I.
READINESS
Teacher Readiness
Title: The Ghosts of the Great Lakes Grade Level: 5th Grade
State Standard for English/Language Arts
Writing/Grade 5
#3: Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective
technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.
- Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, description, and pacing, to develop
experiences and events or show the responses to characters to situations.
State Standard for Social Studies
Strand B: History
B.8.1: Interpret the past using a variety of sources such as biographies, diaries, journals,
artifacts, eyewitness interviews, and other primary source materials, and evaluate the
credibility of sources used.
Learning Objectives:
- Students will interpret a historical event where a ship sank in one of the Great Lakes by
reading the tale of the ship sinking and then including themselves in the tale as part of the
crew on that shipping sink.
- Students will create a semantic map to help them develop one journal entry as if they
were part of a crew on a ship that is sinking on the Great Lakes.
- Students will compose a one-page journal entry pretending they are part of the crew of a
ship that is sinking in the Great Lakes.
Materials Needed:
- Videos on “Wisconsin’s Great Lakes Shipwrecks” – YouTube
o First: http://av.aqua.wisc.edu/shipwrecks/video/vernon_1L.mov
o Second: http://av.aqua.wisc.edu/shipwrecks/video/Lucerne_1L.mov
- Tales of 23 sunken ships, victims of the Great Lakes
- PowerPoint of what is being taught
- Example semantic map done by me.
- Example journal entry done by me.
Student Readiness
Engagement Strategy
- Tell the students to put their things in their desk and to take out a pencil.
- Tell the students, just write down some notes of what you notice in the video, what could
we be talking about, how will what you are seeing be related to a creative writing lesson?
- Show students the videos in the order listed above.
- Ask the students for what they noticed.
Statement of Purpose:
“Today we are taking historical events of the Great Lakes, reading about the events and then
interpreting the event through a creative writing activity. To prepare you for your creative
writing activity, I am going to show you how to organize your thoughts by helping you create
a semantic map. This is important because it will help organize all of the writing you will
ever do and it will create an organized way for you to gather your thoughts. You will be able
to use this for all of your future writings through middle school, high school and college. I
still use this technique to date!”
II.
INPUT
Instruction:
- Tell the students a semantic map has a main point and then you can build off of it.
- Tell the students a semantic map has a big center circle. This is where you put your main
idea for what you want to write about.
- Tell the students from the center circle with your main idea, you draw lines to smaller
circles to organize your thoughts, in which, you want to include in your writing around
the main idea.
- Tell the students, you can draw as many smaller circles as you want when you organize
your thoughts and then you can choose what you want to use in your writing.
Model:
- Show the students a semantic map.
- Show the students in the center circle is your main idea.
- Show the students that the outside circles are smaller ideas that help support your main
idea.
Formative Assessment:
- Ask the students, how does a semantic map help you with your writing? Thumbs up if it
helps you organize your thoughts or thumbs down if it is just more work to do.
- Ask the students, what do we put in the center circle? Thumbs up for main idea or thumbs
down for supporting ideas.
- Ask the students what do we put in the smaller circles? Thumbs up for main idea or
thumbs down for supporting ideas.
Instruction:
- Tell the students now we are going to practice using a semantic map.
- Tell the students you will receive a tale of a ship that sank in the Great Lakes.
- Tell the students you will need to read the story of the sunken ship.
- Tell the students to then create a semantic map to help them organize their writing for the
creative writing activity.
- Tell the students the activity. The students will write a one-page piece that is a journal
entry as if they were on the ship. It could be the day of the ship sinking, the day before
but you are on the ship and you are writing a crew members’ journal entry while using
information you pick out from the story you read.
- Tell the students there is a minimum of 3 smaller circles needed on your map. The main
idea will be ‘Crew Members journal entry on the (blank) ship’. The smaller circles will
be your ideas for what will be in the body of your one-page journal entry.
- Tell the students to pretend this is a journal entry archeologist divers will find when they
are discovering your sunken ship.
Model:
- Show the students the story you read and summarize.
- Show the students your semantic map and explain what you put on the semantic map.
- Show the students your journal entry. Point out key points such as the correct historical
date, the facts and details taken from the story you read, and how you added more
creativity to it.
Formative Assessment:
- Ask the students, once you are done reading your sinking ship story, what should you
create? (Create a semantic map)
- Ask the students, once you start your semantic map, how many smaller circles should
there be around your main idea? (Create 3 smaller circles with ideas)
- Ask the students, how many pages will be included in your journal entry?
- Ask the students, while writing your journal entry what character are you pretending to
be?
Guided Practice:
- Pass out to the students their ship tale.
- Tell the students to get started reading their tale, then once they are completed with the
story to create their semantic map and finally start their one-page journal entry.
- Remind the students your map and journal entry are up for them to look at if they get lost.
- Walk around to see how the students are doing and answer any questions.
III.
OUTPUT
Summative Assessment:
- Students will create a semantic map to help them organize their creative writing prompt
for the day. Once the students are finished with their semantic map, they will compose a
creative one-page journal entry as if they are on the ship the day of it’s sinking. This is a
journal entry archeological divers find when they are discovering the ship, which sunk.
Modification: The autistic student will work one-on-one with the teacher. They will be read
the story out loud and asked to create, together, a semantic map and then take that
information on the map and create a journal illustration of what the day of the sinking
was like.
Closure:
Tell Us About Your Ship
- Tell the students we all had a different ship that sank in the Great Lakes. Write a brief
summary about what you read. What is the name of the ship you read about? How’d it
sink and when did it sink?
- Once you are finished writing put your head down.
- Once everyone is finished, students will tell a partner about their ship and then turn in
their summary they wrote.