Lesson Plan Format



Disciplinary Unit: Lesson Plan #1

I. General Information:

Grade Level: 5th Grade

Discipline: Social Studies - History

Unit Topic: The Great Irish Famine

Time Frame: 1 hour

Anchor Text: Under the Hawthorn Tree by Marita Conlon-McKenna

Other Materials: YouTube video, Copy of the anchor text for every child (or eBook), KWL chart on Smartboard, Worksheets for Placemat activity

II. Essential Understanding/Questions:

• Define the meaning of the word Famine.

• Describe the onset and indications of blight in the potato fields

• Identify personality traits of the main characters of the anchor text and determine whether these traits are situational or stable.

III. Standards/Indicators

RI 1 CCR Quote accurately from a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text

• R1 1.3: Demonstrate understanding, either orally or in writing, after reading, viewing, or listening to a text

RI 3 CCR Explain the relationships or interactions between two or more individuals, events, ideas, or concepts in a historical, scientific, or technical text based on specific information in the text.

• R1 3.3: Use text-relevant information and language to explain connections between and/or among events, ideas or concepts, and steps in a text.

RI 6 CCR Analyze multiple accounts of the same event or topic, noting important similarities and differences in the point of view they represent

• R1 6.2: Gather relevant textual evidence for comparing and contrasting two or more accounts of the same event or topic

RI7 Draw on information from multiple print or digital sources, demonstrating the ability to locate an answer to a question quickly or to solve a problem efficiently.

W9 CCR Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research

• Write in response to grade-level print, nonprint, and digital literary or informational text(s)

Irish History Curriculum

Strand: Eras of Change and Conflict

Strand Units: The Great Famine

The child should be enabled to:

• Become familiar with aspects of these periods

o Ways in which the everyday lives of people changed

o Changes in people’s thoughts and beliefs

o Reasons for these changes

IV. Lesson Objectives

Adapted from the Standards for Reading Informational Text for Grade 5 students:

• Compose and write a definition for the word Famine after discussion and viewing/reading from multiple sources

• Determine and explain the main ideas (explicit or inferred) of the YouTube video and anchor text

• Explain what is directly stated in the video and/or text by citing specific details and examples from the text

• Synthesize information and ideas gathered from the text/video

• Use information, gathered from multiple sources (i.e. the text and the video) to explain the multiple causes of the famine

V. Evaluation/Assessment:

Formative Assessment: Four Corners Strategy (Vierstra, 2015)

During this lesson, the children will be introduced to the topic and the primary anchor text for the unit. The children will initially gain a lot of general information about the Famine times, but will receive very little detailed information during the first lesson. The Four Corners strategy would allow the teacher to assess the children’s current understanding informally and address any misconceptions through discussion, before moving on to the provision of more detailed information in proceeding lessons. An example of a question/statement which could be used would be “The potato blight was the sole cause of the Great Famine”. The children could choose between four answers: I agree, I disagree, I am unsure/I need more information, I have no opinion (the final option is included for more opinion-based questions).

VI. Procedures:

Introduction

KWL: Using a chart on a Smartboard, discuss as a class group what we already know about the Great Irish Famine (Note: If this lesson is taking place within an Irish classroom, the students would have studied the topic briefly in 3rd and 4th grade. Therefore, Irish students would have a greater prior knowledge of this topic than most American students). Invite students to form some questions regarding the Famine; what do they want to know?

Teaching/Activities

Vocabulary Development: Placemat Activity

Divide the children into groups of four. Provide each group with a large version of the Placemat Activity worksheet (See Resources Tab). Ask the children to write the word Famine at the top of the middle box. Invite each student to write their definition of the word Famine in one corner of the placemat. All the children will write simultaneously on the large worksheet. Encourage them to include the cause of famine in their definitions. Once every student has written a definition, invite the students to discuss their definitions as a group. Each group must formulate one definition from the individual definitions they all provided. The group’s definition will be written in the center box. Each group’s definition will be shared with the class.

Video: The Great Potato Famine 1845 -1851 (Kumar, 2015).

Show the students the above YouTube video. Stop at 1:01.

Discuss: How does the video’s definition of famine differ from the definition which your group provided? Create a class definition of Famine. Compare this to the dictionary definition provided for the word.

Video: Continuing watching the video. Provide the students with focus questions before continuing the video. Stop at 4:19.

Focus Questions:

What was the disease which affected the potato known as?

How would you know a field was infected before ever examining the potatoes?

How many people starved to death during the Famine?

Which group provided over £100,000 relief to Ireland? Why was the aid not distributed equally?

Name the countries which people emigrated to.

Inferential Questions:

Discuss how the images presented in the video are a misrepresentation of Famine times.

Discuss why the Gaelic speaking Catholics were affected the most by the Famine?

Anchor Text

Introduce the Anchor Text to the students. Provide a brief summary of the text to the students and describe the first time you read the book as a child their age. Sell the book to them and get them excited about reading it.

Prediction: Examine the contents page of the text. How do the names of the chapters influence our predictions of what is going to happen in the text?

Teacher Read Aloud

As this is the first lesson in the unit, the children will be invited to relax and listen to the beginning of the story, creating a picture in their heads as they listen.

Draw attention to vocabulary words which the children may be unfamiliar with; in particular Irish words like bog, a ghile, a stór etc. which American students would not understand. Discuss what these words could mean by using semantic and syntactic textual cues.

Closure

Character Analysis

Provide the Character Analysis Worksheet to the students (see Resources tab). At 3 points during the reading of the Anchor Text, the children will be encouraged to return to these character outlines (as part of prescribed homework assignments) to record how the characters change as the Famine progresses. Discussions will ensue – why did the children change so much? Was it a personality trait or a cause of the situation they were in? Discuss the difference between situational vs. stable personality traits. How would you determine this?

Four Corners

The students begin by standing in the center of the room. Each corner of the classroom will be labelled; I agree, I disagree, I am unsure/I need more information, I have no opinion (the final option is included for when I ask more opinion based questions). After hearing the statement, the students must walk to the corner of the classroom to indicate their response to the statement.

Example statements:

The smell was the first indication that the blight had affected the potato crop.

People went to the Doctors when they were sick.

Due to the number of people who died, formal funerals became uncommon.

The children stayed home from school to help their mother clean the house.

Strangers were not welcome to houses for fear of the spread of sickness.

The potato blight was the sole cause of the Great Famine

Working on the roads was a hard job, but it brought good money to the family.

KWL: Revisit the KWL chart from the beginning of this lesson. What information can we already add to it?

References

Conlon-McKenna, M. (1990). Under the Hawthorn Tree. O’Brien’s Press: Dublin

Kumar, J (2015, July 14). The Great Potato Famine 1845 – 1851 [Video File]. Retrieved from .

Vierstra, G. (2015, March 4). Formative Assessment Resources: They Them Today, Tomorrow, or Sometime Soon. Retrieved from

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