Water for South Sudan Inquiries

A Long Walk to Water Lesson Plan

Overview

The following lesson plan focuses on having students explore the Water for South Sudan website in order to better understand the last two chapters and the author’s note of A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park. This lesson is based around high school students, and the content standards follow the Montana Common Core Content Standards for ninth and tenth graders.

Content Standards

Despite multiple content standards being used throughout this lesson, the content standards students should focus on are:

RI.9–10.5 Analyze in detail how an author’s ideas or claims are developed and refined by particular sentences, paragraphs, or larger portions of a text (e.g., a section or chapter).

SL.9–10.5 Make strategic use of digital media (e.g., textual, graphical, audio, visual, and interactive elements) in presentations to enhance understanding of findings, reasoning, and evidence and to add interest.

Materials Needed

The following materials will have the standard material needed for this lesson and then other alternatives or adaptions that can be used to adhere to the Universal Design for Learning Framework.

Board and Writing Utensil — This material can be a chalkboard, whiteboard, smartboard, etc. It will just be used so the teacher can write down the term “Water for South Sudan” and later its website www.waterforsouthsudan.org.

Computers — These should also have speech to text and text to speech functions for students who need them.

Powerpoints — Students should be able to access google slides, prezi, or other powerpoint tools they can use while presenting the information they found.

Paper and Pencil — Computers can also be used for this part, but students will use these to create their KWL charts. Instead of writing, students could also draw pictures as long as they explain to their teacher their meaning behind them.

Lesson Sequence

Start the lesson by having the term “Water for South Sudan” written on the board. Have students take the first five minutes of class to create a KWL chart explaining what they know about Water for South Sudan. If they don’t know anything about Water for South Sudan, have them write what they think it is with a note stating that’s what they did in the “know” column.

Next, have students share their answers. Briefly explain that it is a nonprofit organization started by Salva Dut, the main character in A Long Walk to Water, to bring clean water to South Sudan. Be careful not to say too much, though, because students will explore the website.

Then, have students write what they want to learn about Water for South Sudan. Once they finish, have students break into four groups that will explore the Water for South Sudan website. One group will explore the “about us” page, one the “our work” page, one the “how to help” page, and one the “new, blogs, and events” page.

As students are exploring the website, have them create a powerpoint or powerpoint equivalent that they can use to present the information they find to the rest of the class.

After about 20 to 30 minutes depending on how much time the students need, have them stop and start presenting their findings. Once all the students have presented, have the students fill out the “learned” section of their KWL charts. Obviously, they learned a lot, so have them just write what they found the most interesting and turn their charts in.

Have students apply this knowledge by having them discuss in the next day’s lesson about how knowing this information about Salva changes the way they perceive him or the book. Does it change the way they perceive the contents of the book?