Lesson Plan for Applying Past Knowledge to New Situations
Objective: By completing a response
sheet, students will make connections between their own experiences and the
story The Name of the Tree, a
Bantu folktale retold by Celia Barker Lottridge.
Process:
1.
Tell students they will hear the story The Name of the Tree, a Bantu folktale retold by Celia Barker Lottridge. In the story, one
character remembers something his great-great-great grandmother told him. Close
your eyes and think of someone in your family telling you something important.
Now take 3 minutes to write what you remember that person saying to you.
(Response Sheet section A)
2. Ask
if students want to share what they wrote. Allow for any who choose to share.
3. Before
you hear the story, take a few minutes to fill in the BEFORE section on the
chart of WORLD TRUTHS. On the side marked BEFORE, write an A if you agree with
the statement and a D if you disagree. (Response Sheet section B)
4.
Read the story without showing the pictures. Ask students to form
pictures in their minds of what they hear in the story. There are 3 boxes where
they can draw pictures of what they visualize. (Response Sheet section C)
5.
After reading the story, allow time for
students to draw. Have them fill in the sentences by each picture. This is ___________ On
this line, they will tell what from the story they drew. This reminds me of __________________ On this line, they will tell
something from their own experience that the picture reminds them of. For
example, This is the gazelle stepping in the rabbit hole
and falling head over hoofs. This
reminds me of the time
my ski got stuck and I flipped over in the snow.
6.
After reading, discuss—
Ø Why was the young turtle
successful? (he remembered what he learned from his great-great-great
grandmother and used it to solve this problem)
Ø What was the turtle thinking
about on the way home? (he was saying the name of the tree over and over)
Ø Do you think the turtle was thinking
about what he was thinking? (he seemed to be making the choice to be thinking
about the name and nothing else)
Ø What were the gazelle and
the elephant thinking about on the way home?
7. Write
on the board:
Turtle Gazelle Elephant
thinking
about thinking about how thinking about
name of tree happy and thankful names of all the
animals
will be trees in
world
8. Ask
again, why was the young turtle successful? (he was aware of what he was
thinking and he made a choice to be thinking about the name)
9. Go
back to the WORLD TRUTHS chart (section B) and fill in the AFTER side. What do
you think is true after hearing the story? Write an A if you agree with the
statement and a D if you disagree. Discuss student responses as a class.
10. Tell students this story
is a folktale. Read the Characteristics of Folktales chart and decide together
whether this story contains the features of folktales. Circle the ones that fit
this folktale. (Response Sheet section D)
11. Summarize:
One of the ways that we can understand more when we read is to connect what we
are reading to what we already know. You have made some important connections.
Ø
You connected the story to yourself when you wrote about something
someone in your family told you.
Ø You
connected the story to your own experiences when you told what your pictures
reminded you of.
Ø You
connected the story to other text features when you checked the characteristics
of folktales.
Ø You
connected the story to the bigger world when you thought about the WORLD TRUTHS
statements.
12. You
can now make another connection looking forward by looking at the table in
Section E. Tell what the turtle did—tell how the turtle used thinking to solve
the problem. Think about what you learn from that. Then think of a way you
might be able to use what you just learned in for a future problem.
13. (Optional)
Lead students through a discussion to give each of the characters in the story
a grade using the Assessment Rubric for Applying Past Knowledge. Read the
descriptor and decide whether each one is a 3, 2, or 1.