Lesson plan Grade 5 English Language Arts
Explaining the Fish Ladder at Tallowbrook Dam
A grade 5 informative writing lesson: students take notes from a visitor sheet about a fictional dam's fish ladder, then write a grouped, linked paragraph.
Objectives
- Students will sort facts from a source text into two labeled groups.
- Students will quote one sentence from a source text accurately and explain what it means.
- Students will write an informative paragraph that uses linking words and ends with a concluding sentence.
Vocabulary
- Fish ladder
- A series of water steps built beside a dam so migrating fish, like salmon, can swim past it. Fish leap or swim from pool to pool to reach the river above.
- 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.
- Reservoir
- A human-made lake, usually created by a dam, that stores water for later. Reservoirs supply cities and farms and help control floods.
Also: upstream, concluding sentence
Teacher overview
Dams hold back water for drinking supply, flood control, and electricity, and they also block the fish that swim upstream to lay eggs. A fish ladder is a set of shallow, stair-stepped pools built beside a dam so that fish can climb past it a short rise at a time. This lesson gives students a short source text about the fish ladder at a fictional dam and asks them to turn scattered facts into an organized informative paragraph. Fifth graders often assume a fish ladder lifts fish over the dam like an elevator, so the source text and the teacher model both emphasize that the fish swim and leap the whole way themselves.
Procedure
Hook (5 min): Project or draw a simple side view of a dam with a stair-step channel running around one end. Ask students to write one sentence predicting what the stair-step channel is for. Take three or four predictions aloud without correcting them.
Reading the source (10 min): Distribute the handout and read the visitor sheet aloud once while students follow along. Then have students reread it silently and underline any sentence that tells what the ladder does for the fish. Confirm that the ladder does not carry the fish, since that is the point the elevator picture gets wrong.
Modeling note-taking (10 min): On chart paper, draw two columns labeled "How the ladder is built" and "How the fish use it." Think aloud as you place two facts from the visitor sheet into the correct column, showing that a fact about pool size belongs on the left and a fact about swimming upstream in spring belongs on the right. Leave the chart posted for the rest of the lesson.
Independent work (15 min): Students complete the five numbered questions on the handout. The first two build their own two-column notes, question three asks for an exact quoted sentence, question four asks for an inference the sheet supports, and question five asks them to plan a concluding sentence.
Drafting (8 min): Students write one informative paragraph using their notes. Require a topic sentence, at least three facts, one linking word or phrase from the posted list ("for example," "because," "as a result," "in addition"), and the concluding sentence they planned in question five.
Closure and formative check (2 min): Collect the paragraphs and read only the first and last sentence of each. If more than five students in a class of twenty-five have written a paragraph with no concluding sentence, reteach the concluding sentence in the next writing block before moving on.
Student Handout
Visitor sheet: the fish ladder at Tallowbrook Dam
Tallowbrook Dam sits across the Ottersby River in a fictional river valley. The dam holds back a reservoir that supplies drinking water to nearby towns. It also stands in the path of the trout that swim upstream every spring to lay their eggs.
To let the fish get past, the town built a fish ladder along the north end of the dam. The ladder is a channel of fourteen shallow pools. Each pool sits a little higher than the one below it, so the ladder climbs the same height as the dam in fourteen small steps. Water spills down through every pool, which gives the fish a current to follow.
The fish do the climbing themselves. A trout rests in one pool, then swims hard or leaps into the next pool up. It repeats that until it reaches the reservoir above the dam. A biologist counts the fish through a window in the third pool from the top and records the number each week.
Questions
- Write two facts from the visitor sheet that belong in the group "How the ladder is built."
- Write two facts from the visitor sheet that belong in the group "How the fish use it."
- Copy one exact sentence from the visitor sheet that shows the fish move themselves rather than being carried. Then explain in your own words what that sentence tells the reader.
- The sheet says water spills down through every pool. Why would that moving water help a trout find its way up the ladder? Use the sheet to support your answer.
- Write a concluding sentence for a paragraph about the Tallowbrook fish ladder. Your sentence should tell the reader why the ladder matters to the river.
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: Any two of: the ladder runs along the north end of the dam; it is a channel of fourteen shallow pools; each pool sits higher than the one below; the ladder climbs the same height as the dam; water spills through every pool; there is a counting window in the third pool from the top. Accept any two facts about the structure itself.
- Answer: Any two of: trout swim upstream every spring to lay eggs; a trout rests in a pool and then swims hard or leaps into the next pool; the fish repeat that until they reach the reservoir; a biologist counts fish at a window each week. Accept any two facts about fish behavior.
- Answer: "The fish do the climbing themselves." Students may also quote "A trout rests in one pool, then swims hard or leaps into the next pool up." The explanation should say that the ladder gives the fish steps small enough to pass, but the fish supply the effort.
- Answer: The spilling water gives the fish a current to follow, and trout swim against a current when they head upstream, so the falling water points them toward the next pool.
- Answer: Accept any concluding sentence that states why the ladder matters, such as: The Tallowbrook fish ladder lets the river's trout reach their spring nesting water even though a dam stands in the way. Sentences that only repeat a construction detail do not meet the task.
Differentiation
Support
Give these students a two-column note chart with the column headings already written and two facts already placed, so the sorting task starts from a model rather than a blank page. For question 3, narrow the search by telling students the sentence they need is in the third paragraph.
Extension
Ask students to add one sentence to their paragraph that explains what would likely happen to the spring trout run if the ladder were closed for repairs, and to mark that sentence as an inference rather than a fact from the sheet.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "ladder," "pool," "upstream," and "spill" with a labeled side-view sketch of the stepped channel. Provide a sentence frame for question 4: "The moving water helps the trout because ___." Allow students to draw the ladder and label it before writing the paragraph.
Extensions
Students write a second short paragraph from the biologist's point of view, explaining what the weekly count at the window would tell her about the trout run, and identify which of their sentences are facts from the sheet and which are their own reasoning.