A guided exploration of “Hopitutskwa,” the Hopi homeland, through maps and place names. Using English translations, students make inferences about the Hopi cultural relationship to landscape and place. They examine regional place names of their own home communities and create personal maps by identifying and naming places of importance in their lives.
Heroes abound throughout history and in our everyday lives. After completing the activities, students will be able to understand the meaning of the words hero and heroic.
The study of humans and animals in cooperation and conflict within folktales from different cultures lends itself to a simple lesson on ecology and endangered species to help students can make connections between the relationships between human beings and animals in folklore and the relationship between people and the environment in our world.
Using archival material, students will associate Francis Scott Key's Star Spangled Banner with historic events and recognize the sentiments those words inspired. Students will explore the symbolic nature of the American flag.
The following lesson introduces children to folk tales through a literary approach that emphasizes genre categories and definitions. In this unit, students will become familiar with fables and trickster tales from different cultural traditions and will see how stories change when transferred orally between generations and cultures.
Students read excerpts from Columbus's letters and journals, as well as recent considerations of his achievements in order to reflect on the motivations behind Columbus's explorations.
By studying paintings from the Cave of Lascaux (France) and the Blombos Cave (South Africa), students will discover that pictures can be a way of communicating beliefs and ideas and can give us clues today about what life was like long ago.
Students explore the cultural significance of masks, discuss the use of masks in stories, and then investigate the role masks play in ceremonies and on special occasions in various African cultures.
Emily Dickinson's poetry often reveals a child-like fascination with the natural world. She writes perceptively of butterflies, birds, and bats and uses lucid metaphors to describe the sky and the sea.
This lesson plan compares the plot and setting characteristics of several versions of the Cinderella tale to teach students about universal and culturally specific literary elements.
