Thematic Unit

Melissa Anderson
Thematic Unit – Second Language Instruction

12/12/15
My thematic unit covers the Social Studies topic of the Dust Bowl for grade 4.
My fourth grade classroom of 20 is mainly English-native speakers, but I have 6

Second Language Learners. 4 of my ELLs are from Spanish-speaking countries. Alejandro
and Dailin are from Cuba, Nena is from Puerto Rico, and Carlos is from Mexico. My other 2
ELLs are from Asia: Bo is Taiwanese and Sameer is Indian.
Nena is the most recent addition to my classroom having come a month ago. She is
familiar with English through television, movies, and visiting the U.S. from Puerto Rico, so
she’s making pretty good headway, and when I tested her scored about a mean of 3 on the
SOLOM Matrix. Sameer joined us just three months ago and is struggling the most with
English, especially pronunciation. He scored about a 2 average on the SOLOM Matrix.
Alejandro was born in the United States and Carlos emigrated from Mexico when he
was 3. Both have very good proficiency in English, but struggle with grammar and writing
since their parents have not been educated in the English language. They both scored an
average of 4 on the SOLOM.
Bo is hard to assess since he doesn’t speak much in class. He has been in the U.S. for
about a year now, and in my class for about four months. His comprehension seems to be a
4, and his grammar is high as well when writing along with his vocabulary, but his
pronunciation is lacking whenever he does speak and fluency is about a 2.
Second Lang. SIOP Lesson Plan Name: Melissa Anderson
Lesson Title: The Dust Bowl Subject: Social Studies Grade: 4th
TEKS: §113.15 b(5)B
Content Objectives: Identify what caused the Dust Bowl and how the Dust Bowl affected
the Great Depression. List the methods used to remedy the Dust Bowl and state the year it
ended.
Language Objectives: Discuss pictures with a group using descriptive language.
Key Vocabulary: The Dust Bowl, drought, the Great Depression, soil, crops, migrate, the
Great Plains, dust,
Materials: Laminated pictures of the Dust Bowl, classroom map, classroom timeline
Anticipatory Set: (Motivation) (How will I grab the students’ attention for this lesson?)
Project the picture of the Dust Bowl. Ask students to guess what is happening/about to happen in the
picture. Have the students discuss with their desk partners what they and their family would do during
conditions like the one in the picture.
Modeling and Instruction: (Presentation) (How will I teach the content of the lesson?)
Have the class split into their home groups (4 each) and assign each group a picture depicting the Dust
Bowl. Have each group discuss what their picture tells them about the Dust Bowl for 5 minutes and
summarize it into one sentence. Ask each group what they came up with and write it on a poster board.
Explain what the Dust Bowl was: an area of land where the soil for crops had dried out and turned to dust
because of drought and over-usage of the land. Identify the most severe areas of the Dust Bowl on the
classroom map: Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, and New Mexico.
Add the Dust Bowl’s starting year (1934) to the classroom Timeline of Important Events. Discuss how close
in time the Dust Bowl began to the Great Depression happening. Relate the Dust Bowl to increased poverty
(people lost their homes, land, and most of their possessions) and decreased employment (farmers lost
their jobs because the soil in those regions was implantable). Now 2.5 million people were moving to other
states, a lot of them looking for jobs that weren’t there. This slowed down the Great Depression from
being fixed.
Very soon after the Dust Bowl began in 1934, Congress passed Soil Conservation Service in the
Department of Agriculture to help preserve the soil. This service taught farmers things like strip cropping
(picture/explanation) and crop rotation (picture/explanation). In 1937 FDR began a project under that
same SCS called the Shelterbelt Project to plant trees across the Great Plains (identify on map) to protect
them from being pelted by dust storms.
These projects decrease the dust storms by 65%, but the country is still in drought. The only thing that
could heal the Dust Bowl was rain. In 1939 rain came once again to the Great Plains and the Midwest was
brought out of the Dust Bowl. It happened just in time for World War II when many crops would be needed
to feed the soldiers fighting for our country.
Guided Practice and Check for Understanding: (Modeling) (How will I model the
expectation for the students? How will I know they are understanding the lesson?)
Ask students to vote on which act of Congress they liked best, either the Soil Conservation Service where
farmers were taught proper techniques, or the Shelterbelt project. Have at least one student from each side
explain their reasoning.
Independent Practice: (Practice/Application) (What will the students do on their own to

practice and apply the skill/knowledge?)
Display the prompt: If you were in President Roosevelt’s place, what act would you pass to help people in
the Dust Bowl? Have the students come up with their own unique act and draw a picture or collage of it
writing two or three sentences describing their picture. Once they are done, ask two students to share their
picture and plans.
Closure: (Review) (How will I wrap up the lesson?)

Call on students randomly and ask:
What caused the Dust Bowl? (A drought and improper farming techniques)
What five states was the Dust Bowl most severe in? (Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico)
What 2 projects did Congress pass to help the Dust Bowl? (SCS and Shelterbelt Project)
What year did the Dust Bowl finally end? (1939)
The class will look into how the Dust Bowl affected Americans tomorrow.
Assessment: (This should relate to the objectives)

Formative assessment comes from class discussions during the lesson, the act of Congress each student
creates to pass, and the closure review.
Additional modifications for ELL:

A Dust Bowl Word Wall will be put up for the whole week including words like: crops, dust, Dust Bowl,
Great Depression, Great Plains, erosion, migrate, soil, storm, etc. The pictures, maps, and timeline help ELLs
piece together the history of a country they are probably not familiar with. In this lesson, ELLs also get the
opportunity to have group discussion getting into the habit of using descriptive words.
Lesson Title: Point of View Subject: Language Arts Grade: 4th
TEKS: §110.15 b(6)C
Content Objectives: Be able to identify the differences between first, second, and third
person point of view. Identify words that are characteristic to each POV. Write a journal
entry in the first person.
Language Objectives: Write a journal entry in the first person and stay consistent in that
person. Match up sight vocabulary words to a POV (i.e. he to 3rd person, I to 1st person, you
to 2nd person)
Key Vocabulary: Point of View, First Person, Second Person, Third Person, narrative,
narrator, entry, journal
Materials: Madison Butler journal entry, poster board, 5 dry-erase boards, 5 dry-erase
markers
Have 3 students read 3 sentences:
I love Ms. Anderson’s class!
You love Ms. Anderson’s class!
He loves Ms. Anderson’s class!
Ask the students what the differences are between these 3 sentences (the words “I,” “you,” and “he.”)
https://vimeo.com/93104211 Watch this point of view video and stop it at 1:47.
The Point of View of a story is what perspective the story is told from. It is always going to focus on the
narrator’s point of view. It doesn’t matter who had dialogue in the story (so anything in dialogue quotation
marks doesn’t count).
Use a POV poster board divided into 3 sections with the definitions of each POV already written on it with
some extra space. 1st person: the narrator is one of the characters, 2 nd person: the narrator is talking to you
(usually informational or technical), 3rd person: the narrator is not part of the story. Explain the POVs to
the students and discuss what kind of pronouns we see in each POV. 1st: me, I, we, 2nd: you, 3rd: he, she,
they.
Have the kids separate in their home groups and give them each a dry erase board. Project sentences on
the screen one at a time and have the students work by group to figure out which POV the sentence is in.
Once they figure it out, they write down which POV they think the sentence is in. Each team gets a point for
a correct answer. Have them change the sentence into another POV of the teacher’s choosing, and the first
team to hold up their board and get it right gets an extra point.
Read the Madison Butler journal entry aloud while it is projected on the screen. Take note of the date and
how close this entry was written to the start of the Dust Bowl. Ask how the entry depicts the points that the
class gathered from the pictures the class saw at the beginning of the social studies lesson earlier that day.
What other information could the author have given to help out someone who knew nothing about the
Dust Bowl?
Have each student write their own journal entry from the first person POV as if they themselves were
living in the Dust Bowl in any one of the 5 states that it affected most (Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado,
New Mexico) It needs to be at least 1/2 a page about how they think they would feel and what they would
experience based on the social studies lesson.

Have three students stand up in front of the class and share either a portion or all of what they wrote. Ask
the other students to tell the writers if they used the POV properly, and if not, how they could change some
of their sentences to do so.

Formative assessment is the game that was played during guided practice and the journal entries
themselves to see if the students used the first person POV correctly.

A Dust Bowl Word Wall will be put up for the entire week to help them write their entries.
Lesson Title: Soil Subject: Science Grade: 4th
TEKS: § 112.15 b(7)A
Content Objectives: List the 2 elements that soil is made from, identify 4 different types of
soil, begin an experiment planting seeds in soil.
Language Objectives: Use descriptive, scientific words to describe what the student is
seeing in their observations.
Key Vocabulary: soil, minerals, topsoil, weathered, dirt, humus
Materials: Fruit platter, napkins, Poster board for KWL chart, sticky notes, paper bowls,
bins of 4 different kinds of soil, at least 8 radish seeds, What is My Soil Like? Worksheet,
Soil information jigsaw sheets, radish logs
Pass around napkins and carry a fruit platter to each student and let them have 2 pieces of fruit each
(accommodate for allergies with a wide variety and spacers between different fruit). Allow the students to
eat their fruit and begin the lesson.
Ask: Why should we care about dirt? (Wait for the response that we can’t have fruit or most food without
dirt.)
Introduce the KWL chart about soil and ask the students to get into their home groups and collectively
write down on a sticky note one thing they already know about soil. Walk to each home group with the
KWL chart and allow the students to read what’s on their sticky note and then stick it under the “K” on the
chart.
Next have them write what they wonder about soil and do the same thing.
Place 4 see-through, Tupperware bins of different kinds of soil at the front of the classroom labeled sand,
clay, silt, and loam, respectively. Talk about how soil is made up of 2 things: tiny pieces of rock and humus.
The earth is one big rock and little by little things like water, wind, and other rocks rub rocks down into
tiny pieces to make part of soil. Humus on the other hand is organic material, or things that were alive, that
have died and are decomposing like plants and animals.
We identify soil by its soil profile, which we learned about the day before this lesson. Play this YouTube
video to refresh the students’ memories on soil layers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysIm7ImsK6c
There are 4 different kinds of soil: sand, clay, silt and loam. Each of these is made up of a different amount
from each layer; that’s what makes the difference.
Number each child in their home group from 1-4. The 1’s will study the sand, the 2s will study the clay, the 3s
will study the silt, and the 4s will study the loam. When the students get into their jigsaw groups, give them each
a paper describing their soil and a worksheet to record their observations and predictions on. They can discuss
their questions together, but cannot all have one collective answer on their paper. Each child from their jigsaw
group’s Tupperware bin of soil gets to take a paper bowl full back to their table to show their group.

As each child observes and discusses their observations and predictions in their jigsaw groups, they also
independently write and fill out their worksheet as well as read their information. When they go back to
their group, they have the opportunity to now verbally explain all that they’ve learned to solidify it in their
minds and share with the group.

Ask a couple of students what they answered on the two last questions of their worksheet, “Which soil do I
think looks the most like the Dust Bowl soil?” and “Do I think a plant can grow strong in this type of soil?”
Bring the bins back up to the front and let the kids know that we are going to conduct an experiment that
will take a few weeks. Plant 2 radish seeds in each bin and have the helper of each day help water the
plants for the next few weeks. Students will observe their progress every day for the next two weeks in
their radish logs.
The worksheet and the retelling of each expert’s information are the formative assessment for the lesson.

A Dust Bowl Word Wall will be put up for the entire week. On the informational sheets that each student
was given in the jigsaw groups, descriptive words are underlined with definitions underneath so that
students can incorporate them into their writing and observations.
Lesson Title: Out of the Dust Subject: Guided Reading Grade: 4th
TEKS: §110.15 b(4)
Content Objectives: Read text in poetic page format (unusual line breaks, etc.)
Language Objectives: Hear prosodic and fluent reading out loud.
Key Vocabulary:
Materials: Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse, print outs of entry “March 1934 Tested By
Dust” for the entire class
Introduce Out of the Dust to the class and explain the background of the story. Billie Jo is an 8 th grade girl
living in Oklahoma in 1934 and 1935 during the Dust Bowl. She’s a normal girl who loves to play piano and
spend time with her parents, but the Dust Bowl is devastating to her family, especially her farmer father.
Read aloud the excerpt from “March 1934 Fields of Flashing Light” as it is projected on the screen via this
website
http://www.btboces.org/Downloads/1_Out%20of%20the%20Dust%20by%20Karen%20Hesse.pdf
Ask: Why do you think Billie Jo went out to see the Dust Storm?
How do you think Billie Jo felt when she realized the crops would be destroyed?
What do you think Pa was doing outside for hours?
Why didn’t Ma and Pa cry?

Have each student read the excerpt from “March 1934 Tested By Dust” to themselves then have them
discuss in their home groups what they found interesting about the chapter and what was difficult about
reading this kind of writing with poetic page layout.

Explain that writers often use this kind of poetic layout for emphasis. The line where Pa “Coughed and spit
out/ mud” emphasizes the word mud because it’s a word that the author really wants you to pay attention
to.
Let the students know that the class will continue reading excerpts from Out of the Dust the rest of the
week to see what happens to Billie Jo and her family.
The assessment from this lesson will mainly come from the group practice and asking children to read
quietly aloud to the teacher as they read the chapter by themselves.
A Dust Bowl Word Wall will be put up for the entire week. The teacher will be reading aloud with prosody
and fluency to model to my ELLs what reading in English should sound like, and moreover, what reading
poetry in English can sound like.
Lesson Title: Equivalent Fractions Subject: Math Grade: 4th
TEKS: §111.6 b(3)C
Content Objectives: Determine if two fractions are equivalent using common denominator
method, cross-multiplying, and reducing the fractions.
Language Objectives: Work with a multi-step word problem to acquire data to solve a
math problem.
Key Vocabulary: numerator, denominator, fraction, equivalent, equal, cross-multiply,

reduce, common
Materials: Block manipulatives
Billie Jo’s Pa planted 85 acres of crops. He planted wheat in 35 acres and he planted corn in 30 acres. He
also planted peas. When a big dust storm came, it wiped out 8 acres or peas, 16 acres of corn, and 14 acres
of wheat. What percentage of each of Pa’s crops was destroyed by the dust storm?
Remind the students to take each word problem one step at a time. Have everyone get out a piece of
scratch paper and work with the teacher on their own.
Have the students draw out a diagram to represent what they already know. Find the missing value for the
acres in which Pa planted peas (20 acres). Next, make simple fractions representing how many crops were
lost by placing the number of destroyed acres over the number of total acres. There is your simple answer.
Do not reduce the fractions.
Now prompt the question: How can we find out if two of these fractions are equal fractions?
The students will brainstorm a bit and may come up with the answer “reduce all the fractions.” This is the
perfect way to proceed. Reduce all the fractions on the board, working with the students. The reduced
fractions for peas, corn, and wheat are 2/5, 8/15, and 2/5, respectively. Pa lost an equal fraction of peas
and wheat. However, there are 2 other ways to figure this out which work really well if the fractions
contain much larger numbers.
Another way to figure out if 2 fractions are equal is to find a common denominator between the two and
see if their numerator is equal. If their numerator is equal, then, of course, the fractions themselves are
equal. Have each student do this on their own scratch paper and see if everyone comes up with the same
answer.
The last way to do this is to cross-multiply. This way is great if you don’t want to reduce. Simply write the
two fractions beside each other and multiply each numerator by the other fraction’s denominator. If the
new numerator and the denominator are equal to each other, than the fractions are equal.
http://www.augustatech.edu/math/molik/fractionequivnotes.pdf
Make several more examples up on the board, of course all dealing the Dust Bowl. Create problems with 2
fractions and use all 3 methods to check. Continue to practice until the students are feeling confident
enough as a whole to do it on their own.

Have each student pull out a fresh sheet of paper and check for several more equivalent fractions on their
own. For those who want extra guided practice, have them join the teacher in the back to work until they
feel comfortable enough to do it on their own. After several minutes, however, send everyone to their
desks to work on their own.

Quickly review the 3 methods. Ask the students which method they prefer and why. Remind the students
that math is approachable from several different angles and all of these methods are acceptable as long as
they get to the correct answer.

The guided practice and extra guided practice are formative assessment as well as the independent
practice they do.

A Dust Bowl Word Wall will be put up for the entire week. Extra guided practice is available to create a
more one-on-one environment for ELLs who are having difficulty with the lesson. Drawing out a visual of
the word problem also makes the problem more understandable.
Dust Bowl Pictures (Anticipatory Set/Modeling and Instruction – S.S.)
Point of View Sentences (Guided Practice - English)
The Dust Bowl affected all of America.

The United States of America was in trouble.
I wish I could run away from all this dust.
Grandma lived during the Dust Bowl.
You lived in Kansas in 1935.
We turned our plates upside down so dust wouldn’t get in them.
The Dust Bowl began in the 1930s.
My grandfather’s father was a farmer.
I helped you harvest your crops.
Did the Dust Bowl make the Great Depression worse?
Would America survive something so terrible?
Journal Entry (Independent Practice - English)
April 15, 1935

A storm came rolling through our tiny Texas town yesterday. It was a storm like I
had never seen before; a storm of dust. I saw it rolling over the horizon and knew it was
something terrible. It was so scary that even Pa was frightened. When the storm hit our
small, wooden house, it shook and the dust squeezed in through the cracks getting into
everything. The dust got into our clothes, into our skin, into our food, into our blankets, and
into our lungs. My brother and I tried to cough it out for a few minutes before Ma put some
wet rags on our faces for us to breathe into. She said if we kept those on then less dust
would get into our mouths. It helped a little, but everything still tastes like dust. Sometimes
I feel bits crunch between my teeth.
All I know is that I hope that dust storm never happens again, and that our crops will be
okay because if we don’t sell crops, then we don’t make money. And if we don’t make
money, we don’t eat. We’re poor enough as it is, and I sure do get hungry.
Madison Butler
What is My Soil Like?
What type of soil do I have?
What color is it?
What does it feel like?
If I grab it in my hand and make a fist, does it stick together?
Why?
Is it dry or wet?
Do I think a plant can grow strong in this kind of soil?
Why?
Which soil do I think looks the most like the Dust Bowl soil?
Soil Types Jigsaw (Science)
Sandy Soil
Sandy soil is easy to spot by its feel. It has a gritty texture and when a handful of sandy soil is
squeezed in your hand, it will easily fall apart when you open your hand again. Sandy soil is
filled with sand and sand is mostly small pieces of weathered rocks.
Sand tends to have big pieces of rock and the pieces are solid and have no pockets where water
and nutrients can hold on. Because of this, water and nutrients do not stay in sand, and because
sandy soil is missing water and nutrients, many plants have a hard time living in this kind of soil.
Gritty: rough, hard, sandy

Weathered: broken down
Solid: hard, firm
Pockets: Sections of empty space
Clay Soil
Clay soil is soil that is mostly made of clay minerals which can make clay look very orange. This
type of soil is usually heavy, sticky, and dense. Clay usually sticks together tightly because it
holds a lot of water, and is slippery when it is wet.
Since clay sticks together so well, water and nutrients cannot flow through it. Also, clay
tends to dry out very quickly. This makes it hard to grow plants through clay soil.
Heavy: has a lot of weight, hard to move

Sticky: Does not come off of something, holds onto things
Dense: thick, a lot
Tightly: close together
Slippery: smooth, hard to hold on to
Silt Soil
Silt soil is in between sandy and clayey soil. It is sandy, with mostly pieces of weathered
rock, but it also has a little bit of clay in it. This means that when silt soil gets dry, it gets very
hard and is difficult to work with. But it can also hold a lot of water.
Clayey: like clay

Weathered: Broken down
Hard: tough, firm, strong
Difficult: hard, not easy
Loam Soil
Loam soil is an equal combination of sand, silt, and clay soils. It is the best kind of soil to
grow plants in. Loam soil can drain water and hold it at the same time so that it does not get too
watery or too dry. Loam soil sticks together, but it does not stick together too tightly, so it is easy
to work with. Most plants grow the best when they are in loam soil.
Equal: the same

Drain: let away, to make something go away
Watery: with water
Dry: without water
Tightly: close together
‘s Radish Log
Date Sand Clay Silt Loam
Excerpt from Out of the Dust (Reading)
March 1934
Spring 1934
Tested by Dust
While we sat taking our six-weeks test,
the wind rose
and the sand blew
right through the cracks in the schoolhouse wall,
right through the gaps around the window grass,
and by the time the tests were done,
each and every one of us
was coughing pretty good and we all
needed a bath.
I hope we get bonus points
for testing in a dust storm.
Books
Hesse, K. (1997). Out of the dust. New York, NY: Scholastic Press.
Garland, S. (2012). Voices of the Dust Bowl. Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing Co. Inc.
Silverstein, A. (2000) Life in a bucket of soil. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications.

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Melissa Anderson

Thematic Unit – Second Language Instruction

My fourth grade classroom of 20 is mainly English-native speakers, but I have 6

TEKS: §113.15 b(5)B

Language Objectives: Discuss pictures with a group using descriptive language.

Independent Practice: (Practice/Application) (What will the students do on their own to

Closure: (Review) (How will I wrap up the lesson?)

Assessment: (This should relate to the objectives)

Additional modifications for ELL:

Lesson Title: Point of View Subject: Language Arts Grade: 4th

TEKS: §110.15 b(6)C

Closure: (Review) (How will I wrap up the lesson?)

Assessment: (This should relate to the objectives)

Additional modifications for ELL:

Lesson Title: Soil Subject: Science Grade: 4th

TEKS: § 112.15 b(7)A

Key Vocabulary: soil, minerals, topsoil, weathered, dirt, humus

Independent Practice: (Practice/Application) (What will the students do on their own to

Closure: (Review) (How will I wrap up the lesson?)

Additional modifications for ELL:

TEKS: §110.15 b(4)

Language Objectives: Hear prosodic and fluent reading out loud.

Independent Practice: (Practice/Application) (What will the students do on their own to

Closure: (Review) (How will I wrap up the lesson?)

Lesson Title: Equivalent Fractions Subject: Math Grade: 4th

TEKS: §111.6 b(3)C

Key Vocabulary: numerator, denominator, fraction, equivalent, equal, cross-multiply,

Materials: Block manipulatives

Independent Practice: (Practice/Application) (What will the students do on their own to

Closure: (Review) (How will I wrap up the lesson?)

Assessment: (This should relate to the objectives)

Additional modifications for ELL:

The Dust Bowl affected all of America.

Journal Entry (Independent Practice - English)

April 15, 1935

What color is it?

What does it feel like?

If I grab it in my hand and make a fist, does it stick together?

Do I think a plant can grow strong in this kind of soil?

Gritty: rough, hard, sandy

Heavy: has a lot of weight, hard to move

Clayey: like clay

Equal: the same

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