Lesson Plan Assignment

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  • November 20, 2007 at 9:09 am #5705
    Rob_Hugo@PortNW
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    I thought I'd start this thread as a way to get people talking about their ideas for the lesson plans for class.

    The idea I'm bouncing around has to do with a comparative world mythology unit I'd like to do with my 4th graders. I knew I wanted to cover mythology, and while Greek and Roman mythology is fascinating, I'm trying to move away from such Eurocentric topics, especially given my ethnically diverse class. We've been learning about Indigenous Californians and the students really responded to the different creation myths. After hearing the Korean Tang Gun story, I thought that worldwide creation myths would be a great starting point for studying myths/legends from Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. As a final project I was thinking of getting the students to rewrite a legend from each region in comic book form. The Asian myths would be drawn in a manga style, the Greek/Roman in a classical, statuesque style, the African myths in bold color and repetiion, and the myths from the Americas in a very geometrical, woven blanet-ish style.

    So the lessons for class would be a series of, either introducing creation myths from the East Asian countries we've been studying, OR relating those creation myths to the current culture/climate of the countries today.

    I have a few websites that seems to be great references for translated myths and legends that I'll post on the other forum. I also found a few good books in the library that cover some Chinese myths. I'll do a book review of that in the elementary school resources section.

    November 25, 2007 at 10:48 am #34237
    Anonymous
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    Good idea about the creation myths as a theme! Here's some brainstorming ideas. Most cultures have a supernatural version of origin that every child grows up with which gives them a connection to history. They also provide our common "human-ness". I know my 7th graders enjoy the connection between creation myths and histories of religion we study. Joseph Campbell's "The Power of Myth" greatly influenced George Lucas in the creation of Star Wars. Maybe students could come up with their own creation myths of how the world began developing connections between supernatural characters, heroes, choices and the earth. Here's some food for thought (a rubric perhaps?) from Wikipedia about the universality of myth(sorry, I know we scholars don't like to reference Wikipedia but...) It references Joseph Campbell's other work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

    "Campbell explores the theory that important myths from around the world that have survived for thousands of years all share a fundamental structure, which Campbell called the monomyth.

    This fundamental structure contains a number of stages, which include (1) a call to adventure, which the hero has to accept or decline, (2) a road of trials, regarding which the hero succeeds or fails, (3) achieving the goal or "boon," which often results in important self-knowledge, (4) a return to the ordinary world, again as to which the hero can succeed or fail, and finally, (5) application of the boon in which what the hero has gained can be used to improve the world. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces, accessed 11/25/07)

    You know, I like this idea so much I'm going to try to incorporate this when we go over the Japan creation myth and I'll introduce the Korean myth as well for compare/contrast. Regards, Betse Amador

    November 26, 2007 at 10:20 am #34238
    Anonymous
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    In my class we are on the unit of Astronomy and we were reading the story The Heavenly Zoo. This story focuses on the constellations,which mentioned about myths and legends I wonder if there are any Chinese,Japanese, or Korean myths or legends about the constellations.Another thing I would like to know is, if there are Asian names for the constellations or even poetry about them.

    November 26, 2007 at 11:00 am #34239
    Anonymous
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    Your lesson plan sounds like a great idea! I'm curious, have you had your students do manga/comics before? I've tried it a couple of times, and my students always struggle with finding the meat--in other words, putting only the necessary information to the story so that it's a comic book and not an essay. I found that most of my students just tried to copy the text into comic boxes and it took up so much room that they didn't have space to draw pictures. Any advice or help you could give would be greatly appreciated. I would love to do a manga lesson.

    November 26, 2007 at 11:55 pm #34240
    Anonymous
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    My idea for the comic book part was that I would have them retell and rewrite the myth as dialogue. Since I teach 4th grade this is good for them practicing proper quotation and punctuation. Then, anything that needed to be mentioned that didn't fit in conversation would go in the narrative boxes at the bottom of the panels. My husband is a comic book artist and is a member of the Comic Artists Guild, so either he, or someone else is going to come in and do a workshop on setting up panels and doing the writing. The art teacher will help them create the art once the dialogue and narrative is written.

    November 27, 2007 at 12:01 am #34241
    Anonymous
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    I actually found this book:

    http://www.amazon.com/Animals-Stars-Chinese-Astrology-Children/dp/1591430003/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196179039&sr=1-1

    in our school library. It's called Animals in the Stars, it's written and illustrated by Gregory Crawford. It's all about Chinese Astrology and the animals myths that go along with it. I think high school/middle school kids could appreciate it. And the table of contents has the Chinese Zodiac symbols written in character, so they could maybe do a comparison of the shape of the character and the shape of the constellation?

    November 28, 2007 at 10:50 am #34242
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Thanks for the advice--I guess when I did the lesson, I omitted a step. I think having the students first translate it into dialogue, and then to comic book form would make it less difficult. The book sounds interesting, and I'm very interested in using it. There could be a whole series of lessons just based on it. First, the students would retell the myth in another form (either orally, or in a comic book). Then, they could study the character for the sign, and analyze it, like you said. Then they could find out their own sign and see if it matches their personality. They could then compare their Chinese sign to their western sign and see which is more accurate.

    December 3, 2007 at 1:32 pm #34243
    Anonymous
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    I know that in terms of astronomy, different cultures has unique ideas about how to sun revolved around the earth (or vice versa). In ancient Greek, the sun rode on a boat back to the east each day to rise again. In China, the belief was that the sun was moving at the edge of the earth until you can see it again rise on the eastern side. You can get these ideas from GEMS, which is for science, but can be useful in even the social studies courses.

    December 9, 2007 at 6:51 am #34244
    Anonymous
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    I teach 8th grade US history and I am thinking about building a lesson around the issue of asian immigration to the US since 19th century immigration is one of our standards. Most of my students are very familiar with immigration as a concept since the majority of them are themselves immigrants or children of immigrants. I was also thinking of using the comic book concept as well. I tried a small version of this recently involving Shay's Rebellion (one of the things that led to the creation of the Constitution) and had two problems. First some students just spent their time drawing pictures, some of which were very good, but without really adding any content to the picture in terms of captions, diologe, etc. Others did a lot of work, but were not really able to tell the story they were supposed to tell. So for the immigraiton comic strip I am thinking of giving more guidence. In particular I am planning to have the students outline their comic book first writing the entire story and then dividing the story into the necessary parts to tell it as a comic book. Hopefully by planning ahead what each panel of the comic will involve they will be able to do a better job this time.

    Also-does anyone know of any manga that tell the story of Asian immigrants to the US, specially in the 19th century? I would love to have some examples to show the students.

    December 10, 2007 at 9:39 am #34245
    Anonymous
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    I was thinking about doing a series of lessons on how Korea, China, and Japan celebrate the New Year. It would certainly be timely, with the Lunar Year starting February. It would be interesting to see the similarities, but the great amount of differences. I started reading up on the subject on wikipedia, but I know it may not be the most accurate. Does anybody here have any resources about how the New Year is celebrated in different countries?

    December 11, 2007 at 12:37 am #34246
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Judi- I love the idea about how different countries celebrate lunar new year. My students could do a compare and contrast expositiory essay about the specifics of how each country celebrates. I found this website:

    http://www.asianamericanbooks.com/lny_ch_a.htm

    which is a series of articles under the heading: Lunar New Year Across Asia. It has short articles about many Asian countries and their specific celebrations and traditions around the holiday. I think I'll assign an article to a group of students and have them report out on specifics: food, costume/dress, music, activities, etc. Then chart the details. From the chart students can compare and contrast the way different countries celebrate Lunar New year.

    Also, a beautiful book on Korean new year is

    http://www.amazon.com/New-Clothes-Years-Day/dp/1933605294/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1197390888&sr=1-1

    New Clothes for New Years Day by Hyun-joo Bae. It's about a girl getting ready for Korean New Year and each of the steps you take to get into the elaborate new years dress costume.

    December 12, 2007 at 1:16 pm #34247
    Anonymous
    Guest

    As a chemistry teacher, I find this to be a challenge but "Bring it on!"

    What I have been thinking of doing is giving the students different topics as 1) air quality in Beijing and 2) water quality of the Yellow river. With their topic, the students would research the causes of water and smog pollution and explain the chemistry behind them, offer clues as to how to best mediate these issues and create new strategies to implement both there and in the United States. Any thoughts?

    December 14, 2007 at 10:12 am #34248
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Amanda,

    Thanks for the links!

    It was surprising to read the article about New Years in Korea. The article basically said that New Years is really a minor holiday in Korea. For me, New Year's Day always seemed like one of the big holidays. I would always help my mom (still do) make homemade Korean dumplings (mandu) a few weeks before the New Year. We would have to get up early and drive to all our relatives houses, eat A LOT of food, and then saebae, or bow to our elders. Maybe it just stood out to me because I would get money from my relatives as a reward!

    I definitely think I'll do my lesson plans on New Years. Today, I did a little mini-lesson on New Years, and I showed my students how to bow the Korean way, and they really enjoyed it!

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