Lesson Introduction and Rationale:

The students in my classroom for this novel study and concluding lesson with The Girl Who
Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill, are currently 5th graders. This novel is a story that includes
characters, settings, and a plot line that creates a fantasy story for 5th graders to attend to. To
engage students in this novel and create a real world connection, I will be connecting this novel
study to US history. Engaging the students in cross-curricular instruction and digital literacies
will provide an engaging literacy environment that all students can participate in. In the end,
asking the students to create a video that is a powerful literacy to share with peers, family
members, and their communities. The activities in this lesson go beyond what we think of a
novel study as just comprehension questions, students will be making real life connections in
meaningful and purposeful ways.
This lesson plan would conclude a novel study on the book The Girl Who Drank the Moon by
Kelly Barnhill. The theme of the novel study is looking at how stories and narratives are often
exaggerated and not always, as they seem. Emphasizing the important component to use your
voice to be an advocate when a power source is telling a story not as it seems. At the beginning
of this lesson to finish a novel study I would start by using a quote from the middle of the book,
“A story can tell the truth, she knew, but a story can also lie. Stories can bend and twist and
obfuscate. Controlling stories is power indeed.” Being a critical and conscious citizen in our
society means that you are able to question authors and information being told. Throughout this
novel study, and particularly in this lesson, I will be encouraging students to ask questions, thing
about what is influencing these narratives, and ultimately empower students to use this
information to make a change.
For many students it is often difficult to take a theme from a novel and then connect it to the
world we live in. I will be providing activities that give a historical account from US history and
create an authentic student driven learning experience that connects this time in history to the
theme we are discussing. The theme of The Girl Who Drank the Moon will be difficult for
students to grasp who have had limited schooling and vocabulary knowledge in 5th grade. To
make this theme clear for all students and applicable to the world we live in, I will make the
connection to a time in history where the narrative and account was a little exaggerated and what
came out of it. I will share accounts from the Vietnam War time with students, and how people
used their voice to speak out against this to change the narrative being told. Making direct
connections between details in history and in the book.
3 texts (1 digital):
The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill
Khan Academy article with protesting image https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-
history/postwarera/1960s-america/a/the-student-movement-and-the-antiwar-movement

Gulf of Tonkin Incident

https://academickids.com/encyclopedia/index.php/Gulf_of_Tonkin_Incident
Kelly Barnhill Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3JXsIk3kJ4&t=534s
Lyndon B. Johnson Speech https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-
speeches/september-29-1967-speech-vietnam

Estimated time: Five days

Grade/Subject: 5th grade ELA
Instructional Context (Rationale)
The students in my class I would be teaching this novel to students who achieve below grade
level benchmark, striving readers. To immerse these students in rich literacy environments we
must give them equal access to the text and authentic learning experiences. These students often
just constantly read decodable texts with a series of skill and drill activities. All students desire to
have equitable access to authentic reading experiences that engage them in meaningful,
purposeful, and authentic ways. The novel, The Girl Who Drank the Moon, will be taught in this
5th grade classroom. Their end of novel study will be to create the connection between the theme
of the book and a real world example of a time when something similar happened in US history.
With the goal to engage students in meaningful literacy studies that creates a connection between
what we are doing in the classroom to the real world. Throughout this novel study to empower
students to use their voice to speak up when they see something that doesn’t seem to be true.

Objectives Standard Authentic Assessment

Students will be able to CCSS.ELA-Literacy. To assess the student’s ability to
determine the meaning and RL.5.2 Determine a theme determine the theme of our story,
show evidence of of a story, drama, or poem the students will use a six word
understanding words and from details in the text, synthesis. With a partner students
phrases in a text that including how characters in will create a six-word synthesis
include figurative a story or drama respond to for the theme of the novel. There
language. challenges or how the will be a video played of the
speaker in a poem reflects author talking about the purpose
upon a topic; summarize behind the book half way through
the text. to allow for more support and
understanding of the book’s
theme.

Students will be able to CCSS.ELA-Literacy. During the pre-reading phase of

determine the meaning of RL.5.4 the lesson to engage students in
Determine the meaning of this activity, I will post a quote
words and phrases as they from the book onto a graffiti wall.
are used in a text, including The students will respond to the
figurative language such as quote explaining what this quote
metaphors and similes means, why it connects to our
 book, and how it could connect to
the world we live in.
In conclusion of a novel CCSS.ELA-Literacy. For independent practice, students
study on The Girl Who RL.5.6 Describe how a in groups of two will create a
Drank the Moon, students narrator’s or speaker’s digital video modeled after the
will be able to explain how point of view influences idea of a remix for The Girl Who
the speaker’s point of view how events are described. Drank the Moon. The students
influences the narrative will create a remix using lines
being told using a digital from the book that are the people
video. in power creating a false narrative.
The students will contrast these
voices of power in the text with
quotes or summaries of the text
when people spoke out against this
false narrative. Ending the remix
with explaining how and why
people are influenced to say. Look
fors in this assessment are students
are able to articulate their thoughts
in words of how events and stories
are influenced by point of view.
Students will explain the CCSS.ELA-Literacy.R.I.3 The assessment to determine if the
interactions happening Explain the relationship or students mastered this standard is
between the events and interactions between two or the comments on the
people within a historical more individuals, events, NowComment articles. Students
text. ideas or concepts in a will make comments while
historical, scientific, or reading on the article and on the
technical text based on image about what they are
specific information in the reading. These comments will
text. show inferences and connections
students are making to the novel.
After reading, students will
discuss with a peer what they just
read about and write a brief
summary of the article and the
connection to The Girl Who Drank
the Moon.

During discussion CCSS.ELA- During class discussions

opportunities students will Literacy.SL.5.1.C Pose and throughout this lesson, I will be
be able to respond to respond to specific using ongoing formative
discussion questions that questions by making assessment to see how students are
contribute to the class comments that contribute able to respond to each other’s
discussion. to the discussion and ideas in meaningful ways. Look
elaborate on the remarks of for’s in class discussion are
others. students using accountable talk
 with each other, students are not
repeating ideas, and the comments
made are more than “I agree with
you”.
Students will be able to CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.5.9 Using the students bubble maps of
integrate information on Integrate information from what a false narrative is, I will
the same topic from several several texts on the same assess the student’s ability to
sources to write about the topic in order to write or integrate inferences made about a
topic knowledgeably. speak about the subject false narrative from the novel and
knowledgeably. a historical account.

Instructional Strategies & Learning Tasks (Procedures)

Pre-reading activity Depending on classroom technology, students ideally would
all have a computer to use in the classroom during this lesson.
Using a digital graffiti wall, I would present the quote, “A
story can tell the truth, she knew, but a story can also lie.
Stories can bend and twist and obfuscate. Controlling stories
is power indeed.” Students will be instructed to respond to
this quote by explaining what it means, why it is important to
our text, and making a connection to the text to the world we
live in. During this activity the teacher is actively walking
around support students through conversations, sticky notes,
or scaffolds to get started. Students would work
independently on their graffiti wall to explain the meaning
behind this quote. The students will be given five minutes to
respond to this quote independently. After five minutes
students would then work with a partner to explain their
thinking behind their graffiti wall and collaborate together to
add anything they did not write about the quote yet. The
students will have four/five minutes to talk a peer about their
graffiti wall. The teacher will ask the students to come back
together as a group and share out what they found to be
important about this quote. During this sharing time, students
will be encouraged to use their accountable talk with their
peers as they connect ideas and/or disagree with each other.
The role of the teacher during the sharing time of this activity
is to facilitate the discussion and support students, but the
conversation should be the student’s voices rather than the
teacher explaining the quote. Once the discussion has come to
an end when students do not have much more to say, the
teacher will read the rest of the novel. The novel will be read
aloud by the teacher to allow access to the text for each
student. The teacher will read pg. 356-386.
Real-world purpose for The real world purpose for reading these texts in the
reading these texts classroom are to connect to the themes of how narratives that
are told are often untrue and the people who tell these
narratives have the power. The people that have this power to
tell us stories are influenced by something to tell these
narratives and stories in a specific way. Students will dive
into the theme of this book while making connections to the
world we live in, inspiring students to ask questions about the
world we live in. Why is it like this? Helping students see this
power of asking questions and using their voice to make a
change in the world we live in. Concluding the Vietnam tie
into to the novel theme the students will read about how
college students used their voice to make a change during that
time. Connecting the theme of our book to the importance of
asking powerful questions to come up with a plan of how to
use your voice to inform people of a different narrative.

Group activity that helps After finishing the novels students will get into groups of two
expose students to two or or three, and create a six-word synthesis of the theme of the
more possible responses to the novel. The students will be encouraged to only use six words
text and a descriptive image that adds to the theme. The students
will be given about fifteen minutes to create their six-word
synthesis. The process of creating a six-word synthesis will
already be set in the classroom because this is an activity that
the students have had exposure to. The role of the teacher in
this activity is to go around supporting the students in the
creation of their six-word synthesis. Once most students are
finishing up, I will play part of a YouTube video with Kelly
Barnhill describing her purpose behind writing the book The
Girl Who Drank the Moon. After the video, the students will
be encouraged to revise or change their six-word synthesis.
To help students get to the theme of the book, the teacher
during this time will use prompting questions to connect
students to other parts of our novel studies, discussions, and
assignments surrounding this book. If the students do not
finish their six-word synthesis in class, they will be asked to
finish them at home that night. The students will share their
six-word synthesis to the rest of the class through a gallery
walk. Students will pull their six-word synthesis up on their
computers, and the students will participate in a gallery walk.
At the end of the gallery walk, students will have the
opportunity to share what they liked about someone else’s
six-word synthesis and/or make a connection from someone’s
to their own. To share the student work, I will print these six
word synthesis out and hang them in our classroom.

During reading support During reading support, I will be supporting all readers by
strategies first reading the text aloud to the entire class giving all
students the same access to the text. While reading the rest of
the novel, I will be periodically stopping to ask questions to
the students and check for comprehension. To support all
readers in the lesson, I will be using flexible grouping and
purposefully pairing students that will be able to learn from
each other. At the end of all the activities, I will support all
students by inviting a student discussion to happen in the
classroom that allows for all students to share their ideas and
listen to other students share. During this discussion, I will
solely be the facilitator; the discussion will be student center
focusing on their ideas rather than mine. To support all
readers during each activity I will be an active participant in
the learning with them. I will be conferencing with groups,
asking probing and meaningful questions, finding resources
for students, and supporting students in getting started. I will
support students in getting started on many of these activities
by the use of sticky notes. Depending on the level of support
needed, I will have a conversation with the student while
jotting down their ideas of where to start on a sticky note and
then leaving that sticky note on their table to guide them in
their activity.

Independent practice As a group I will introduce the Vietnam War to the class
using images, vocabulary terms, and a summary of the events
that happened in the United States using a PowerPoint
presentation. In this introduction, I will just give what this
time period was like in our country and events that happened.
I will not expand on the narration that was told during this
time, and what played out in history. This information will be
left for the students to explore. As a class we will listen to
parts of Lynden B. Johnson’s press conference from August
18, 1967 to hear him talk about the Vietnam War. As a class
quickly discussing what the purpose of the press conference
was for and predicting possible influences on him at the time.
The students will do a quick turn and talk and predict what
influencing factors Lynden B. Johnson was under during this
time that would influence the narration told during this press
conference. The teacher will write these possible influencing
predictions on the board for the students to refer back to.
Next, the students will be broken into groups of two or three,
depending on the numbers in the class that day. The students
will log into NowComment and read the Khan academy and
academic kids articles posted. The students will be asked to
read it once through independently and then read it through
once more with their partner. As they are reading they will be
 asked to make a minimum of three comments on each of the
articles itself or on the picture. With a partner, they will write
a summary of what they just read about the Vietnam War and
how it connects to our book theme. At this point, I will pull
the class together for students to share what we just read
about and how it connects to our book theme. After
discussing, the students will create a bubble map of
descriptive words or phrases for a False Narrative. The
students will be encouraged to pull details from The Girl Who
Drank the Moon and from the digital texts about the Vietnam
War. In the bubble maps, students should include what a
false narrative is, who tells them, what influences them, what
we can do about them, and how they affect us.

With the same partner or group of three, the students will

create a video modeled after a remix video about untrue
stories using details and inferences from The Girl Who Drank
the Moon and US history. The students will use a series of
small clips to describe what a false narrative is, pulling their
information from the bubble map they created. The students
will string these videos together using iMovie on their
computers. My vision for these videos is to be a video that
defines false narratives using quick clips of speech just like a
remix video. The students will be alternating lines in the
video ending with their six-word synthesis.
To help the students to get started I will show examples of
what a remix is. Discussing what these remixes do and how
they give us information. Then helping students to draft a
script of what they will say during their remix.

Consider what adjustments One adjustment that would be made to this lesson is
might be made to lesson (if dependent on the students’ technology skills would be to pair
this happens, then…) the students strategically together that can help each other
with tech skills. In the lesson, if this pairing is not enough to
support all students in their technology skills, I will plan
explicit teaching mini lessons for using the technology.
Especially for creating the iMovie for independent practice, I
will support students in steps of how to create these and
support through technology help. If I noticeable see students
struggling with the technology aspect of this lesson, I will
take a step back to provide more digital skills within the
lesson.

What are the places in your One key place in my lesson plan that might confuse students
lesson where content might be is when I am introducing the Vietnam War and what this
confusing? What alternative period was like in US history. An alternative way to describe
ways do you have to this period in time is using this Newsela article
present/explain the content if https://newsela.com/read/lib-history-vietnam-war/id/29905/
you need it? This article would provide another source of information and
present the war to the students. Depending on how the
introduction goes, I would pull this article out for the whole
class or just for a few students who need more clarification.

Are there additional supports An extension activity that I would provide for students during
that specific groups of the lesson is for them to collect an article or historical piece
students need? ELL? IEP? of evidence that either creates a false or true narrative and
504? Gifted? Extensions? explain why it is false or true. Depending on the time allowed
Remediations? for this lesson, I would like to use this after reading the article
on NowComment for the students to use critical thinking to
find their own article or historical time of a narrative.
One support I would like to use in this lesson to support ELL
students in my classroom during the pre reading is the
activity of translation. The students as part of their graffiti
wall would translate the quote into their native language. An
extension activity for Gifted learners in the classroom, I
would like to challenge them to find another example of a
false narrative in US history they can think of. For example,
in the video with Kelly Barnhill, she explained her purpose
behind writing this was inspired by journalism that happened
after Hurricane Katrina. For students that have an IEP,
individual supports will be made in the classroom to
accommodate their learning styles.

Materials & Resources

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/postwarera/1960s-america/a/the-
student-movement-and-the-antiwar-movement
Vietnam and the rise of the antiwar movement
As the US involvement in the Vietnam War intensified, so did antiwar sentiment. Especially
after 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson dramatically escalated the US troop presence and
bombing campaigns in Vietnam, the war became the focal point for student political activism.
The role of the media in the antiwar movement

The role of the news media in the antiwar movement increased both antiwar sentiment and
hostility towards antiwar activists. As investigative journalists began digging into the official
version of the US war effort, they began to uncover the truth of conditions in Southeast Asia.
Graphic images of death and destruction displayed on the nightly news turned the American
public ever more sharply against the war. At the same time, news media coverage was frequently
hostile to the activists themselves, and thus contributed to the conservative backlash against the
antiwar movement.

In 1971, the New York Times broke the story of the Pentagon Papers, a Department of Defense
report that concluded that the Johnson and Nixon administrations had systematically lied to the
American people and Congress about the extent of US involvement in the Vietnam War.
Together with the Watergate scandal, which involved Nixon’s authorization of the illegal
wiretapping of his political enemies, the Pentagon Papers undermined the trust of the American
people in its president and government.
https://academickids.com/encyclopedia/index.php/Gulf_of_Tonkin_Incident

Gulf of Tonkin Incident

The Gulf of Tonkin Incident was presented to the American public as two purported attacks
by North Vietnamese gunboats without provocation against two American destroyers
(the USS Maddox and the USS Turner Joy) in August of 1964 in the Gulf of Tonkin.
The Pentagon Papers, which were later revealed by Daniel Ellsberg, revealed that the Johnson
administration of the United States had virtually fabricated the attacks, as dissident researchers
subsequently showed. The US-supported South Vietnamese regime had been attacking oil
processing facilities in North Vietnam, with planning and support from the CIA, for the very
purpose of providing a pretext to initiate the Vietnam War.

Kelly Barnhill Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3JXsIk3kJ4&t=534s

Lynden B. Johnson Speech
https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/september-29-1967-speech-vietnam