Today I have two fun lessons to share with you. The first lesson is intended for use in the 4th grade. It is a Language Arts lesson and it has to do with Fables!
To do this lesson you will need:
1) A book of Fable's. I like this book of Aesop's Fables because they are classic and fairly straight forward. An easy way to promote diversity in your class would be to use a book of specific cultural fables. Pick 6 to 7 stories (depending on how large your class is and what size groups you want to use later)
To begin this activity, gather your student around your usual reading area. Begin with a discussion of Fables. Has anyone heard of fables? What are fables? Read your class the fables that you selected earlier. After each Fable discuss what happened in the story. Make sure you identify the moral of each story and discuss common themes. After you are done discussing all of the fables, split your class up into small groups. Assign each group a moral from the fables you just discussed and instruct the groups to come up with their own fable using their morals. Remind students of the common themes of the previously discussed fables. Each group will then come to the front of the class and perform their fable using their scripts and puppets (or using props). The students in the audience will then guess the moral that the group had and will evaluate whether or not the group's skit fulfilled the criteria for a fable.
The next activity is for a 4th grade Social Studies class.
Your resources for this lesson will be:
A map of North Carolina
A short video summarizing the lost colony story.
And a wonderful detective story outlining the mystery of the lost colony.
Begin your lesson by asking your students if they know anything about the lost Roanoke colony. Has anyone ever been there? Locate the island on the map. After your brief discussion play the video. Discuss what happened in the video. Ask the students what do they believe happened to the colonists. After your discussion urge your class to put on their detective caps and get out a notebook as you delve in to the mystery along with the spunky detective. Make sure they write down their own clues as you move through the book so that you can compare their notes with the book's as a class. After you comparison ask your students to make their own prediction about what happened to the settlers. Have them imagine that they are one of the colonists who were left behind. They will write an illustrate their story of what happened including details about their daily life, relations with the Native Americans and their reasoning behind the conclusion. When everyone is finished, have each student present their story. It will be fun to see the conclusions that everyone came to.
