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

By Ricky Hamilton

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• Learn more about English language arts.

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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 (3X5) for each student
• pack of colored pencils for every 4 students
• The Story of the Milky Way by Joseph Bruchac and Gayle Ross (Dial Books for Young Readers, 1995)

Technology resources

None

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 (2000, International Reading Association), is a great source of information on porquoi tales.

Related websites

N/A

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.