We worked for much of last quarter on culture, based on many versions of Little Red Riding Hood. Here are our final drafts of the books we published about the cultures of the various regions and countries we studied (not all kiddos wanted me to share, by the way–since I know now that I should ask!).
Thank you for reading! We worked so hard and would love your feedback! 🙂
Since we’ve begun our Little Red Riding Hood culture study, some exciting things have happened! Let me tell you about what’s going on!
Alongside the LRRH books that we shared was another book, full of all sorts of organizers, charts, and a map. This would be where we’d record our thinking and learning throughout the study.
As we read a book, kiddos would fill in a chart that marked certain features of each story, which we would later use to compare stories and use the information to learn more about each culture represented.
Additionally, we kept track of where our countries are in the world, by adding a star on the map for every one we read. Later on, we added a US map to our book (which I don’t have a picture of yet) as we learned about regions.
As we read different versions, we also compared how certain books were alike and different…
…as well as finding other things that we needed to add into our book (note to Mrs. Bearden to make sure to put this in there next year!):
Once we got the background of the stories, talked about characters, compared and contrasted and decided on our favorites, we were ready for the really fun part–researching more about the cultures from our books.
Each kiddo chose their top 3, then randomly came and declared which culture group they wanted to be in. I wanted it to be about the country/region/culture, not the people in the group, so this part was all done first, then I shared their groupings. Each group has 3 people, which is kind of ideal. I could hardly get the directions out before they were ready to get going (kind of like with our spelling investigations this week–they were eager!). I had found books for each group to start their research, but groups had to go book shopping to find the right ones. Once they had books, they were busy digging in, collecting information about land (not culture, but related to the geography focus), language, holidays, food, games, religion, school, music, art and then a topic of their choice.
After our initial book search, kiddos were allowed to use website that I had found, as well as World Book Online and Kid Info Bits, which we have subscriptions to from our library.
We even had an opportunity to learn about German culture from someone in Germany! I sent out a request on Twitter for friends from our countries/regions of choice, but was unable to work out any Skyping situations. Then I remembered that Mrs. Appelbaum’s daughter is studying German in GERMANY and that she might be available to help us out! She was more than willing and so we worked out a FaceTime call for last Thursday afternoon. Those girls were so excited (and so was I!)!
We are just about done with research and are excited to start writing–we’re going to take all of our information and make books to share with other Robinson kiddos! Stay tuned for updates on that part of our work!
I started the story recently about our culture/geography/literature study of Little Red Riding Hood. We’ve done many things along the way with stories and maps and learning about regions (which I promise to share later!), but today there’s another story to tell.
Today we read Little Red Riding Hood: A Newfangled Prairie Tale by Lisa Campbell Ernst. The connection was to the Midwest region (at least as far as our SS unit was concerned), but my kiddos made many others kinds of important to connections in addition!
The Little Red story here is very different than most others (and I won’t spoil the ending for you), and so gave us some new things to think about and respond to as readers and thinkers. Before I was even finished, the suggestions came spilling over and kiddos could not contain themselves. Many of them were related to this picture, which is on the last page:
Like I mentioned, the muffin-related ideas came quick and fast and I grabbed a marker and started recording so we wouldn’t forget the conversation:
There are many layers to this list, and they’re not all related to the 100th Day, but that was a catchy title that Tyrin suggested. We did decide, though, that we wanted to make these as part of our 100th Day festivities and share them with our 2nd grade friends–and there happen to be about 100 of them. Seems like a match made in heaven. 🙂
We hope to address some of the others (and I’m sure add many more!) in the days to come. Many of them could relate to a service-learning project and all will touch the hearts (and stomachs!) of our community. As I keep saying, I can’t wait to continue to share this story!
Little Red, Pretty Salma, Petite Rouge, Little Roja, Lon Po Po. The list goes on and on. And it’s a pretty good list, eh? Rm. 202 thinks so! (Do you know what it’s a list of?) We have just begun a study much like one (only better!) that we did last year. And you know how I told you about this thing I have the other day? Yeah…well I am afraid that because of that thing I didn’t tell you about that awesome study last year. UGH! Luckily things have changed, though, and I’m starting this story much earlier. 🙂
This quarter we’re studying culture, and because of the unit I found last year (I used a variation of this Cinderella unit from First Grade Wow. It went SMASHINGLY and was a great combination of literature, non-fiction text, culture AND geography. It was also tons of fun to boot, which increased the engagement with a topic that is already generally interesting for first graders. Win, win, win all around!
So this year when we came to this culture/geography time of year again (which in our curriculum usually happens in January), I knew I wanted to try something similar to what we had done last year. The big idea of the unit is that folktales and fairytale can tell you something about culture. When talking about culture, it is also important to understand the geography related to that culture; where the people live and why they might do the things they do there is essential to the puzzle. Makes sense then, that all of those things would be connected–integrating subjects gives students multiple ways to make new information fit in with old knowledge and therefore make for stronger pathways to memory and understanding. And honestly, making the unit include multiple subjects and topics helps time-wise. Fitting it all in is always a concern for teachers, and this helps me get it all in.
Starting with framework from last year, I collected books. The Cinderella theme worked so well and I knew I had to find another fairy tale or folktale that both had multiple versions, as well as a story that would interest my students. There were obviously many choices, but I went with Little Red Riding Hood. This story was familiar enough (like Cinderella), but also had many variations, and had interesting characters we could study, as well.
Our focus is to be using the fairy tales and folktales to analyze story structure, characters and main idea, as well as compare and contrast different versions. Eventually we’ll probably write about our favorite version, trying to convince our readers why it’s the best with strong evidence from the text. We will also study geographical concepts like continents, countries (and how they’re different from states and cities, as well as what our country is), bodies of water and regions–this one is new this year. Besides just studying cultures of other places (which was our main focus last year), we’re incorporating the idea of regions of our own country this time; there are stories from both different countries and US regions in this unit. We’ll analyze maps, talk about how they work and what information they give us, put stars on the places from where our stories come, color and label maps and talk about the places we know about (as well as places we wonder about). Eventually then, students will choose one culture to learn more about, and research it. This will incorporate with our next writing unit, and then will still touch reading and social studies skills and concepts, too.
And here’s the part where the “messy” of writing about this starts. Previously, I would have waited until the very end of the study, hoping to include all the details and pictures, including fabulous videos of us presenting our final products. Like I mentioned earlier, that often meant that I then didn’t even get around to writing about ANY of it–usually because I either forgot the details, ran out of steam or just didn’t have time. And yeah, it makes me sad that it’s missing on the blog. So here we go. You might want to wear gloves. Or a poncho. Maybe goggles or a raincoat?
First let me share our booklist. I compiled it from a variety of places online, as well as just by standing forever in front of the fairytale section of my library with a crooked neck reading books spines. I know–I’m a glutton for punishment. It’s really not so easy, either, by the way, because they’re organized not just by story, but by author and by country. Oh, and then they’re the ones that aren’t so obvious because they don’t have ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ in the title. Anyhow…
We are using stories from Germany (the original), China (we have two from this culture, actually), Ghana, Spain, as well as from at least 4 regions in the US (and maybe another one that I’ve forgotten. Told you this was messy!!!).
While those are the “official” titles, we are also going to enjoy some others that will be specifically for the reading part of the study, where we can study version, point-of-view and character. Those include (at least for now!):
Very Little Red Riding Hood by Teresa Heapy
Honestly, Red Riding Hood Was Rotten!: The Story of Little Red Riding Hood as Told by the Wolf (The Other Side of the Story) by
I’m excited to share more pages to our story as we go along! 🙂
LRRH_culture
20somethingkids and 1kookyteacher 