Direct Instruction Lesson Plan Template

Name: Taylor Gamache

Central Focus/Big Idea of the
Lesson:
Grade Level/Subject: Fourth Grade
For students to learn about how
the interactions of people, and
cultures can effect the
environment.
Essential Standard/Common Core Objective: 4. G. 1. 3: Exemplify the
interactions various people, places, and cultures in terms of adaptation and
Date taught: 3/ 19/
modification to the environment.
2015

Daily Lesson Objective: Students will be able to analyze a social studies text to learn how
peoples choices effect the environment around them by taking part in a social studies literature
circle.
21st Century Skills: Communication and Collaboration and
Academic Language Demand
Life and Career Skills.
(Language Function and
Vocabulary): Analyze, explain,
environment, modifications,
adaptation, Nashua River, and
connections
Prior Knowledge:
Students will need to read a selected text.
Students will need to know how to work together.
Students will need to know how to write a journal entry.
Activity
1. Focus and Review
2. Statement of
Objective
for Student
3. Teacher Input

Description of Activities and Setting

Teacher will ask students what environmental adaptation
means to them, can students think of any examples. Record
students answers on a chart.
Today we are going to do a social studies literature circle; by
doing this we will learn environmental changes impacts on
human adaptations.
Teacher will pass out copies of A River Ran Wild to students.
Ask students to look at the cover, and flip through and look at
the pictures and make predictions about what they think it will
be about. Ask students to turn and talk to their partner about
the predictions they have made. After 2-3 minutes of talking
with their partner, ask volunteers to share their ideas with the
class. Teacher will begin to read and will call on other students
to read throughout the passage. Teacher will stop periodically
to summarize, and give students changes to share ideas and
ask questions. During the reading the teacher will make give
examples from the text and discuss how peoples behaviors
are effecting the environment, and how the citizens have to
accommodate these changes. Teacher will ask students to be
looking out for other examples throughout the rest of the
reading. Once class is finished reading A River Ran Wild ask

Time
10

1
30

4. Guided Practice

5. Independent
Practice

6. Assessment
Methods of
all
objectives/skills:

7. Closure
8. Assessment
Results of
all
objectives/skills:

students for ways that this book related to environmental

changes and human adaptation. Teacher will ask questions
like, What are the differences between the river when the
Indians first found it, to when it became a trading post? What
were the reasons for these changes? How did the changes the
people were making have an effect on the river and other
individuals in the area? Take time to record and discuss
students responses on the board while they do the same in
their notebooks.
Teacher will explain each literature circle job to the students.
The jobs are: Civics Critic, Geography Illustrator, Economic
Investigator, culture connector and History Tracer. The
Teacher will give examples to students of the different jobs,
and leave time for questions to make sure the students
understand. Students will go to their different groups to
complete their assigned social studies jobs. For Civics Critic:
students will need to complete 2 strengths and 2 weaknesses
20
for the book. the History Tracer will need give three history
examples of the time period and how the people lived. The
economic Investigator will need to identify two economic
themes in the book. The geography Illustrator will need two
pictures, one of the river before trade started and one of what
the river looked like after trade started. The Culture
Connector: Will need to give one text-to-text example, one
text to world example, and one text to life example.
The class will come back together and discuss their examples,
and ideas that their groups came up with. For independent
practice students will be asked to pretend they are a citizen
living on the Nashua river during this time and to write a
journal entry. How did they feel during this time? What did
20
things around them look like? What was changing? Hoe did
you feel about the traders during this time? They will be used
to use examples from the text in their journal entry, which
they will have to reference.
For mastery the students need talk about how the traders were changing
the land they were living on, they also need to talk about the physical
changes around them as a result of the new trading post, they need to
include at least two examples from the reading. For partial mastery they
will have only one example from the text. For no mastery they will have
no examples from the text and not discuss much about the Nashua river
during that time period.
We will come back together as a class and the teacher and
students will talk about how the interactions, and choices that
5
people made influenced the environment as well as other
people around them.
All of the students met the objective. Their journal entries were fun to
read and showed they understood the concept and objective of
environmental change and human adaptation.

Targeted Students
Student/Small Group
Modifications/Accommodations: Spend one
Modifications/Accommodations:
on one time with ELL students explaining
jobs and making sure they understand.
Materials/Technology: A copy of the River Ran Wild for each student, paper, markers,

pencils, white board, white board markers, and social studies notebooks.
References: The river ran wild text.

Reflection on lesson: The cooperating teacher I was working with loves reading, and that is
the whole reason she became a teacher, to teach children how to read. She tries to incorporate
reading into everything that she does with her students. Because I knew this about my teacher, I
presented her with the social studies literature circle idea(that I learned during microteachings),
since she was such a fan of regular literature circles. She had never heard of them, but loved the
idea. I emailed her the River Ran Wild text as well as the jobs and she was excited and loved the
idea. At first, I was nervous that the students would not like the reading, or think it was boring,
but they were really into it. They were asking several questions throughout the reading and
bringing up great discussion points such as trade, producers and consumers, and supply and
demand. This are all points I did not plan on bringing up but I was happy to see where the
discussion went and I was finding more and more about what the students knew. As we
continued reading a lot of the students were mad that this was happening to the Nashua river, I
did not expect them to become so invested. They were making comments like, all of those
animals had no where to go, and I cant believe all of the fish were being killed for no reason.
This was a perfect discussion starter for the objective that we had. The students had lots to say
about the never-changing environment during this story and couldnt believe it was a true story
and really happened. My cooperating teacher told me that this class had an exceptionally hard
time with text to text, text to self, and text to world connections, because of this I pointed out
several of my own connections throughout the reading. I did not make a sheet with the jobs and
their descriptions on them, which was a mistake! I had to write them on the board while we were
discussing them, it would have been easier to give the students handouts they could refer to
instead. The students all loved doing their jobs and really took ownership of their work. When
we came back as a class to discuss them, we had a fire drill. This not only scared me to death,
but also took up 20 minutes of time. Because of this, the students could not share their work in
groups, and they could not finish their journal entries, they had to take it home for homework. At
first I was disappointed by this, but I realized that, you can only plan so much, there will always
be interruptions and things that come up that are out of my control, this was just good practice
for that. I think I over planned though and tried to fit too much in a small time slot, an hour
seems like a lot but it goes by so quickly, especially when fourth graders have lots to say. I think
next time the literature circle would have been enough content for one lesson, rather then a
journal entry as well.