Fables & Folk Tales
My School, My Museum
4th Grade | May | Social Studies + ELA + Visual Arts
Teachers, arts integration specialist and museum educators collaborated to design an interdisciplinary project that incorporated both social studies, language arts and the visual arts to reveal how all three disciplines are connected through the topic of Fables and Folktales.
Due to the outbreak of the Coronavirus in the spring semester of 2020 all schools in Arkansas were forced to close their campuses and offer virtual Alternative Method of Instruction (AMI) for all classes for the remainder of the school year. While the COVID-19 pandemic may have prevented the My School, My Museum program from taking place physically on the campus of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the fourth grade teachers and arts integration team saw this challenge as an opportunity to develop creative, virtual experiences for the students.
FABLES & FOLKTALES
"Slow and steady wins the race", how often have we heard this phrase? Where did it come from and what does it actually mean? Fourth grade students in Mrs. Rozanna and Mrs. Adam's classes focused on fables and folktales as an interdisciplinary lesson to learn about stories that have a moralizing lessons. The Tortoise and the Hare, from which the "slow and steady" phrase originates, is part of a collection of stories known as Aesop's Fables. Aesop, who is credited as the storyteller of these fables, lived in ancient Greece between 620-564 BCE. Stories such as these are known as moralizing tales, deriving from oral tradition, these stories were used to address specific themes and often for the use of educating young children.
Paca and the Beetle (attached right) is a story shared throughout Latin American cultures. Similar to the Tortoise and the Hare the story substitutes the characters of animals and environment for species and terrain that would be familiar to the communites in Mexico, Central and South America.
As part of a social studies and language arts unit students were introduced to the fable/ folktale moralizing story style as well as learned about the many cultures throughout history who have used this tradition to educate the youth and members of their communities.
Copy of Paca and the Beetle.pdfTHE ARTWORKS
Tortoise from Tortoise and Hare, Nancy Schön, 2009
Hare from Tortoise and Hare, Nancy Schön, 2009
VIRTUAL CONNECTION
zoom_tortoise and hare.mp4Analyzing Aesop
Using the sculptures of the tortoise and hare located on the grounds of Crystal Bridges Museum and created by Nancy Schön, Arts Integration Director, Aaron Jones, and Museum Educator, Sally Ball, created a virtual presentation with discussion and prompts for students to interpret and analyze the objects both as characters of the fable as well as species within a north american habitat.
Arts Integration Project: Accordion Books
As part of the arts integration project students were introduced to accordian books. A book method that uses folds from a single piece of paper to serve as the "pages" for the content and narrative.
This unique book style has been used by many cultures throughout the world for centuries. In Asia this style of book is called orihon (from the Japanese characters of "ori" (fold) and "hon" (book). It is believed the folding was created as an alternative to the scroll.
Simple in design the folded format allows the author to compose or illustrate excerts from a story on a single folded page as well as reveals the progression of the narrative to a final completed story unfolded (pun intended).
Students were asked to create their own accordion book as part of an arts integration social studies and ELA project. Students learned about fables and folktales and how cultures use them as moralizing lessons. Students were then instructed to write a story of their own that informs the reader of a moral, the intention of doing right over wrong.
The student's story complete with illustrations would be created on the folds of one side of the book and on the opposite side students created a timeline documenting the dates and locations that different cultural folktales and fables were written.
Using youtube videos for instruction students leared how to create an accordion book using household materials.