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A Story with
a Good Moral
Students choose a proverb and write a story that has their
proverb as its moral.
2 hours (can be completed over several sessions)
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partners |
| CA
Writing Standard 1.0: Students write clear, coherent
sentences and paragraphs that develop a central idea.
Their writing shows they consider the audience and purpose.
Students progress through the stages of the writing
process (e.g., prewriting, drafting, revising, editing
successive versions). |
Plan
| Read or tell students the
story of “The Tortoise and the Hare,” then
discuss how the story illustrates the moral “Slow
and steady wins the race.” |
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| Link the concept of the moral
of a story to what students already know about proverbs.
Guide students towards the realization that the moral
of a story may become a proverb by being repeated long
after the story is told. |
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| Choose (or have students choose)
one of the proverbs from the book and, as a class, make
up a plot for a story that might result in a moral similar
to that proverb. For example, “Getting up at dawn
will not make the morning come sooner” / “No
por mucho madrugar amanece más temprano”
might elicit a fable about a competition between the
sun and an overeager rooster to decide who gets to wake
up a town's villagers. |
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| Have students find partners
to choose a different proverb for a story of their own.
Encourage them to work together to develop an original
plot using the Our Fable worksheet. |
Draft
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| Ask the writing teams to use
their completed worksheets to write a first draft of
the fable. Encourage them to use descriptive language
and to incorporate dialogue into their writing to make
the action come to life. |
Revise
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| Ask student pairs to share
their first draft with one other pair. Encourage them
to ask for and give feedback about the relevance of
the moral/proverb to the story, and about the structure
of the story (e.g.: Does it have a clear beginning,
middle, and end? Do the characters behave in ways that
make sense to the reader?). |
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| Have students use the feedback
to revise and rewrite their work. |
Edit
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Ask students to edit their
second drafts, reading through their drafts carefully
and marking their errors. Encourage them to check spelling
and punctuation, and to use a word wall, dictionary,
thesaurus, or other classroom reference tools. |
Publish
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Share the stories by inviting
younger children or other classes to a story hour in
which students read their work aloud. You may wish to
provide copies of the stories for the listeners to read
along and take back to their own homes or classrooms. |
Other Writing Activities
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Creative writing:
Direct students to the proverb, “A painting is
a poem without words” / “Una pintura
es un poema sin palabras.” Tell them that
they are going to put words to some of the paintings
in the book. Have them choose an illustration and come
up with a poem about the surrealistic elements that
it contains. For example, students may wish to write
nonsense verses about watermelon-faced mermaids. |
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Gathering many
littles to make a big: Students discuss
the concept of an anthology, and then put together some
of their own anthologies. Elicit information that students
may have about collections of stories or poems, and
then ask how this book is a similar collection. Introduce
the word anthology and discuss it with students.
Help students develop a list of genres of texts that
may be anthologized. Students may suggest, in addition
to short stories and poems, some of the following: jokes,
song lyrics, jump rope rhymes, riddles, word games,
letters from famous people.
Tell students or small groups that they will develop
anthologies of their own. Have them choose a category
from the list of genres (the shorter ones, such as riddles
or jokes, may be more manageable in the allowed time
span) and then have them brainstorm where they are likely
to find material. Students can then collect examples
from friends, family, or other students, or they can
research in the library or online, writing their entries
on cards or individual sheets of paper.
Once students have collected their items, have them
cull them for the best examples, decide on a logical
organizing rubric (students may decide to place them
in chronological order, if that is appropriate, or by
subcategories), and put them in a folder. They may choose
to create a table of contents.
Encourage them to draw illustrations of the items in
their anthologies and then place their folders in the
reading corner for others to read. |
Proverbs in the Community
Students do an oral history project in which they interview
older members of the community, collect proverbs, and create
their own proverb anthologies.
Two 45 minute sessions |
individual and whole class |
| CA
Social Studies Standard 3.3: Students draw from
historical and community resources to organize the sequence
of local historical events. |
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Tape recorder
and blank cassettes; large index cards; pens and
paper; stapler |
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- Tell students that the authors collected the proverbs
in this story when they traveled throughout Mexico and
the United States and interviewed people, asking them
to share proverbs that they knew. Explain to the students
that they can do the same thing in their own neighborhoods
and with their families. Many of the proverbs that people
will share with them are very old and often are traditional
in their countries of origin. Even in communities without
many recent immigrants, most adults know and can share
a large number of proverbs.
- Help students list possible sources of good proverbs.
For example, grandparents and other elders. Explain to
students that their project will be to make their own
proverb anthology.
- Tell students that their homework assignment will be
to collect their own proverbs. They will have to take
careful notes so as to share with the class what they
find! As a group, brainstorm interview questions. Students
should know to write down each new proverb they hear,
and document the following: the person they heard it from
and who first told it to that person, how long ago he
or she first heard it, what country or area of the country
the proverb came from, and any other interesting information
about the proverb. They should also give some information
about the meaning of the proverb.
- The next day, ask students to share their findings.
Record and post the new proverbs the class has collected,
together with information about what country or area of
the country they came from.
- Students can create minibooks by copying the proverbs
and the information they've collected onto large-size
index cards, then stapling them together. Make the individual
proverb collections available in the classroom reading
corner for students to share.
Other Social Studies Activities
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Folklore Day:
Invite several community members to the classroom to
talk to students about proverbs they have heard and/or
used themselves in the past, and to tell fables and
stories from their countries or regions of the country.
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Comparative Studies:
Tell students that some of the proverbs in this book
are familiar to people of other countries. Have students
use the library or the Internet to find similar proverbs
that appear in the folklore of different cultures. Lead
a discussion about how these proverbs may have traveled
from one country to another. |
Art That Is Beyond the Real
Students discuss the style of the art in the book, look
at examples of surrealist art, and produce surrealist art
of their own.
1 hour |
individual |
| CA
Visual Arts Standard (Artistic Perception) 1.0:
Students perceive and respond to works of art, objects
in nature, events, and the environment. They use the
vocabulary of the visual arts to express their observations;
(Creative Expression) 2.0: Students
apply artistic processes and skills, using a variety
of media to communicate meaning and intent in original
artworks. |
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Reproductions
of surrealist paintings, such as Frida Kahlo's
“The Little Deer,” Salvador Dali's
“The Persistence of Memory,” or René
Magritte's “The Son of Man.” Reproductions
of Surrealist paintings, such as Frida Kahlo's
“The Little Deer,” Salvador Dali's
“The Persistence of Memory,” or René
Magritte's “The Son of Man.” (see
Resources); White paper for drawing; crayons,
oil pastels, acrylic paints, and/or markers. |
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- Have students look through the illustrations in My
First Book of Proverbs / Mi Primer Libro de Dichos
and conduct a discussion of what makes the art in this
book different from other books. Explain that the art
found in this book is sometimes called surrealism.
Show students examples of surrealist art, and invite them
to talk about the ways in which these examples are similar
to or different from the illustrations in the book.
- Ask students to list the familiar items they see in
the book illustrations and in the art examples. Encourage
students to look at how the illustrations do not look
like anything from nature, but rather combine elements
from nature (watermelons, combs, bees, etc.) in different
ways to create new and unfamiliar images. Explain that
art of this kind is also considered surrealism.
- Now, ask students to create their own surrealist art
to illustrate a familiar proverb, using crayons, oil pastels,
acrylic paints, or markers.
- Finally, have students look at the different frames
in the book. They can then design and cut out a cardboard
frame for their own artwork. The proverb being illustrated
should be enclosed in a banner along the bottom of the
frame. You may wish to mount an exhibition of the students'
surrealist works in a school hallway.
Busy Bees
Students use one of the proverbs to begin an exploration
of bees and their hives.
2 hours |
small group |
| CA
Science Standard 3: Students understand that adaptations
in physical structure or behavior may improve an organism's
chance for survival. |
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Encyclopedia and
other resource materials on bees. You can find
a website on the “waggle” and “round”
dance of bees in the Resources
section; websites that offer lists of women
scientists (see Resources
section) | |
- Have students go to the proverb “One bee doesn't
make a hive” / “Una abeja no hace una
colmena” in the book. Encourage them to share
what they know about bees and their hives. Discuss the
appearance, purpose, and inhabitants of a hive.
- Tell students that this proverb is accurate in describing
the communal nature of the hive: It does in fact take
many bees to do the work of a hive, and bees demonstrate
many behaviors that indicate the highly developed way
in which they function as a group.
- Have students research on the Web or in the library
the “waggle” and “round” dances
that bees are believed to perform. (When a worker bee
identifies a good source of nectar, it flies back to the
hive, “dances” in a path that includes a straight
run and one shaped like a figure eight. It then “waggles”
its abdomen and buzzes to notify other bees of the location
of the source of food. A “round” dance indicates
in a miniaturized way the route to the food source.) Other
groups can research the general social makeup of the hive,
and/or the very specialized roles of the queen, the drone,
and the worker bees.
- Ask students to prepare skits based on what they've
learned, sharing their research findings with the other
groups.
- If you wish to extend this activity, provide students
with other insect proverbs and have them research their
scientific accuracy.
Other Science Activities
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Great Women Scientists:
Direct students to the proverb “Experience is
the mama of science”/ “La experiencia es
la mamá de la ciencia” and have students discuss
why they think the woman in the illustration has so
many arms. Encourage students to research and report
on the lives and/or work of women, such as Aglaonike
(the Greek woman who discovered a way of predicting
eclipses), Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz (a Mexican nun
who argued that women make excellent scientists since
they deal on a daily basis with the basic elements of
science), Elizabeth Blackwell (the first woman to graduate
from a U.S. medical school), and Marie Curie (famous
for her work on radioactivity). Several Websites offer
lists of women scientists, which you and the students
can use to begin research (see Resources
section). |
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Cycles of Day
and Night: You can use the proverb, “Getting
up at dawn will not make the morning come sooner”
/ “No por mucho madrugar se amanece más temprano”
to spark a science discussion about the movement of
the Earth around the sun and the resulting cycles of
daylight and dark. |
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