The Sign of the Beaver
Cabin Design
- 4th Grade -
The Challenge!
In this challenge, we want you to use evidence from the book, The Sign of the Beaver, to add to our GIANT-SIZED engineering design notebook. Can we figure out what Matt's cabin actually looks like? Look through the evidence, taken from the text by some of our WT Schools 4th graders, and contribute some designs to the Expo notebook. Let's see what fantastic ideas we can come up with together!
Challenge Constraints
1) All designs MUST be supported with evidence from the text. We are looking for what parts of Matt's cabin would have been like.
2) Designs MUST have labeled parts stemming from the text evidence.
Student Skills In Focus
Learning Goals
Students will:
Analyze text in search of evidence to meet a design goal.
Collect information, brainstorm to solve a problem and model possible solutions with sketches.
Use the challenge to develop the Pillar Skills in focus.
Questions To Ask Students:
What are the main parts of a cabin and what does the text evidence tell us about how Matt handled them?
What materials did Matt use? How were the materials used?
How might these parts come together?
Essential Questions:
How does the setting influence the characters and the changes?
How do readers use evidence from literary texts to support analysis and reflection?
NJ Student Learning Standards:
W.4.9. Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.
NJSLSA.SL5. Make strategic use of digital media and visual displays of data to express information and enhance understanding of presentations.
SL.4.1.A. Explicitly draw on previously read text or material and other information known about the topic to explore ideas under discussion.
8.2.5.ETW.1: Describe how resources such as material, energy, information, time, tools, people, and capital are used in products or systems.
8.2.5.ED.2: Collaborate with peers to collect information, brainstorm to solve a problem, and evaluate all possible solutions to provide the best results with supporting sketches or models.
8.1.5.DA.1: Collect, organize, and display data in order to highlight relationships or support a claim.