Making Connections to Myth and Folktale… Lesson Plan

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In The Way to Rainy Mountain, N. Scott Momaday links the survival of the Kiowa people to their ability to remember, preserve, and pass on stories. Taking the idea one step further, Momaday models the necessity of personal involvement in the stories. For Momaday, to make sense of and find a place in the contemporary world, one must connect on a personal level with the stories of one’s past.

In this assignment, students write a three-voice narrative based on Momaday’s structure. This model for remembering and personal involvement in folktales, mythologies, and tales of personal heritage can be part of any study of mythology or folktales.

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Native Americans Today – Lesson Plan

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Many people think that Native Americans are a vanished people—that they do not exist in the present day.

Using this lesson plan, teachers can use photo essays and other texts to introduce students to Native children and their families, thereby countering the idea that Native people no longer exist.

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Native American Pourquoi Tales – Lesson Plan

Engage your students in an exploration of Native American heritage through a study of Native American pourquoi tales. Pourquoi tales explain why something or someone, usually in nature, is the way it is. Have your students read a variety of Native American pourquoi tales, explore the cultural origins and signficance of these stories, and share similar stories from their own cultures.

For more info and resources click www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=324

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Battling for Liberty… Lesson Plan

www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=72

Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death!” has become such a part of American culture that students may not know where the phrase came from, though many will have heard it before. Yet how many know Tecumseh’s equally persuasive “Sell a country? Why not sell the air?”

This lesson extends the study of Patrick Henry’s “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” speech to demonstrate the ways Native Americans also resisted oppression through rhetoric. By examining two speeches by Chief Tecumseh of the Shawnee alongside Henry’s speech, students develop a new respect for the Native Americans’ politically effective and poetic use of language.

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