EQ: How do community members work together? How do the main events or characters in this story influence the plot?
ELA Week Theme: Birth of a Town
Learning Target: I can sequence the main events in the plot of the story. I can use ideas to make and confirm predictions. I can use text evidence to think and compare.
Genre: historical fiction
Writing Example Type: narrative fiction
Materials / Resources
Nine for California by Sonia Levitin (E LEV)
Boom Town by Sonia Levitin (E LEV)
Pocket chart or magnetic board
Sentence strips listing events that occurred each time Amanda wished something would
happen
Prior Knowledge
Students have read Boom Town in the Third Grade anthology. They are familiar with Amanda and her family and the Gold Rush Era in California. Review the characters. BACKGROUND BUILDING: Show students several nonfiction books about the California Gold Rush (discuss the ways text might look in a nonfiction book—index, maps, charts) TIMESAVER: Use the map on the end pages of the fiction book to follow the route that the stagecoach followed from St. Louis to California. Explain possible reasons for moving to California and the existence of no real towns—only mining camps.
Procedure
Modeling and/or Skills Development
1. Before starting the lesson, mix up the sentence strips and put them in the pocket chart and turn it around so that it is not facing the class.
2. Tell students that Nine for California is the story of an exciting trip to California that took 21 days on a stagecoach. Review the characters. Can you imagine riding on a stagecoach for 21 days with your mother, four brothers and sisters, a school teacher, a cowboy, and a banker who thinks children should be seen and not heard? Amanda did just that-- She and her family traveled to a place that would become Boom Town to meet their father, a prospector looking for gold.
3. Do you think it could get very boring riding in a stagecoach for 21 days with no electronic devices to entertain yourself? Amanda got so bored that she wished something would happen.
Ask students to listen actively for Amanda’s wishes as you read Nine for California.
Every time she made a wish, something did happen. These are main events in the plot. Think about Amanda’s wishes. Ask students if they can remember what she wished for in the order of her wishes? Turn the pocket chart around and work with students to put the events in order.
4. Choose one character and model the development of that character through actions or dialogue. Discuss how the attitudes of the three adults changed toward Amanda and her family from the beginning of the story to the end. (skill: summarize, sequence, make and confirm predictions)
(Extension – assign other characters to students / groups. Ask them to read or act out a scene that shows something important about the character.)
Reflection
5. Amanda’s father just couldn’t understand why anyone would bring an empty sack to California. What do you think would have happened if Amanda’s mother hadn’t brought that sack?
Extension
1. Have nonfiction books about the Gold Rush era on display. Instruct students to use the table of contents to select information of interest and go to the index to narrow the topic they choose. Pairs of students can read about different aspects of the gold rush and share an interesting fact they learned about their topic with the group.
2. Preview interactive history adventure stories to acquaint students with books that allow them to make choices that will affect the outcome of the character or event they choose to follow. The California Gold Rush: An Interactive History Adventure (a You Choose Book) by Elizabeth Raum (979.404 RAU) may be found in a number of elementary libraries.
3. Media Literacy / Writing a newspaper article. Look at newspaper articles and find Who, What, Where, When, Why. How are these articles different from a fiction book? As a group, answer the Five W questions about Amanda and written sentences for a newspaper article if time allows. Why would a reporter write a newspaper article about Amanda?