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Book Reports |
Books
How Animals Got Their Colors: Animal Myths From Around the World, by Michael Rosen
Old Mother West Wind Stories-Francis Burgess
Why the Possum's Tale is Bare, and Other North American Indian Nature Tales, edited by James E. Connolly
Websites
Pourquoi (por-kwa) means "why" in French. Pourquoi tales are used to explain different things in nature, such as why the skunk has a smell, or why the leopard has spots.
http://teacher.scholastic.com/lessonrepro/lessonplans/pourquoitales.htm
This is a Scholastic website that offers lesson plans, literature references and ideas for integrating reading/language arts, social studies and math with Pourquoi tales.
Native American Lores Index Page
http://www.ilhawaii.net/%7Estony/loreindx.html
There are over 100 links on this site that will take you on an adventure of legends and lore. Some of the Pourquoi links included on this site are How Coyote Stole Fire, Rabbit Shoots the Sun, Rabbit and Coyote and many more.
Animals, Myths & Legends
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~oban/
Click on Legends to explore a variety of legends from different cultures such as Aboriginal people, Inuits, Native Americans and a variety of created Pourquoi Tales by people like you and me!
This site will also take you to factual research information on animals that provides pictures and a wealth of information.
www.k12.nf.ca/staugustines/grassroots/grade4
This is a 4th grade classroom website that includes over 20 different Pourquoi tales written by Mrs. Pittman's students. The students' illustrations are also included with their tales. What a delightful site!
I use this site as a helpful tool for my students to browse through to get an idea of what other students are doing with their writing.
Writing/Speech/Drama
Before starting your writing on Pourquoi tales, make sure you spend a good amount of time to reading orally to your students a variety of these wonderful tales. In so doing, this will provide your student with a nice base of knowledge to work from.
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Generate a list of Pourquoi (Why) questions with your class |
Remember, most tales start with "Long ago.... and end with .... and that's why |
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Use partner writing |
Each student can make his/her own book. |
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Use your students' writing to produce a Pourquoi classroom book. |
Allow students to provide illustrations with their writings. |
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Allow the students to write skits from their tales and to perform them for another class. |
Use Native American art techniques or other cultural art when providing illustrations for the writing. |
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Integrate adjectives and metaphors into the writing. |
Use this activity as a springboard for authentic research |
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Use Round Robin writing-each student adds a sentence to the story and continues to pass story around. |
Work on using dramatic voices to make the characters come alive! |