Fishtank Unit 3: Passing Down Wisdom
Updated for SY25-26
Embedded Files
Unit Overview: Read more about the unit and find all unit materials here on the Fishtank website
Students explore the power of oral storytelling in African-American and Hispanic cultures through reading and listening to a wide variety of folktales and stories that have been passed down within families and communities for generations. These stories serve as a launching point for students to explore and understand the world around them, to grapple with what it means to be a good person, and to consider what they can learn from the experiences of others. This unit, in connection with others in the course, will challenge students to think about the power of storytelling and the influence it can have on individuals and entire communities.
This unit focuses on helping readers see the connection between recounting stories, determining a central message, and using details to explain how the central message is conveyed. Through multiple readings of the same stories, students will be able to analyze and discover how messages are developed. Rereading the same folktale multiple times also supports students' fluency and vocabulary development.
Students continue to work on sharing their ideas through discourse, focusing on how to provide evidence and examples to justify a particular idea or point. Being able to clearly articulate and support their own ideas sets students up for success in later units when they begin to build on to and critique the ideas of their classmates.
Students continue to build their writing fluency by writing daily in response to the text. In this unit students learn how to brainstorm and write literary analysis/opinion paragraphs, focusing on how to write topic sentences that state an opinion and then how to determine evidence and reasons that support the opinion. The unit concludes with students writing their own folktales or stories, using the core texts and strategies learned in previous units as a guide.
Unit Calendar:
Unit 3 is 38 instructional days. It is recommended to run from December 15th - February 27th.
Unit 3: Mastery
Unit 3: Mastery
Every ELA classroom 2-8 will give both the content assessment and the cold read assessment at the end of each Fishtank unit. Learn more about Fishtank assessments here.
You can find the unit assessments for this unit here.
More to come soon on assessment and data expectations. All ELA assessments will be given and scored on Illuminate.
Unit 3: Additional Guidance
Unit 3: Additional Guidance
Before lesson 18 of this unit, in which the text "Tales of Uncle Remus: The Adventures of Brer Rabbit" by Julius Lester is introduced, you will notice a flex day. This flex day is intentionally included to provide space for teachers to thoughtfully introduce this text and build historical context with students. Below are recommendations from Fishtank on how to do this:
This is students' first introduction to this text; therefore, it is important to note the features that make the text complex. The Brer Rabbit stories are an important part of American folklore, and many versions are written in a manner that respects the dialect from the time period. This collection of stories is rewritten to be more accessible to readers while still remaining true to the traditional storylines.
Read sections of the introduction with students. Prompt them to discuss:
What is the history behind Brer Rabbit stories?
How have the stories changed over the years?
What is unique about Julius Lester's retelling?
Preview word choice:
Some dialect is used in order to hold true to the meaning and feel of the stories. The speaker shortens particular words to match the dialect of the time period (for example: sho' nuf', gon', etc.). Students may also need an introduction to the word ain't and the way it is used, along with the use of the word no.
Preview features of the genre: Trickster tales are a type of folktale in which a character uses intellect or secret knowledge to play tricks or otherwise disobey normal rules and conventional behavior.
Additional historical context for this retelling can be found here (from CourseHero)
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