Lesson Plan: The Blood-Red Night

Essential Questions

• How do human changes to the natural environment affect both nature and people?
• Why is it that some stories from history are remembered and others are forgotten?

Literature Connection

• Nonfiction: The Great Peshtigo Fire: Stories and Science From America’s Deadliest Fire by Scott Knickelbine

Preview Text Features (10 minutes)

Guide students to locate the article in their magazines or at Action Online. Preview the text features by asking the following questions:

• Read the article’s title and subtitle (the text below the title). What do you think makes a fire important in history? Why are some fires  still talked about decades later? Fires might be remembered for how much area they cover, the number of lives lost, or the impact they have on communities and the environment.
• Look at the map of Wisconsin included with the article. What are three facts about Peshtigo that you can learn from  the map? Facts include: Peshtigo is located in the northeastern part of Wisconsin, Peshtigo is not the state capital of Wisconsin, Peshtigo was in the area of greatest fire damage.

Preview Vocabulary (10 minutes)

• Point out the vocabulary box. Read the words (lured, marsh, brush, smoldering, inferno) 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 the article “The Blood-Red Night” tells the survival story of one family that lived through the deadliest fire in U.S. history. 
• 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.
• Point out the activity at the end of the article and tell students they’ll complete it after reading. Encourage them to keep the Think About It! question at the bottom in mind as they read.

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

Close-Reading Questions (15 minutes)

• What does the article’s first paragraph tell you? Why do you think the author chose to begin the article this way? (author’s craft) The author begins by saying that Peshtigo would be burned to ash, and many people would be dead by the end of the night. She probably chose to begin this way to grab readers’ attention and make them want to read further.
• What role did logging play in creating the conditions for the Peshtigo Fire? (cause and effect) Logging cleared large sections of forests, leaving behind dry branches and stumps that easily caught fire. This, combined with farmers’ use of fire to clear land and a dry summer, created the perfect conditions for a massive wildfire.
• What actions did the Kramer family take before the fire to prepare for the possibility of disaster? (key details) The Kramers cleared their land of dried brush and wood to reduce the risk of fire spreading. They also identified a nearby field free of trees and brush as a safe place to shelter their children in case the fire reached their home.
• How did John Kramer’s parents try to protect themselves during the fire? How did John and his brother protect themselves? (problem and solution) John’s parents soaked a mattress with water from a well and used it as a shield while they climbed into the well, which allowed them to survive the intense heat and flames. John and his brother followed their parents’ instructions to stay in the middle of a cleared field and buried their faces in the dirt to shield themselves from the heat and smoke.

Critical-Thinking Questions (10 minutes)

• The article notes that the Peshtigo Fire is largely forgotten, while the Chicago Fire is still widely remembered. Why do you think this is the case? The Chicago Fire probably received more attention because Chicago was a major city, and news about it spread quickly due to surviving telegraph lines and railroads. In contrast, Peshtigo was a rural area, and its communication lines were destroyed, delaying the spread of news about the fire.
• The article says that many families left the Peshtigo area after the fire, but the Kramers did not. If your family had lived in the area at that time, would you have wanted to stay? Why or why not? Answers may vary. Some students might say that they would have wanted to stay, because being part of a community has value and it’s difficult to start over in a new place. Others might say that they would not have wanted to stay, because the fire would have made the area seem dangerous, and if they would have to rebuild anyway, they might as well do it somewhere else. 

• 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 Sequence of Events Skill Builder, available in higher- and lower-level versions. (Click here to view all your Skill Builders for this article.)
• Writing prompt: Imagine you are John Kramer many years after the Peshtigo Fire. Write a letter to your grandchildren describing what it was like to survive the fire. Include details about what you saw, felt, and did during the fire, and explain what lessons you learned from the experience. (You can use information from the article and also make inferences about John’s feelings as he prepared for the disaster, saw fire all around him,  and later learned that his parents had survived.)