 with Map Card 2, again six minutes. The new describer usually names directions and landmarks far more often, and this shift is worth pointing out.
  7. Give students twelve minutes to complete questions 1 through 5 and to draft the paragraph in item 6 about whichever card they described.
  8. Close with a five-minute debrief on two questions: "Which sentence in your paragraph did your partner most need?" and "The dashed line on both cards runs along hilltops rather than along the creek, so what does that line actually mark?"
Describing the Quillmarsh Creek Watershed: A Map Talk Activity — Grade 5 English Language Arts
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Handout

Each map card is a square divided into nine boxes. Read your card quietly before you begin.

Map Card 1: The Quillmarsh Creek watershed.

West side Center East side
North strip Bell Hill, the highest ground on the map. A dashed line runs along its top. A spring marked with a star, labeled "head of Quillmarsh Creek." Pine Ridge. The dashed line runs along its top too.
Middle strip A hay field. A wide strip of grass separates the field from the creek. Quillmarsh Creek, flowing south and bending toward the east. The village of Quillmarsh. An arrow from a storm drain points to the creek.
South strip Otter Marsh, a shaded wet area beside the creek. A bridge where County Road 9 crosses the creek. An arrow at the corner labeled "creek leaves the map."

Map Card 2: The Gallowbrook watershed.

West side Center East side
North strip Slate Knob, a rocky hill. A dashed line runs along its top. Two small streams that join to form Gallowbrook. Apple orchard on a slope. The dashed line runs above the orchard.
Middle strip A gravel pit with bare ground around it. Gallowbrook, flowing south in a straight line. Northvale School and its parking lot. An arrow points from the lot to the brook.
South strip A cattail wetland along the west bank. Gallowbrook Pond, held back by a low stone wall. A pipe leaving the pond, labeled "to the town well field."

Answer these questions on your own paper.

  1. What does the dashed line on your map card show?
  2. Name two places on your card where rain lands and then travels to the creek or brook.
  3. Rain falls on the far side of the hill, outside the dashed line. Explain where that water goes and why.
  4. Which direction does the water flow across your card? Copy the words on the card that helped you decide.
  5. Find one place where your partner's drawing and your card disagree. Write the one sentence you could have said that would have fixed it.
  6. Write a paragraph of four to six sentences describing your card to a reader who cannot see it. Put your sentences in this order: the boundary first, then the water, then the places along the water.

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

Answer Key

Items 1 through 4 have definite answers. Items 5 and 6 depend on the pair's own drawing and paragraph, so accept any response that meets the conditions described below.

  1. Answer: The dashed line shows the boundary of the watershed, which runs along the tops of the hills and ridges. Accept "the edge of the land that drains to the creek." Do not accept "the creek" or "the town line."
  2. Answer: On Map Card 1, any two of the hay field, the village of Quillmarsh, Bell Hill, Pine Ridge, and Otter Marsh; on Map Card 2, any two of the orchard, the gravel pit, the school parking lot, Slate Knob, and the wetland. The point is that land, not water, is being named.
  3. Answer: It drains to a different creek, because the dashed line follows the high ground and water runs downhill away from that line on both sides. Accept "it goes to another watershed" with the downhill reason attached.
  4. Answer: South. On Map Card 1 the words are "flowing south and bending toward the east"; on Map Card 2 they are "flowing south in a straight line." Accept "south and then east" for Map Card 1.
  5. Answer: Accept any sentence that names a position, a direction, or a landmark that the original description left out, such as "Otter Marsh is in the bottom left box, on the west side of the creek." Vague repairs such as "I should have explained better" do not meet the item.
  6. Answer: Accept any paragraph of four to six sentences that follows the required order: boundary, then water, then places along the water. A proficient paragraph names the dashed boundary before anything else, states the flow direction, and locates at least three labeled places using position words.

Differentiation

Support

Give these students a word bank taped to the desk with "north," "south," "east," "west," "top left," "bottom right," "above," "below," and "beside," and let them point to a word as they speak. Reduce Map Card 1 to the middle strip only for the first round, then add the north strip for the second round.

Extension

Ask these students to describe the card a second time in under two minutes without naming any box, forcing them to use landmarks and directions alone. Then have them write a short note explaining which of the two describing methods produced the more accurate drawing and what that suggests about writing directions for a reader.

ELL supports

Provide both map cards with a small sketch icon beside each label, and pre-teach "boundary," "ridge," "drains," and "downstream" with a hand motion for each. Allow the drawer to ask three questions instead of one during the first round, and accept phrases rather than full sentences in items 1 through 4.

Extensions

Have pairs trade the paragraphs they wrote for item 6 with a pair that used the other map card, then draw the map from the paragraph alone with no speaking allowed. Students mark the sentences that carried the most information and rewrite one sentence that did not. This second pass shows students that a written description has to do the work that a speaker could repeat or repair out loud.