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Bears Make More Soup
Using the writing process, students write their own tales that feature relationships between people and animals.
 3 hours over one week
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individual and partner
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CA Writing Standard 1.0: Students write clear and coherent sentences and paragraphs that develop a central idea. Their writing shows they consider audience and purpose. Students progress through the stages of the writing process.
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blackboard and chalk or flipchart and markers; paper and pens or pencils |
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Plan
 | Have a discussion with your class about the characteristics of the stories in Bears Make Rock Soup. Ask students what elements the stories have in common. Students may note the lack of names and the focus on relationships between people and animals. List these and other elements on the blackboard. (See the What Makes a Folktale? activity under Literary Response and Analysis for one way to structure this conversation.)
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| Ask students to outline a story of their own, using these characteristics. Remind students that their stories should not take place in the present day, and that their characters should be similar to those in Bears Make Rock Soup (e.g., bears, deer, birds, Native American peoples).
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Draft
| Tell students to work independently and use their outlines to write new stories. Encourage them to echo the language and voice used in the book. Have them refer back to the stories and to the list they developed as they write.
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Revise
| Once they have completed their drafts, ask students to share their writing with their original partners. Remind students that at this stage in the writing process, they should focus on the clarity of the writing and the impact of specific words or events, rather than on spelling or grammar.
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| Encourage students to revise their stories according to their partner's feedback. Suggest that they reread their drafts to themselves and then read them out loud (quietly) to see if there are other changes they wish to make.
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Edit
| Ask students to edit their second drafts for publication, and to check spelling and punctuation. Read through the drafts and mark errors. Encourage students to use a word wall, a dictionary, or other classroom reference tools as they correct their stories.
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Publish
| Collect student stories and bind them into a book to accompany Bears Make Rock Soup in your classroom's library. If you wish, see the Art activity for ideas about how to illustrate these stories.
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Other Writing Activities
| Rewriting the Story: Ask students to take one of the stories from the book, such as “Black Bear Sleeping in a Tree,” and to retell it in modern terms. Who would the characters be? What problem would be presented and how would the characters resolve it? Encourage them to think about putting themselves in the story, if they think it would make sense. What would that situation be? What would the characters do? For example, a retelling of “Black Bear Sleeping in a Tree” might involve a cat that has climbed up a tree and won't come down. How would the student convince the cat to descend?
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| Telling the Untold Story: In “The Bears that Couldn't Hibernate,” the women tell the sleepy bears the long, long story of the giant maple and all it had seen in one hundred years. What could that story be? As a group, have the class write that story, detailing the events the maple might have witnessed.
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Traditional Ways
Students study and compare Native American groups, gaining a more complete understanding of their traditional cultures and social structures.
45 min. a day over several weeks
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small group and whole class
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CA Social Studies Standard 3.2: Students describe the American Indian nations in their local region long ago and in their recent past.
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Encyclopedias, reference books, and access to online information about Native American tribes (for recommended books and websites, see the list of Resources); butcher paper and markers
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Remind the class that Native American traditions are not folktales–this book is written and illustrated by two Native Americans who continue to draw from their traditions today. Like all traditions, though, Native American traditions have changed with the passage of time. In this activity, the students are going to be studying the traditions of the different Indian tribes at the time that European people came to America. Many of these traditions have continued, but others have changed.
Break the class up into several small groups, each of which will study one tribe from a different region of the United States. Assign the tribes to the groups on the basis of available resources, but be sure to include either the Plains Ojibway or Oneida, which are the tribes of the author and artist of Bears Make Rock Soup. Other tribes recommended for available information include the Navajo, Haida, Cherokee, and the five tribes of the Iroquois nation.
Over the course of one or two weeks, allow the students to research their tribes' traditions. In the past, what did these tribes eat? What did they wear and where did they live? How did they organize themselves? What did they believe in? How did they see the world? Tell each group that they should complete a chart with information on the following topics: food; clothing; homes; tribal structure and leadership; religious traditions; and folklore.
Once groups have completed their charts, create a comparative chart on butcher paper for the class as a whole. Invite a representative from each group to fill in the boxes with the information and explain what they learned to the rest of the class. Once the large chart is complete, ask your students what similarities and differences they see between Indian groups from diverse regions.
Other Social Studies Activities
| Comparing Traditions: “The Naming Ceremony” describes one traditional ceremony to celebrate the birth and naming of a child. Each culture has its own way of marking these events with traditions and ceremonies. Ask students to share other traditional ways that they know about to celebrate births. Have them research naming traditions from other cultures. For example, Mexican babies are often named after their Saint's Days, while Jewish children are traditionally named after a family member who has passed away, and Korean siblings traditionally share one syllable of their names.
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Imagining Nature
Students create artwork that echoes the themes and style of Bears Make Rock Soup.
1 hour
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individual
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Watercolor paints and paper; construction paper; scissors; gluesticks; paintbrushes
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Have students cut out construction paper silhouettes of animals like those in Bears Make Rock Soup. If students wish, they can trace the animals directly from the book, or they can draw the figures freehand.
Ask students to experiment with where they want to place their animals on the paper, depending on the scene that they wish to illustrate. Once they have decided where they want the animals to go, tell students to use watercolors, the medium used by Lisa Fifield to create the paintings for the book, to paint the background of the scene on a separate sheet of paper.
Encourage the class to study the techniques that Fifield uses and to try to replicate them, blending colors of different densities and creating patterns with their brushes.
Finally, have students position the cutouts on top of the background scenes and glue them down.
Other Art Activities
| People and Animals: Ask students to compare the depiction of people and animals in Lisa Fifield's work with that of other artists. One good example for comparison is “The Life of a Hunter” by Currier and Ives. For this image and others, go to the “animals” page of the Barewalls.com site at http://www.barewalls.com/animals.html.
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Home on the Plains
Students study how animals live in the context of their habitats.
30 min. a day over several weeks
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individual
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CA Science Standard 3b: Students know examples of diverse life forms in different environments, such as oceans, deserts, tundra, forests, grasslands, and wetlands.
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Encyclopedias, reference books, and access to online information about animals and their habitats (for recommended books and websites, see the list of Resources)
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Read the story and look at the painting “Last Respects” (p. 29) with your class. As a group, make a list of the animals you see: bears, wolves, moose, deer, elk, antelope, eagles, geese, loons, squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, and turkeys.
Point out the tipi in the painting and tell students that this is where the people in the book's paintings live. Tipis are the traditional homes of the Plains Indians. What are the traditional homes of the students like?
A habitat is an animal's home–the place where an animal normally lives. What are the habitats of the animals in the book? Have students list what they know, using what they have learned in Bears Make Rock Soup and other outside knowledge. Make sure to include information about the vegetation and the climates of these habitats.
Have each student pick one animal and habitat to learn more about. Have students use encyclopedias, resource books (such as Homes Are for Living, published by Hampton-Brown), and websites to answer the following questions:
| What is the name of this animal's habitat? |
| What is the climate of the animal's habitat? |
| What kinds of plants grow in the habitat? |
| What other animals share this habitat? |
| How has the animal adapted to this habitat? |
| What makes this habitat a good place for the animal to live? |
Have students write reports to share what they've learned, or ask them to work together in groups to create oral presentations.
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