September · Week 1 · Day 4 · School day 4

Day 4: Rivers, Mountains and the Fall Line

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🔎 Play with your child: Roots of Truth and Force

The day, step by step

1. 10–15 min Morning meeting and current events SL.11-12.1

   1. Question of the day: How did rivers and mountains decide where your town grew? Students name one river, mountain range or coastline near where they live and guess how it shaped the town.
   2. News brief and one question.
   3. Preview: the Thanksgiving Address greets the natural world; history today asks how that same natural world shaped settlement.

2. 15–20 min Vocabulary and word study L.11-12.4a, L.11-12.4b

   1. Model sentence: The novel's careful details of colonial kitchens gave it verisimilitude, the appearance of being true.
   2. Model sentence: The captain averred that the map was accurate, though no one had checked it. Aver means to state firmly as true.
   3. Students write one sentence for each word about a film, book or history source.
   4. Check: does verisimilitude mean a story is true? (No, it means it seems true.)

3. 30–40 min Literature and texts RL.11-12.2, RL.11-12.5

   The Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address (the English version the Haudenosaunee share freely)

   1. Context: the Address is spoken at the opening and closing of Haudenosaunee gatherings and is often called the words that come before all else.
   2. Read the Address aloud, one section per student. List its order: the people, the Earth, the waters, the fish, plants, food plants, medicine plants, animals, trees, birds, winds, thunderers, sun, moon, stars, teachers and the Creator.
   3. Structure: each section closes with the same refrain agreeing that the people's minds are now one. Discuss what the repetition does for listeners.
   4. Purpose: to give thanks and to bring a group to agreement before decisions are made. Students write one sentence linking the purpose to the structure.

4. 40–50 min Algebra 2 HSA-REI.B.3, HSA-CED.A.1

   1. Absolute value is distance from zero. |2x - 3| = 7 means 2x - 3 = 7 or 2x - 3 = -7, so x = 5 or x = -2.
   2. Less than means between: |x - 4| < 3 gives -3 < x - 4 < 3, so 1 < x < 7.
   3. Greater than means outside: |x + 2| ≥ 5 gives x ≤ -7 or x ≥ 3. Watch for no solution: |3x + 1| = -4 has none, since distance cannot be negative.
   4. Real use: a bolt must be 50 mm long within 0.2 mm, so |L - 50| ≤ 0.2 and 49.8 ≤ L ≤ 50.2. Exit ticket: |x - 6| = 2 (x = 4 or 8).

5. 30–40 min U.S. history C3 D2.Geo.2.9-12, D2.Geo.4.9-12

   1. On a physical map, label the Atlantic Coastal Plain, the Appalachian Mountains, the fall line, the Mississippi River, the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains.
   2. The fall line: where rivers drop from hard upland rock to the soft coastal plain, waterfalls stop ships and power mills. Cities grew there: Philadelphia, Trenton, Richmond, Raleigh and Columbia.
   3. The Appalachians (about 1,500 miles long) slowed westward settlement for more than a century; the Mississippi and its tributaries drain about 40 percent of the lower 48 states and became a highway for trade.
   4. The Great Plains get roughly 10 to 20 inches of rain a year in many places, and the Rockies divide rivers that flow east from those that flow west. Students write how one feature helped and one hindered settlement.

6. 25–35 min Writing W.11-12.8, W.11-12.9

   1. MLA in-text citation: author or short title and page in parentheses. For an anonymous traditional story use a short title: ("World" 23).
   2. Works cited entry for a story in an anthology: "The World on the Turtle's Back." Anthology Title, edited by First Last, Publisher, Year, pp. 22-26. Italicize the anthology title.
   3. Students write the works cited entry for the edition they are using and two in-text citations from their notebook.

7. 25–35 min Independent practice and projects

   1. Label five fall-line cities on a blank map.
   2. Solve |4x + 2| = 10 (x = 2 or x = -3) and |x - 1| > 4 (x < -3 or x > 5).
   3. Write a works cited entry for the Thanksgiving Address in the version you read.
   4. Use verisimilitude in a review sentence about a movie.

   Projects: keep the reading log current and build the analysis notebook toward the literary analysis essay.

   Device time (15 min): play Roots of Truth and Force on the Student games page.

   Today’s game: Roots of Truth and Force

8. 5–10 min Closing reflection SL.11-12.1

   1. Why did so many early cities grow on the fall line?
   2. What does the repeated refrain do in the Thanksgiving Address?
   3. When does an absolute value equation have no solution?

Short day? Keep the Address reading, the geography map and the absolute value examples.