Overview

Lesson Procedure

65-70 minutes of class time across 5 phases.

1. Warm-Up10 minutes
2. Direct Instruction20 minutes
3. Guided Practice15 minutes
4. Independent Practice15 minutes
5. Closure5-10 minutes

1. Warm-Up10 minutes

   Warm-Up Prompt

   "A printed poster and a web page both explain the same event in history. Name one thing the web page can do that the poster cannot. Then name one way that same feature could leave a reader with the wrong idea."

   Collect answers on the board in two columns, helps and could mislead. Point out that nearly every feature appears in both columns: a link can open a source or a dead page, and a filter can focus a reader or hide half the story. WHST.9-10.6 asks writers to take advantage of what technology can do, which means choosing features for the reader.

   Introduce the history task. Ms. Varadi's U.S. History class is building an online exhibit, Hard Times on the Plains, on the school's history website. Read Text 1: her assignment and one team's first draft, a printed paragraph about the Dust Bowl. Ms. Varadi and the team are invented; the facts about the 1930s are real. Students underline every fact in the draft that a reader might want to check and circle every term a ninth grader might not know.

   1Assignment from Ms. Varadi, U.S. History 10

   2Your team will publish one entry in our class's online exhibit, Hard Times on the Plains, on the school's history website. Your readers are next year's U.S. History students and their families. Every fact must be linked to a source the reader can open. Use at least two features that a printed poster cannot offer, and explain in your team notes why each one helps a reader understand the history. The entry is due in two weeks. After that, your team keeps it up to date for the rest of the semester.

   3The team's first draft, written as one printed paragraph

   4The Dust Bowl was a disaster on the southern Great Plains in the 1930s. In the 1910s and 1920s, farmers plowed up millions of acres of native grassland to grow wheat, especially when wheat prices were high during World War I. The grass roots had held the soil in place. When a long drought began in the early 1930s, crops died, and strong winds lifted the bare soil into huge dust storms. In May 1934, one storm carried dust all the way to cities on the East Coast. The worst storm came on April 14, 1935, a day people called Black Sunday. Less than two weeks later, on April 27, 1935, the Soil Conservation Act became law. It created the Soil Conservation Service to teach farmers methods such as contour plowing and strip cropping. Many families left the region. Dorothea Lange's 1936 photograph Migrant Mother shows one of these families. The photograph and many other pictures from the 1930s are in the Library of Congress. The law is also online.

2. Direct Instruction20 minutes

   Show Diagram 1. A printed paragraph gives every reader the same words in the same order and can only name its sources. A linked entry lets each fact open its source record and each hard term open a definition. A flexible, dynamic display lets the reader choose a view: filter a timeline, open an entry, sort a table, show or hide detail on a graph. Flexibly means the reader can rearrange or choose what to see; dynamically means the display responds, when the reader taps, or when new data arrive. The bottom row of the diagram is the rest of the standard: the piece is produced, published and then updated, with every update logged.

   Read Text 2, the team's comment thread, and Text 3, the entry as published. Students draw an arrow from each comment in Text 2 to the block in Text 3 that it produced. Then work through the five examples.

   1Hana: Our readers will open this on the school site, and a lot of them will be on phones. Right now it is one long paragraph. The order of events is the whole story, cause and then effect, so I think the events should become a timeline instead of sentences.

   2Desmond: A timeline where each entry is one line, and you tap it to open two or three sentences. Then a reader can see the whole chain from the plowing to the law at a glance and open only what they want.

   3Lior: Can we add filter buttons? Weather, Farming, Government, People. If you pick Farming, you only see the plowing and the new methods. That shows that the disaster had human causes and not just bad weather, which is our main point.

   4Joaquin: Only if "Show all" is what readers see first. If someone lands on the Weather filter and nothing else, they'll think it was only drought.

   5Hana: Links next. The brief says every fact links to a source. For Black Sunday, I found a digitized newspaper front page from April 15, 1935. Should we paste a screenshot of it?

   6Desmond: Link to the newspaper page in the archive instead, and say in the link text what it is. A screenshot can't be zoomed or searched, and the archive page gives the paper's name and date, which a history reader needs to judge the source.

   7Lior: Same for Migrant Mother. The Library of Congress record has Lange's own caption and the date. Let's show the photo and link it to that record, so a reader can check where it came from.

   8Joaquin: And the Soil Conservation Act: link the full text, but put one sentence in our own words right next to the link. Nobody should have to read a law to understand our entry.

   9Hana: What about "contour plowing" and "strip cropping"? Next year's ninth graders won't know those terms.

   10Desmond: A short definition that opens when you tap the term. It keeps the timeline short for readers who already know the words.

   11Ms. Varadi: Good plan. Two cautions. First, anything a reader must know to understand your claim cannot live only behind a tap or a filter, so put your main claim in plain text at the top. Second, every photo needs alternative text, a written description that a screen reader can speak aloud, and the timeline has to make sense with no photos at all.

   12Lior: I'll write the alternative text. Joaquin, can you open every link on a phone and a laptop before we publish?

   1[Heading] Why the Plains Blew Away

   2[Claim, in plain text at the top] The dust storms of the 1930s were not caused by drought alone. Farming had stripped away the grass that held the soil, and drought and wind did the rest. The government's answer, soil conservation, went after the farming causes.

   3[Filter buttons] Show all (selected) | Weather | Farming | Government | People

   4[Timeline entry, Farming] 1910s-1920s: Farmers plow up the grassland.
   Tap to open: Farmers plowed millions of acres of native prairie to plant wheat, especially while prices were high during World War I. The grass roots had held the soil in place. [link: Natural Resources Conservation Service history page on the plowing of the Plains]

   5[Timeline entry, Weather] Early 1930s: Drought begins.
   Tap to open: Years of low rainfall killed the wheat and left plowed fields bare.

   6[Timeline entry, Weather] May 1934: Dust reaches the East Coast.
   Tap to open: One storm carried dust from the Plains to cities as far away as the Atlantic coast.

   7[Timeline entry, Weather] April 14, 1935: Black Sunday.
   Tap to open: One of the worst storms of the decade turned the afternoon dark across the southern Plains. [link: Front page, April 15, 1935, reporting the Black Sunday storm (digitized newspaper archive)]

   8[Timeline entry, Government] April 27, 1935: The Soil Conservation Act becomes law.
   Tap to open: The law created the Soil Conservation Service to teach farmers ways to keep soil in place. [link: Full text of the Soil Conservation Act of 1935] Terms that open a definition when tapped: contour plowing (plowing across a slope along lines of equal height), strip cropping (planting a field in alternating strips of crops and of grass or other cover, so that no wide stretch of soil lies bare).

   9[Timeline entry, People] March 1936: Migrant Mother.
   Tap to open: Dorothea Lange photographed a mother and her children in a camp of pea pickers in Nipomo, California. The photograph shows a family that fled the dust storms. [Photo, with alternative text: "A woman in worn clothes sits in a tent with one hand raised to her chin. Two children lean against her shoulders, and a baby lies in her lap."] [link: Library of Congress catalog record for Migrant Mother, with Lange's caption]

   10[Map] The five states hit hardest: Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado and New Mexico. Tap a state to list the timeline entries that mention it.

   11[Version history]
   Version 1, March 3: Published on the school's history website. (Whole team)
   Version 2, March 9: A reader wrote that the woman in Migrant Mother, Florence Owens Thompson, had moved to California in the 1920s, before the dust storms. The team checked two sources, changed "a family that fled the dust storms" to "a family of migrant farm workers during the Depression," and added a dated correction note at the bottom of the entry. (Lior)
   Version 3, March 12: The newspaper archive moved its pages to new addresses, so the Black Sunday link opened an error page. Replaced the link and tested it on a phone and a laptop. (Joaquin)

   • Producing a shared product: dividing the work in the shared document

     Four writers share one entry. In Text 2 they comment beside the draft instead of rewriting each other's sentences, and the thread ends with two named jobs before publishing.

     Result: Lior takes the alternative text, and Joaquin tests every link on two kinds of device. A shared product still needs owners for each task, and the comment thread becomes a record of who decided what, which the version history later continues.

   • Linking: the archive page instead of a copy

     Hana found a digitized newspaper front page about Black Sunday and asks whether to paste a screenshot of it (Text 2, paragraph 5).

     Result: Desmond's answer: link to the page in the archive, with link text that says what it is. The published link reads "Front page, April 15, 1935, reporting the Black Sunday storm (digitized newspaper archive)." The reader can zoom, search and see which paper printed it, which a history reader needs to judge a source.

   • Displaying flexibly: filters without hiding the story

     The team adds filter buttons to the timeline. Joaquin warns that a reader who sees only one filter could leave with half the story (Text 2, paragraph 4).

     Result: The published entry opens on "Show all (selected)," and each filter only narrows a view the reader has already seen. A flexible display lets readers choose a view, but the writer chooses the first view, and it should be the one that carries the claim.

   • Linking a long source: a sentence in our own words beside the link

     The full text of the Soil Conservation Act is long and legal. Joaquin says nobody should have to read a law to understand the entry (Text 2, paragraph 8).

     Result: Text 3 states what the law did in one sentence, "The law created the Soil Conservation Service to teach farmers ways to keep soil in place," and then links the full text. The link is for readers who want to check or go deeper; the sentence is for everyone.

   • Updating: a correction that readers can see

     After publishing, a reader points out that the woman in Migrant Mother had moved to California before the dust storms (Text 3, Version 2).

     Result: The team checks two sources, rewrites the caption and adds a dated correction note to the entry. Updating a published piece means changing it where readers will see the change and logging what changed and why, not quietly replacing a sentence.

3. Guided Practice15 minutes

   Move to the science context. Amira and Tobias, two invented biology students, tested how the concentration of sucrose (table sugar) affects fermentation by yeast. Yeast breaks down sugar and releases carbon dioxide gas, so more gas in the same time means faster fermentation. Their class publishes lab reports on a class lab website. Show Table 1, then read Text 4, their report as published, and Text 5, the comments that came in and the updates they made. Diagram 2 shows the graph as it looks after the updates.

   Table 1. Gas collected in 15 minutes from 1.0 g of dry yeast in 40 mL of sucrose solution at 35 °C (invented data; three trials each)

   Sucrose (%)	Trial 1 (mL)	Trial 2 (mL)	Trial 3 (mL)	Mean (mL)
   0	0.5	1.0	0.5	0.7
   2.5	9.0	10.5	8.5	9.3
   5	15.5	17.0	16.0	16.2
   10	21.0	19.5	22.5	21.0
   20	16.0	15.0	16.5	15.8

   1[Title] How Does Sugar Concentration Affect Gas Production by Yeast?

   2[Summary, at the top] Yeast produced the most carbon dioxide in 10% sucrose: a mean of 21.0 mL in 15 minutes. Gas production rose from 0% to 10% sucrose and fell at 20%.

   3[Method, in brief] We mixed 1.0 g of dry yeast into 40 mL of sucrose solution at 35 °C and collected the gas by water displacement in an inverted 25 mL graduated cylinder for 15 minutes. We ran three trials at each concentration. [link: Class procedure for the yeast fermentation lab (shared document, view only)]

   4[Interactive graph] Mean volume of gas collected (mL) at five sucrose concentrations. Tap or hover over a point to see its value. A button, "Show all trials," adds the three separate trials as small dots.

   5[Table, sortable by any column] Sucrose concentration (%) | Trial 1 (mL) | Trial 2 (mL) | Trial 3 (mL) | Mean (mL). The numbers are the same as in Table 1.

   6[Term that opens a definition when tapped] fermentation: a process in which yeast breaks down sugar without oxygen, releasing carbon dioxide and ethanol.

   7[Discussion] Gas production increased with sugar concentration up to 10%, because the yeast had more sugar to ferment. At 20%, the volume dropped. One possible explanation is that a very concentrated sugar solution draws water out of yeast cells by osmosis, which slows them down. [link: Section on osmosis in our class's online biology textbook] We tested only five concentrations, so the highest rate could lie anywhere between 5% and 20%.

   8[Link] Raw data: [link: Our data file (spreadsheet)]

   1Dr. Kwan (biology teacher), October 8: The graph's vertical axis starts at 8 mL. The 0% point falls off the bottom, and the rise from 2.5% to 10% looks several times steeper than it is. Start the axis at zero. "Show all trials" is a strong feature, so tell readers in a caption what the spread of the dots shows.

   2Mateo (classmate), October 9: Your data file link opens the spreadsheet in edit mode. I could have changed your numbers without meaning to.

   3Reader comment, October 10: On my phone, the table is cut off after the Trial 2 column, so I can't see the means.

   4Version history

   5Version 1, October 7: Published on the class lab website. (Amira and Tobias)

   6Version 2, October 9: The vertical axis now starts at 0 mL. Added a caption under the graph: "Small dots show the three trials. At 20%, all three trials are lower than every trial at 10%, so the drop is not caused by one unusual trial." (Amira)

   7Version 3, October 9: Changed the data file link to view only, and opened it from a classmate's account to test it. (Tobias)

   8Version 4, October 11: On narrow screens, the table now shows only the Sucrose and Mean columns, with a "Show trials" button that opens the other three. (Tobias)

   Feature audit for the lab report (pairs fill in the empty columns)

   Feature in Text 4	What it lets the reader do	Problem found after publishing (if any)	Update that fixed it
   Summary at the top
   Link to the class procedure
   Interactive graph
   Sortable table
   Link to the data file

   Pairs complete the audit, then begin Activity 3. Discuss: which feature in Text 4 needed no update at all, and what does that say about testing a page before it goes live?

4. Independent Practice15 minutes

   Each student takes a piece of writing from a current history, science or technical class, such as a paragraph, a lab conclusion or a set of instructions, and plans its online version. (1) List three things in it that should link somewhere, with link text for each that names the destination. (2) Choose one flexible or dynamic display and write two sentences on what the reader can do with it. (3) Mark one piece of information that must stay in plain view, and say why. (4) Write alternative text for one image or graph. A student without a current piece uses the team's printed draft in Text 1 and plans a version different from Text 3.

   The quiz uses Texts 1-5 and Table 1 (Warm-Up, Direct Instruction and Guided Practice); point students back to those phases when they take it.

5. Closure5-10 minutes

   Exit ticket: (1) Name one link or display in Text 3 or Text 4 and the reader it helps most. (2) Name one update in either version history and the kind of problem it fixed. Then hand out the homework: Hana's printed draft of a new exhibit entry, and the message Ms. Varadi sends a week after it goes live.

   Teacher note on sources: the Dust Bowl facts are standard in U.S. History textbooks and in the histories published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The correction in Version 2 is real history: Florence Owens Thompson, the woman in Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother, was born in Indian Territory, in what is now Oklahoma, and moved to California in the 1920s, before the dust storms, so the photograph is often mislabeled as a picture of Dust Bowl migrants. The Library of Congress catalog record carries Lange's own caption. The exhibit, its links and its readers are invented.

   Safety note for teachers who run the yeast lab: prepare the 35 °C water bath yourself, wear splash goggles when filling and inverting the graduated cylinders, and wipe up spills, since sugar solution makes floors slippery. Do not let students taste any solution.

   1Planting a Wall of Trees (Hana's printed draft of a new exhibit entry)

   2In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced a plan to plant long belts of trees across the Great Plains to slow the wind and hold the soil. The U.S. Forest Service ran the work, known at first as the Shelterbelt Project and later as the Prairie States Forestry Project. Planting began in 1935 and continued until 1942. Workers, many of them hired through New Deal work programs, planted about 220 million trees in windbreaks on farms from North Dakota to Texas. Farmers agreed to protect and care for the trees on their land. Some people at the time doubted that trees could grow on the dry Plains. A windbreak slows the wind for some distance downwind of the trees, which keeps soil from blowing and protects crops. Some of the windbreaks still stand today. There is a Forest Service history of the project online, and there are photographs of the plantings in the Library of Congress. A map of where the belts were planted would also help.

   3Message from Ms. Varadi, one week after the entry is published

   4Two things came in about your entry. The Library of Congress link opens a page of search results with hundreds of photographs instead of the planting photographs you describe. And a reader asked what "New Deal work programs" means.

Differentiation Strategies

Assessment Guidance

1. Question 1 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Which requirement in Ms. Varadi's assignment (Text 1) most directly asks the team to use technology's capacity to link to other information?

   AReaders are next year's U.S. History students and their families BThe entry must use at least two features a printed poster cannot offer CEvery fact must be linked to a source the reader can open DThe team must keep the entry up to date for the rest of the semester

2. Question 2 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Why does Hana propose turning the draft's events into a timeline (Text 2, paragraph 1)?

   AA timeline takes up less room on the school website than a paragraph does BThe order of events, cause and then effect, is what the entry is about CMs. Varadi's brief requires every team to include a timeline DA timeline lets readers post comments under each event

3. Question 3 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   According to Lior (Text 2, paragraph 3), what would the Farming filter help readers see?

   AThat the disaster had human causes and not only bad weather BWhich of the five states lost the most farmland CThat the government responded to the storms within days DWhich timeline entries have photographs attached

4. Question 4 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Why does Lior want the Migrant Mother photograph linked to its Library of Congress record (Text 2, paragraph 7)?

   AAn embedded photograph cannot be given alternative text BReaders can download a larger copy for their own projects CThe brief does not allow photographs on the exhibit page DReaders can check Lange's caption and date in the record

5. Question 5 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   How does the team handle "contour plowing" and "strip cropping" in the published entry (Texts 2 and 3)?

   AEach term opens a short definition when a reader taps it BEach term links to the full text of the Soil Conservation Act CBoth terms are cut, because ninth graders would not know them DBoth terms are defined in a glossary printed at the end of the exhibit

6. Question 6 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Which of Ms. Varadi's cautions (Text 2, paragraph 11) does the first content block of the published entry (Text 3) follow?

   AWrite alternative text for every photograph BShow readers the entry's main point before any tap or filter CTest every link on a phone and a laptop DMake sure the timeline makes sense without photos

7. Question 7 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   What led to Version 3 of the Dust Bowl entry (Text 3)?

   AA reader's correction about the woman in the photograph BMs. Varadi's request for a map of the five states CThe newspaper archive moved its pages, breaking a link DA classmate found the wrong date for Black Sunday

8. Question 8 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   A reader who uses a screen reader reaches the Migrant Mother entry in Text 3. Which part of the entry tells that reader what the photograph shows?

   AThe link text for the Library of Congress record BThe People filter button above the timeline CThe one-line timeline heading "March 1936: Migrant Mother" DThe alternative text written for the photograph

9. Question 9 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Which feature of the lab report (Text 4) displays information dynamically, changing what the reader sees when the reader acts?

   AThe summary sentence at the top of the report BThe button that adds each separate trial to the graph CThe link to the class procedure for the lab DThe Discussion paragraph about osmosis

10. Question 10 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    A reader sorts the table in Text 4 by the Mean column, from largest to smallest. Using Table 1, which concentration appears second?

    A10% B2.5% C5% D20%

11. Question 11 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    What problem does Dr. Kwan find with the graph as first published (Text 5)?

    AThe vertical axis began at 8 mL, exaggerating the rise BThe graph showed the separate trials but left out the means CThe graph used a bar for each trial instead of a single line DThe horizontal axis listed the concentrations in the wrong order

12. Question 12 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Which update in Text 5 responds to Mateo's comment?

    AVersion 2, which restarted the axis at 0 mL BVersion 4, which changed the table on narrow screens CVersion 1, which published the report on the class site DVersion 3, which made the data file view only

13. Question 13 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    How does Version 4 (Text 5) solve the phone reader's problem without removing any data?

    AIt deletes the trial columns and keeps only the means BIt shows two columns on phones, with a button for the rest CIt replaces the table with a link to the data file DIt moves the table below the Discussion section

14. Question 14 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    A classmate suggests linking every noun in the Discussion of Text 4, including "yeast," "sugar," "gas" and "volume," to a definition. What is the best response?

    ALink every noun, since more links always make a report more useful BLink none of them, since links distract a science reader from the data CLink unfamiliar terms the explanation needs, such as osmosis DLink only words that appear in the report's title

15. Question 15 of 20 · Short Answer

    Choose one fact from the team's printed draft (Text 1) and show how the published entry (Text 3) links it to other information. Quote both, and explain what the link lets a history reader do that the printed sentence could not.

    Show model answer

16. Question 16 of 20 · Short Answer

    Dr. Kwan calls "Show all trials" a strong feature (Text 5). Using Table 1, explain in two or three sentences what a reader learns from the trial dots at 10% sucrose that the mean alone does not show.

    Show model answer

17. Question 17 of 20 · Short Answer

    Amira and Tobias state their main result in a summary at the top of the report (Text 4), even though the graph shows the same pattern. Explain two reasons this helps readers, and connect one of them to Ms. Varadi's first caution in Text 2.

    Show model answer

18. Question 18 of 20 · Short Answer

    On October 14, Dr. Kwan posts: "Room 12 ran the same lab at 15% sucrose and got a mean of 18.5 mL." (Room 12 and its result are invented.) Should Amira and Tobias add this to their report? If so, explain how, using the capacities of the published page, and write the version history line.

    Show model answer

19. Question 19 of 20 · Short Answer

    Ms. Varadi says the timeline "has to make sense with no photos at all" (Text 2). Rewrite the opened text of the Black Sunday entry in Text 3 so that it adds one detail from Text 1 and still makes sense with no link and no photo. Then explain in one sentence what the link adds for readers who do open it.

    Show model answer

20. Question 20 of 20 · Short Answer

    Choose a piece of writing from one of your history, science or technical classes. Describe one link and one flexible or dynamic display you would add if you published it online, and explain how each helps its reader. Then name one test you would run before publishing.

    Show model answer

These standards connect to WHST.9-10.6: prerequisites to review first, parallel standards at the same level, and next steps that build on it.

Standard text: Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy. © Copyright 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved.