Author - Angela Andrade
Category - Lesson Plans, Foreign Language, Esl, Storytelling
Lesson Plan Duration - 1 hour(s)
Grade Level - esl

Lesson Plan Description

This lesson will introduce non-native speakers of English to the North American Storytelling tradition through Jack Tales.

Primary Learning Objective(s):

Build competency in all four of the learning modalities: reading, writing, listening, and speaking and develop critical thinking skills.

After completing the activites in this unit students will be able to:

  • Students will build on their background knowledge to develop a deeper appreciation and knowledge of their relationship with the North American culture.
  • Students will demonstrate an awareness of, and respect for, the range of cultures, human behaviors, experience, emotions and ideas conveyed throughout the storytelling tradition.
  • Students will begin to understand how environment affects lifestyle and culture.
  • Students will gain an understanding of how our past affects our present and our future.
  • Students will be able to use and analyze primary and secondary sources of evidence.
  • Students will demonstrate the ability to read for meaning, enjoyment and information.
  • Students will demonstrate the ability to interpret and respond to various types of literature.
  • Students will demonstrate the ability to use oral language to clarify and extend their personal understanding of what they observe, feel, hear and read through interaction with others.
  • Students will demonstrate respect for the ideas, language and communication styles of others and awareness of the need for sensitive and thoughtful responses.

Additional Learning Objective(s):

  • To help students feel more comfortable speaking publicly
  • To promote confidence in English speaking skills
  • To encourage considerate group listening skills

Procedures/Activities:

Find out what students know.

  • Write "folktale" on the board.
  • Ask if anyone ever seen this word before. If yes, where? What does it mean? Write responses on board.
  • Have you heard any folktales? Ask the students if they've heard of "Jack and the Beanstalk." Explain that if they have, then they have heard a Jack Tale.

Explain that the Jack Tales are an oral tradition, which means that people traditionally tell the stories rather than write them. Some of the Jack Tales are in books like Richard Chase's "Jack Tales" and William Bernard McCarthy's "Jack in Two Worlds:Contemporary North American Tales and Their Tellers," but the best way to appreciate the the tale is to hear someone tell it. No two people will tell the tale in exactly the same way, so it can be fun to hear the tales told multiple times by different tellers.

Activities/Procedures:

  1. Listen to an audio version of Jack and the Beanstalk. Play the audio and provide students with a handout of the text to read along as they listen.

Vocabulary List:

    • Affectionate
    • Ague
    • Beseech
    • Capacious
    • Cultivate
    • Endeavor
    • Ermine
    • Folly
    • Giddy
    • Hitherto
    • Lumbering
    • Morsel
    • Paltry
    • Perpendicular
    • Perseverance
    • Slay
    • Venture
    • Vexed/vexation

Discussion:

Open a discussion about storytelling traditions we have today.

  • How are they similar or different from your culture?
  • Ask, "Is there anything you or your family does that is like a Jack Tale?"
  • How does this story fit into different cultures?
  • How does this story span generations?

 

Materials/Equipment:

  • Computer with internet access
  • Whiteboard with different colors of pens
  • MP3 player with speakers (if no computer)

Assessment Guidelines:

Through their involvement in several discussions, students will demonstrate their understanding of the multiple ways in which Jack Tales can be interpreted.  They will apply their "reading" and "speaking" skills to a variety of mediums. Criteria for assessment include:

  1. active involvement in discussions
  2. descriptive language in discussions
  3. With a partner, have students compose three questions they have about Jack Tales.
  4. Have students present questions to the class.