Storytelling with Cherokee folktales

This is a two day lesson pertaining to telling Cherokee folktales. This lesson can be modified and used with any folktale.

A lesson plan for grade 4 English Language Arts and Social Studies

By Ricky Hamilton

Learn more

• Why the opossum's tail is bare Students can listen to this ancient Cherokee legend which has been adapted for radio.

Related pages

• The wolf in children's books: Students will explore the ways wolves are represented in children's stories. They will decide if the wolf is a protagonist or an antagonist in the story. They will also attempt to determine if these representations are scientifically accurate. The first in a two-part lesson.
• The Legend of the Blue Bonnet: Students will create their own version/retelling of The Legend of the Blue Bonnet by Tomie dePaola
• "Twas the Night Before Christmas": Retelling through thinking maps: After reading and discussing “Twas the Night Before Christmas,” students will work together to create a Flow Map. Each student will then use the map they created individually to retell the story in his/her own words.

Related topics

• Learn more about American Indians, Cherokee Indians, comprehension, cooperative learning, folktales, language arts, listening comprehension, literature, main ideas, oral histories, read-alouds, and reading.

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Learning outcomes

Students will:

• listen to and learn a Cherokee folktale.
• retell a Cherokee folktale.
• determine the main points within a story.
• determine the cause/effect structure of a “porquoi” tale.
• illustrate the main points of a story.

Teacher planning

Time required for lesson

1.5 hours

Materials/resources

• pencils
• 4 unlined index cards (3×5) for each student
• pack of colored pencils for every 4 students
• The Story of the Milky Way by Joseph Bruchac and Gayle Ross

Pre-activities

• Tell students that you will be telling them a “porquoi” tale. Porquoi means “why” in French. Different cultures use porquoi tales to explain how things in nature were created (such as Genesis in the Bible).
• Tell students that they will be learning how to be storytellers, so they will need to listen carefully so they can retell the porquoi tale.
• Tell the Story of the Milky Way. (Try to keep this story between 5-7 minutes.) Hold the book up after telling the stories but do not show the students the illustrations.

Activities

1. After finishing the story, use a cause/effect graphic organizer to list each event (cause) and their effects. Example:
   • First the people depended on corn meal for survival.
   • Old Man and Old Woman see corn meal missing.
   • Grandson hides to catch the thief, etc.
2. Have the class group the events into roughly 4 or 5 main ideas. Ex. people depending on corn, gathering corn, and in shock because corn is stolen is one main idea. (Grouping into 4 or 5 ideas will help students when it is time to illustrate the story using the 4 index cards.)
3. Pass out index cards and colored pencils. Have the students illustrate the story using one illustration per card.
4. The next day (or after students have finished their illustrations), have students tell the story to a partner. The students should use their illustrations to help them tell the story. Switch partners and continue telling the story.
5. As a whole group, ask for volunteers to tell the story. Begin to encourage students NOT to use their illustrations to tell the story, but rather by memory.
6. After a few students have had a chance to tell the story, discuss with the class how each story is different. Each story has the same basic storyline but each story has a different tone. Encourage students to begin putting more detail into their stories. Ask the students to describe what Beloved Woman was wearing and to give her a voice other than the students’ own. Also, request the students to describe how Great Dog looked. Was he clear, white, yellow, or some other color?
7. The story can be told about 3 more times.After the lesson is over, hold up the book again to students. Open it up to let the students see how their illustrations and imagination differed from Virginia A. Stroud, the illustrator of The Story of the Milky Way.

Assessment

• Successful depiction of story through illustrations on the index cards. Details should represent story events accurately.
• Telling the story, in its entirety to peers. Peers could use a checklist which the teacher could collect to prove that each story was accurately told.

Supplemental information

Reading and Writing Literary Genres by Kathleen Buss and Lee Karnowski is a great source of information on porquoi tales.

Comments

This was the first lesson I did as a Media Specialist and it went great. I was very pleased to see how the students responded to the story as well as to becoming storytellers.