Lesson Plan: “This Is the End of Chicago!”

Essential Questions

• How do communities rebuild after tragic events? 
• Why do we study events from the past?
• How and why does misinformation spread?

Literature Connection

• Graphic historical fiction: The Great Chicago Fire by Kate Hannigan 
• Novel: I Survived the Great Chicago Fire, 1871 by Lauren Tarshis

Preview Text Features (15 minutes)

Guide students to locate the article. Preview the text features by asking the following questions:

• Read the article’s title. What do the quotation marks around the title tell you? The quotation marks tell us that this phrase (“This is the end of Chicago!”) is a quotation, something someone said or wrote.
• Look at the map of Chicago and read its caption. Where did the fire start? What body of water did it cross? The fire started at the O’Leary house and moved across the Chicago River.

Preview Vocabulary (10 minutes)

• Point out the vocabulary box. Read the terms (staggered, embers, elegant, immigrants, prejudice) aloud and discuss their definitions.
• Play the Vocabulary Slideshow.

Make a Plan for Reading

Before students start to read, walk them through a reading plan:

• Set a purpose for reading by telling students that they will find text evidence in “‘This Is the End of Chicago!’” that supports ideas about the risk of deadly fires in the mid-1800s.
• Point out the Pause and Think boxes. Tell students they can check their understanding of what they’ve read by answering these questions.
• Tell students that as they finish each section, they should think about how the text features on the page (e.g., photos, captions, and section headings) relate to what they’ve just read.

Read the article. (Higher- and lower-Lexile versions are available on the Story page at Action Digital. Click Presentation View to access an audio read-aloud.) Then discuss the following close-reading and critical-thinking questions.

Close-Reading Questions (15 minutes)

• Reread the article’s opening section. How does the author help you picture what was happening in Chicago on October 8, 1871? Why do you think the author starts with this description? (author’s craft) The author describes the fire with vivid details, like the height of the flames, the glowing embers, and pieces of burning wood raining down from the sky. She starts with this description to draw readers into the story.
• Based on the section “Hope for the Future,” how were the Bradwell and O’Leary families similar? How were they different? (compare and contrast) Both Mrs. Bradwell and Mrs. O’Leary ran businesses. Both families lived in Chicago and had high hopes for the future. One difference between the families was that the Bradwells were well-off, while the O’Learys lived in a two-room house.
• How did the arrival of trains affect the population of Chicago? (cause and effect) The arrival of trains caused Chicago to quickly grow from a small town to a city of 330,000 people. 
• Look at the drawing and photo of the flyer captioned “Helping Out.” How do these images help you understand what the Chicago fire was like? (text features) The drawing shows how desperate people were to escape the flames. The photo shows that other cities were trying hard to help the people of Chicago. Both images help us understand how devastating the fire was.

Critical-Thinking Questions (10 minutes)

• Summarize what Chicago was like before and after the fire. (summarizing) Before the fire, Chicago was a growing city of 330,000 people. After the fire, one-third of the city was in ruins. Three hundred people had lost their lives. But eventually, Chicago was rebuilt. Twenty-two years after the Chicago fire, the city hosted the world’s fair, attracting millions of visitors.
• Think about how Catherine O’Leary was mistakenly blamed for starting the fire. How might this error have been avoided? (critical thinking) Reporters could have chosen not to report that Catherine was responsible for starting the fire, since they had no proof. And people could have asked themselves (and the reporters) how anyone but Catherine O’Leary could know for sure whether the fire was started by one of her cows knocking a lantern over.

• Have students work in pairs to complete the Spotlight Skill Workout: Text Evidence activity. As a class, discuss students’ answers and the Think About It! question.
• Have students work independently to complete our Central Idea and Details Skill Builder, available in higher- and lower-level versions. (Click here to view all your Skill Builders for this article.)
• Writing prompt: Imagine that you’re a teen living in Chicago in 1871. Write a short (one- or two-paragraph) journal entry describing the fire. Use details from the article (such as how the fire looked, how long it lasted, what was damaged, and how people behaved) as well as your own imagination.