Lesson plan Kindergarten English Language Arts

The Puddle That Disappeared: A Sparrow Hill Water Cycle Story

A 25-minute kindergarten lesson where students retell the story of a playground puddle in order, from rainfall to sunshine, and dictate a reaction to the water's path.

Grade: Kindergarten
Subject: English Language Arts
Material: Lesson plan
Time: 25 min
Prep: Low prep
Materials: Four story picture cards (rain, puddle, shrinking puddle, dry ground) drawn on paper or index cards, one set for the teacher and one set per pair, Drawing paper and crayons

Standards

W.K.3 Common Core ELA

Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to narrate a single event or several loosely linked events, tell about the events in the order in which they occurred, and provide a reaction to what happened.

How this material aligns: Students narrate the puddle's single event in the order rain fell, the puddle sat, and the sun dried it, then give a reaction, exactly the narrate-and-react task this standard requires.

All materials for W.K.3 →

K-ESS2-1 NGSS

Use and share observations of local weather conditions to describe patterns over time.

How this material aligns: The story marks the puddle as wet at morning recess and gone by the end of the day as the afternoon warms, the kind of morning-to-afternoon weather change this standard's clarification names as a pattern to observe.

All materials for K-ESS2-1 →

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This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely, without attribution. Updated 2026-07-16.

Objectives

Students will retell the four events of the puddle's story in the order they happened.
Students will describe the puddle as wetter in the morning and drier by the end of the day.
Students will draw and dictate or write a reaction to what happened to the puddle's water.

Vocabulary

Key words: puddle, evaporate, sun, dry

Teacher overview

At Sparrow Hill Elementary (a fictional school used for this lesson), rain fell on the blacktop one morning and left behind a wide puddle by the four-square courts. This lesson tells that puddle's story in four parts: the rain falls, the puddle forms, the sun warms it through the day, and by afternoon it is gone. Students retell the events in order, then draw the puddle's story and dictate or write their own reaction to where the water went. A common misconception at this age is that the puddle's water simply disappears; the story is built so the teacher can name what really happens, water rising into the air as vapor, in plain, repeatable language.

Keep the four story cards visible for the whole lesson so students can point to them while retelling. No outdoor puddle is required; the story stands on its own as a read-aloud.

Procedure

Hook (4 min): Ask the class, "Have you ever seen a puddle after it rains? What happens to it by the end of the day?" Take two or three guesses without correcting them yet.

Story read-aloud (7 min): Read the four-part story aloud, pointing to a picture card at each part. Part one: rain falls on the playground at Sparrow Hill. Part two: a wide puddle sits on the blacktop at morning recess. Part three: the sun warms the puddle at lunch, and it grows smaller. Part four: by the end of the school day, the puddle is gone, because the sun turned the water into vapor that rose into the air.

Picture-order retelling in pairs (6 min): Give each pair a shuffled set of the four cards. Students work together to lay the cards in the correct order, then take turns pointing to each card and saying what happens in that part of the story.

Whole-class retelling (3 min): Choose one pair to retell the full story to the class using the cards in order, with the rest of the class saying "yes" or "not yet" after each card to confirm the order together.

Draw, dictate, and react (5 min): Each student draws one picture from the puddle's story and dictates or writes one sentence reacting to it, such as "I think the puddle went up into the sky" or "The puddle got smaller because the sun was hot." Circulate and scribe for students who dictate.

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

Answer Key

Retelling question: "What are the four parts of the story in order?" Answer: Rain falls, puddle forms, puddle shrinks in the sun, puddle is gone. This is the correct order of the four story cards, and any retelling that keeps this order counts as correct.
Retelling question: "What made the puddle get smaller?" Answer: The sun. The story states that the sun warmed the puddle through the day, which is why it grew smaller and eventually disappeared.

Differentiation

Support

Give struggling students only two cards at a time (rain and puddle, then shrinking and gone) to order before combining all four, and allow the draw-and-dictate task to be completed with a single word ("gone" or "sun") if a full sentence is still difficult.

Extension

Ask confident students to add a fifth event to the story, such as the puddle's water forming a cloud again, and explain in one more sentence how that event connects to the four they already know.

ELL supports

Pre-teach puddle, sun, and dry with simple gestures (cupped hands for puddle, arms wide and rising for sun, a wiping motion for dry) before the read-aloud. Allow the picture-order task to be completed by pointing and placing cards rather than speaking, and accept a one-word dictated reaction.

Extensions

Set a real cup of water on a sunny windowsill and mark the water line with a crayon. Check it again the next day and compare the new water line to the mark, connecting the classroom puddle story to something students can watch happen for themselves.