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Title: Using Folk Tales to Increase Comprehension

Author: Connie Woosley

GRADE LEVEL/SUBJECT: Grades 6-8

Tennessee Curriculum Language Arts Standards for students in grades 6-8 states the student will develop reading skills
necessary for word recognition, comprehension, interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and appreciation of the written text. This track is designed to
expose students to different types of literature while stressing comprehension skills that are vital to good reading.

OVERVIEW: This unit deals with comprehension skills: understanding, sequencing, interpreting, noting detail, and locating main idea involved in reading. Students will be aware of certain key words, the importance of identification, and how stories and everyday life involve cause and effect. Each skill builds upon the previous skills learned.

Purpose: Students will improve reading skills in reading and in other subject areas by being able to identify cause and effect, locate detail, find main idea, and sequence and to articulate the relevance of all of these to the story.
Students should be able to retell stories in their own words.
Students should be able to identify Tall Tales and be familiar with the characters from these stories.
Students will enjoy reading and learning comprehension skills from these entertaining stories.
Students will enjoy learning some technology skills as they navigate their way through Internet sites of Tall Tales characters.

Objectives:

The student will understand definitions, identify and use cause/effect relationships in reading and writing.
The learner will sequence events properly
The learner will identify character importance and relationships from various reading selections.
The learner will note detail.
The learner will be able to articulate the main idea of a story.

Duration: This reading skills practice will take approximately two weeks. Time can be shortened or extended based on the number of reading selections employed.

Unit Procedures:

Lesson one: Folk Tales will be introduced. Folk tales will be used throughout this unit to review, practice, and teach those pre-determined comprehension skills. Use this link to stress that we don't know where the tales originated or how they began: http://www.usps.gov/kids/stompfeature21.html

Discuss the character. Allow students to write descriptions of how they see Paul Bunyan. Some groups might also illustrate pictures and write captions for their pictures.

Lesson two: http://www.usps.gov/kids/stompfeature25.html Introduce another character of Tall Tales, Pecos Bill. Discuss the story and events of the story. Stress sequencing as students read. Allow students to sequence events in the story. They might also retell the story in their own words.

Lesson three: Use the folk tall found at this link: http://www.paulbunyantrail.com/talltale.html to motivate students to distinguish between Cause and Effect

Presentation of definitions:

Cause - the event responsible for an occurrence

Effect - the situation that exists because of a previous action.

Ask yourself, "What happened?" The answer is the effect. Ask yourself, "Why did it happen?" The answer is the cause.

Lesson four: http://207.105.216.136/jappleseed/ Introduce another character in Tall Tales, Johnny Appleseed. Another site will give a vivid picture of this character: http://www.appleseed.org/johnny.html. Read a book or story of Johnny Appleseed with the students. Discuss main idea and details. Students should leave class today with the knowledge of this character, insight into identifying the main idea, and students should be able to distinguish between main ideas and details.

Lesson five: http://www.sirius.com/~ginna/JohnHenry/Text/Legend.html Use the link to introduce yet another Tall Tale character, John Henry. Students will enjoy listening to excepts of his life and story. Students will spend time with the teacher modeling the rationale behind finding a main idea. Stories will be read to the students and the class will locate the main idea. Students will break into small groups. They will be given group stories. They will work cooperatively to read these and then identify the main idea. These will then be shared with the larger group.

Day six and seven will be spent on comparing and contrasting real characters to the "tall tale" character. Students will author stories that make this comparison and contrast. http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/workshop/7571/JH.html. Also, see the sites of Johnny Appleseed.

Day eight - Students' progress will be evaluated with a classroom quiz that determines how many students can now locate details, find main ideas, sequence, and interpret cause and effect.

Day nine- Students will be authoring their own creative, individual stories. Stress that these stories do not have to be old or famous to be a tall tale. (Students might enjoy putting their tall tales on the web and allowing another class to read and enjoy them.)

Day ten will be spent on making the connection from cause and effect in reading class to cause and effect in other subjects.

Day eleven will be the final evaluation (assessment) day. Students will use self assessment tools and classroom rubrics to determine reading comprehension progress. Students will view the movie "Tall Tales" discussing the characters that they have been studying.

Extensions:

Use this link to get other teachers involved in cross curricular activities. You will find social studies and math skills using Paul Bunyan at http://www.paulbunyantrail.com .

Internet "Tall Tales" Lesson Plans:

Steamboats in America - http://ericir.syr.edu/Virtual/Lessons/SLMAM/Into_Curriculum/Social_studies/steamboats.html

An Introduction to Tall Tales: http://www.soe.ecu.edu/lset/project/SixthGr.htm

Telling the story of Paul Bunyan - http://ericir.syr.edu/Virtual/Lessons/SLMAM/Into_Curriculum/Reading_LangArts/paul_bunyan.html

Combining Tall Tales with Constellations - http://ericir.syr.edu/Virtual/Lessons/Science/Space/SPA0024.html