Language Arts Lesson 1: Legends

After an introductory lesson to learn about basic dance vocabulary, we started off our arts bridge experience with a language arts section. This had a total of 3 lessons. Before moving into this section, Ms. Jones took me to the school library in Bonneville Elementary to pick out some books that could help me communicate some ideas to her class. One book that she had was a legend, so we decided to tackle that first!

Legends Lesson

Using the book How the Stars Fell into the Sky (A Navajo Legend) by Jerrie Oughton and illustrated by Lisa Desimini

I loved the Legends Lesson! This was not originally in a core standard for the fourth grade, but it was an amazing suggestion by Ms. Jones so I decided to run with it. It turned out to be so fun as I used a book to illustrate the characteristics of a legend and put movement with each of those characteristics. I could tell that the students better understood legends and they especially had fun with a section of the lesson where the room was divided into four different quadrants to show different space times.

Desert Spacetime - where everything is in slow motion

Hero shapes!

This lesson was the second lesson overall, and it helped the students break into the movement more by still keeping some simple movement so they wouldn’t be overwhelmed, but also introducing some challenging concepts so they could start to push themselves with the movement and by working with each other.

Escalation or exaggeration of shapes - Legends are exaggerated!

This lesson was a really fun one, and one that the students remembered for a long time!

Here's the Lesson Plan:

Legend Lesson

Objective: By the end of 35 minutes, the 4th graders in Ms. Jones’ class will demonstrate their knowledge of characteristics of legends by moving through ideas from a legend (listed below) and performing these qualities in their bodies.

Materials:

- Book: How the Stars Fell into the Sky (A Navajo Legend) by Jerrie Oughton and

illustrated by Lisa Desimini

- Optional: Speaker, Song playlist

Setting up expectations:

Review Rules: Be kind and safe, give 100%, respect the space

Practice freezing with drum, do it repeatedly until they obey

Experience and Identify:

-Definition of Legend: a traditional story sometimes popularly regarded as historical but not

always true/a very old story or set of stories from ancient times that aren’t always true.

-Read the book and tell them to try and find 5 characteristics of a legend listed below.

Investigate and Explore:

Legend features

1- The hero

-Ask who their favorite hero is and have them make a shape like a hero (tall, bold,

strong)

2- Great actions (of hero or other characters)

-Great, or large movement. Spinning, jumping, hopping, leaping

3- Space-time: where the story unfolds, specific and locatable

-Divide room into four quadrants for four different locations and make movement that

goes with that quadrant

*Outer space: light, weightless

*Sea: Wavy, flowy

*Jungle: Swatting and slashing at bugs that are attacking you

*Desert: Everything is slow motion

4- Reality of stories: they were real at some point, but details have been exaggerated

-Get into groups of 3 or 4 people. The first person makes a small shape, person behind

will make the first shape but just a little bigger and so on until the last person makes the

biggest shape possible. Rotate until everyone has made the small shape.

5- Fantasy: supernatural or magical facts

-What was the fantasy of this story?

*Wolf talking

*Putting stars in the sky

-Put a body part in a fixed point (like the star) and try to move your body in any way you

can without moving that fixed point. (Example: Putting my hand high above me and act

like it is being held there by someone and move as much as I can around that.)

Create and Perform:

-Everyone will freeze in a shape, and pick your favorite of 1-5

-When I say your number, move and perform it for the class

-Stay dedicated to your number that you chose, even if you are all alone!