 The Library
of Congress >> Research Centers |
|||
|
home >> educational
resources>> folklife resources for educators >> all
citations
Folklife Resources for EducatorsAll Citations Alphabetically by TitlePDF documents require the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. There are 101 items in this list.
The A:shiwi (Zuni) People: A Study in Environment, Adaptation, and Agricultural Practices Teaching poster for grades 6-8 that examines the reciprocal relationships between the land and the A:shiwi people, also known as the Zuni, including how they have adapted to the semi-arid climate of New Mexico through a centuries-old farming technique known as "waffle gardens." Lesson plan includes background on how Native peoples have used observation and experimentation to develop science-based agricultural practices and also how A:shiwi waffle gardening reflects the traditional values of their culture. Poster meets national curriculum standards for Social Studies. (10 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: American Indian Perspectives on Thanksgiving Teaching poster, designed for educators and students in grades 4-8, examines the deeper meaning of the Thanksgiving holiday for American Indians through the themes of environment, community, encounters, and innovation. Appropriate for use at any time of the year, the poster includes information on teaching about American Indians and ideas for classroom activities. (10 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Association for Cultural Equity - Teaching Resources Educational resources and activities for use in the classroom, based on archival materials in the Alan Lomax Archive, for use in Pre-K through 12 education in the fields of history, geography, language arts, social studies, visual arts, music, and dance. Includes lesson plans and streaming video for four of Alan Lomax's films in the American Patchwork series: "Appalachian Journey;" "Dreams and Songs of the Noble Old;" "Jazz Parades;" and "The Land Where the Blues Began." In addition, the site includes classroom activities with streaming audio, focused on a variety of musical genres and characteristics, with examples recorded by Lomax in Spain, Italy, the Bahamas, England, Scotland, Trinidad, and the American South.
Sponsoring Organization: At Home Away From Home: Tibetan Culture in Exile Education guide designed for teachers to use with grades K-12, focusing on themes of the exhibition, "At Home Away from Home: Tibetan Culture in Exile," on display at the Museum of International Folk Art in 1999. The curriculum materials in the guide focus on the history and culture of Tibet, Tibetan Buddhism, and the exile of Tibetans from their homeland, especially to India and New Mexico. Activities and art projects feature Kalachakara sand mandalas, thangka paintings (religious scroll paintings on cotton), and the making of prayer flags. The content in this education guide is correlated to the New Mexico State Art and Social Studies Content Standards.
Sponsoring Organization: Baseball: Across a Divided Society -- Primary Source Set Sheet music, video clips, images, trading cards, and photographs tell the story of how baseball emerged as the American national pastime. Featured primary source items show Americans from different backgrounds and social experiences embracing the sport. A Teacher Guide (7 p. PDF) provides background on baseball in the context of American social and economic history, including a focus on minority participation, and a discussion of baseball in both urban and rural contexts.
Sponsoring Organization: Bullfrog in the Classroom Curriculum guide that focuses on learning about children's songs and games collected by Byron Arnold in Alabama in 1947. It includes online audio clips, taken from a published 42-song CD, "Bullfrog Jumped: Children’s Folksongs from the Byron Arnold Collection," plus lesson plans and activities. The guide invites listeners of all ages to use the collection to teach young children old songs and games and to encourage the exploration and preservation of traditional childhood songs. The three Bullfrog Jumped lessons are aligned to the Alabama Course of Study and link to standards across the curriculum for Pre-K, and for grades K-5. Lessons are based on nine songs selected from the CD and include accompanying activities that can be used for library programs, family reunions, or other gatherings outside the classroom. In addition to the study guide, additional on-line materials about the folksong collection can be found on the Bullfrog Jumped site.
Sponsoring Organization: CARNAVAL! Curriculum guide, developed in 2004 in conjunction with the traveling exhibition CARNAVAL! produced at the Museum of International Folk Art. The guide highlights Carnival traditions in areas in Europe and the Americas where the festival is an important part of community life. It includes background information on Carnival traditions in Laza, Spain; Venice, Italy; Basel, Switzerland; Tlaxcala, Mexico; Oruro, Bolivia; Recife and Olinda, Brazil; Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago; and New Orleans, Louisiana for incorporation into classroom lesson plans. There are an additional thirty pages of student activities with directions for making masks, costumes, giant puppets, floats, illuminated lanterns, simple musical instruments, and banners. National Content Standards for Fine Arts, Music, Dance, Theater, Social Studies, and Language Arts are included in the guide, which teachers can use to integrate Carnaval's content into their lesson plans. (50 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: The Catskills: A Sense of Place A series of five curriculum guides, designed for grades 3-12, about the natural and cultural features of the Catskill Mountains. The five guides include: Module 1: Water Resources (192 p. PDF); Module 2: Geography & Geology (167 p. PDF); Module 3: Ecosystems (187 p. PDF); Module 4: Human History of the Catskills (140 p. PDF); and Module 5: Culture & Arts / Building Catskills Communities (176 p. PDF). Each module contains a bibliography of resource people, publications, Web sites, and New York State standards-based lesson plans. A printed copy of the modules can be ordered at a cost from the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development.
Sponsoring Organization: Cerámica y Cultura: The Story of Spanish and Mexican Mayólica A teacher resource guide for grades K-12, created in 2003, which details the history and cultural background of Spanish and Mexican mayólica ceramic pottery. It was developed in conjunction with a traveling exhibition of the same name, which opened at the Museum of International Folk Art in 2002. The guide presents materials for educators to use in introducing students to forms and functions of mayólica ceramic pieces as a way to show how to study culture through the examination of objects and as a point of departure for developing their own creative expression. It includes background information on mayólica for incorporation into classroom lesson plans, questions for discussion, and student activities related to calligraphy, design-making, ceramic tiles, and other projects. (50 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Chasing El Niño Classroom activity called "Forecasting Folklore" created to evaluate the accuracy of weather folklore by formulating questions and designing experiments that put them to the test. Includes links to NOVA's online site that tracks El Niño, the NOAA's El Niño page, and other resources. The "Forecasting Folklore" activity aligns with National Science Education Standards for grades 5 through 12 for Science Standard A: Science as Inquiry.
Sponsoring Organization: Civil War Music -- Primary Source Set Sound files, sheet music, photographs, letters, and maps help students better understand the American Civil War through the study of the popular song, "When Johnny Comes Marching Home." The resources in this primary source set are intended for classroom use. Includes a Civil War Music teacher's guide (6 p. PDF), and photographs, audio recordings, maps, and manuscript materials drawn from the Library of Congress' online digital collections. There is also a link to primary source analysis tools.
Sponsoring Organization: Collections Seldom Seen Curriculum guide that grew out of an exhibition, "Collections Seldom Seen," at the Museum of International Folk Art which brought together objects from the permanent collections chosen by several museum curators. The guide includes cultural and historical background on the chosen objects organized by geographic focus (Asia, Latin America, the United States, and Europe) and textile arts in general, plus two lesson plans with student activities, based on New Mexico state standards. The lesson plans are "How to Make a Japanese Scroll" and "Print Making," based on woodblock printing traditions used in the making of Brazilian literatura de cordel. The guide also highlights the role of the curator in the development of museum exhibitions.
Sponsoring Organization: Cowboy Poets - Teaching Guide Teaching guide for grades 10-12 to accompany an excerpt of the film “Cowboy Poets,” created by Kim Shelton in 1988. Fourteen minutes of the 50-minute film are chosen as a focus for the teaching guide. The film excerpt documents Wally McRae, a cowboy poet from southeastern Montana, a third-generation rancher and gentleman-philosopher, who uses his poetic gifts to make personal statements about continuity within the ranching community and the strength of cowboy traditions under siege in the modern world. The teaching guide and film explore the topics of cowboy culture and poetry, family ranch life, environmental conservation, and community resistance to a giant coal corporation in the neighborhood. The entire film is also available as streaming video on folkstreams.net.
Sponsoring Organization: Crossroads of the Heart: Creativity and Tradition in Mississippi Educational website that profiles community-based Mississippi traditional artists and musicians. It includes a teacher's guide with background on the traditions described, a glossary of terms, student activities, and a resource guide for additional materials and websites. The site is organized into five sections: "Mississippi Music" (blues, gospel, fiddling, and sacred harp singing); "Handmade Objects" (Choctaw basketry, wood carving, pottery, and pine needle basketry); "Maritime Traditions" (boatbuilding, netmaking, Vietnamese fishing and boatbuilding, and model boatbuilding); "Mississippi Quilting" (quilter Hystercine Rankin, Crossroads Quilters, and quilter Elaine Carter); and "Mississippi Narrative" (storytelling, church oratory, and fiction). Each artistic expression highlighted includes streaming audio of interviews and musical performances or photos documenting the traditional form. For upper elementary and middle school.
Sponsoring Organization: Dane County Cultural Tour 2002 Description of a four-day field trip taken by a classroom of fourth and fifth graders from Randall Elementary School in Madison, Wisconsin, to farming communities, small towns, and suburbs in south central Wisconsin. They visited ethnic communities and occupational sites, met and interviewed folk artists, musicians, and community historians, and documented their experiences through writing and photography. Many of the field reports included are written by students. This site gives an idea of the places they visited, and the traditions and folklore they discovered, and includes a "How We Did It" section for ideas on organizing similar cultural tours.
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: Dave - I Made This Jar Educator guide that focuses on the contributions of the enslaved potter and poet, David Drake, who worked in the pottery industry that flourished in the Edgefield District of South Carolina in the 1800s. Curriculum materials were designed to be consulted in conjunction with the McKissick Museum's "I Made This Jar" exhibit, but they may be be used independently of the exhibit. Lesson plans address pottery making, written and oral traditions in poetry, and the economics of slavery in relation to antebellum craft work. The guide also includes student activities, teacher background, and a bibliography. It was created for classroom use in grades 3-12, with guidance on teaching content and skills geared to different grade levels. (45 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: Dust Bowl Migration -- Primary Source Set Photographs, recorded music, and song lyrics document the daily ordeals of rural migrant families from the Great Plains during a decade marked by both the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. The resources in this primary source set are intended for classroom use. Includes a Dust Bowl Migration Teacher Guide (8 p. PDF), photographs, and sound recordings collected at California migrant labor camps, and a link to primary source analysis tools.
Sponsoring Organization: Explore Culture Online Online educational activities, podcasts, videos, exhibitions, oral histories, databases, bibliographies, and multimedia resources created for the Arizona State Museum about their exhibits, collections, and programs related to the material culture of Southwest Native Americans. Includes cultural and archaeological topics such as masks, pottery, textiles, painting, and weaving from Northern Mexico, New Mexico, and Arizona. Can be used in the classroom.
Sponsoring Organization: Explore Your Community: A Community Heritage Poster for the Classroom Poster designed for the middle and high school classroom to encourage students to learn more about their own communities by engaging in documentation and field projects. Includes suggestions for heritage studies and community projects, such as interviewing friends and classmates about school-related traditions and developing a walking tour of a local historical neighborhood. The poster is also available free of charge from the American Folklife Center.
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: Exploring Community History and Cultural Influence Activities for students in grades 6-12 that explore the concept of culture in individual lives, families, communities, regions, and cultural groups for use in a Social Studies curriculum.
Sponsoring Organization: Exploring Diversity in Pennsylvania History Resources for teachers related to the diverse ethnic histories of Pennsylvania. Curriculum materials include lesson plans, student handouts, background readings, and links to primary source materials from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and Balch collections related to the topics of settlement, community, work and industrialization, and interethnic relations. Geared to the middle and high school classroom, the units include resources for studying the settlement, history, and culture of Germans, Irish, Italians, Chinese, Latinos, South Asians, Africans, and Koreans in Pennsylvania. Lesson plans are correlated to a variety of Pennsylvania Department of Education Standards.
Sponsoring Organization: Family Ties and Fabric Tales Lesson with activities for students in elementary, middle, and high school on researching family history by conducting interviews. Included is a Family Data Sheet for use in collecting oral histories and activities on mapping the historical settlement patterns of families. Intended for use in Reading and Language Arts and Social Studies curricula.
Sponsoring Organization: Folk Artists: New Roots Educational web pages designed for use with students in grades 5-8 which provide activities and primary source materials about recent immigrant and refugee communities in Pennsylvania. A 12-page teacher's guide, "Using the Folk Arts of Newcomers in Your Classroom," offers curriculum suggestions and activities for exploring traditional forms of culture found in the Ahikskan Turk, Bosnian, Chinese, East Indian, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Sudanese, and Vietnamese communities in Pennsylvania. Accompanying the guide are stories and videos, some in Spanish, of individual Puerto Rican, Chinese, and Mexican individuals, representing dance, foodways, and other cultural and artistic traditions. The guide correlates with Pennsylvania Academic Standards for Reading, Writing, Speaking, Listening, and the Arts and Humanities.
Sponsoring Organization: Folk Arts in Education--A Resource Handbook II Resource handbook examining folklife, folklore, and folk arts in education throughout the United States with sample curricula from over fifty programs for youth in K-12 educational settings, museums, arts and humanities councils, and other non-profit cultural and arts organizations. The 262-page handbook includes many web-based educational resources, plus a webography and bibliography, for the study of folk arts that encourage students to become involved in hands-on, experiential learning, fieldwork, and place-based research in local community settings. It is available on the site in downloadable form or for sale in hardcopy or on CD through the Michigan State University Museum's Michigan Traditional Arts Program Store.
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: Folklife and Fieldwork: An Introduction to Field Techniques A guide to conducting folklife fieldwork, updated in 2005. (46 p. PDF) Includes information on what to collect, how to do fieldwork, and provides examples of release forms, data sheets, and logs for audio, video, and still photography. Also has tips on using tape recording, video, and photographic equipment. A Spanish-language translation of the guide is included, under the title "La Tradición Popular y la Investigación de Campo Una introducción a las técnicas de investigación." (46 p. PDF) Both English and Spanish versions are also available in free published versions from the American Folklife Center.
Sponsoring Organization: Folklife & Folk Art Education Resource Guide Guide created in 1997 with lesson plans and activities related to teaching a general folklife and folk art curriculum for the upper elementary school grades. It also provides background on the diverse ethnic, occupational, and regional traditions of the state of Utah. Included in the guide are sample cultural surveys for fourth and fifth graders to use in doing fieldwork plus activities such as hosting a folklife fair. Some of the many traditional arts areas explored are cowboy poetry, children's folklore, occupational folklore, foodways, celebrations, and verbal folklore genres.
Sponsoring Organization: Folklife in the Classroom Activities, lesson plans, and background about Montana folk arts and artists. Activities include the topics of "Cowboy Music & Poetry," "Documenting Traditions," "Indian Rawhide Drum Making," and "Quilting Traditions." Site also includes lesson plans, activities, and posters related to individual Montana traditional artists. The artists represent Blackfeet Indian beadwork, knifemaking, wood artistry, and traditional rawhide work from the White Clay People (Gros Ventre) tradition. Each lesson plan is in a 5 p. PDF format. Lesson plans are correlated to Montana Standards for Arts.
Sponsoring Organization: Folkstreams Generic Lesson Plan Generic lesson plan for grades 10-12 for use with films available as streaming video on folkstreams.net. Lesson plan template offers suggestions for viewing films as literary texts and primary sources, analyzing documentary filmmaking techniques, and guiding students in reflecting on the traditions, sense of place, identity, and beliefs of American cultural groups and communities.
Sponsoring Organization: Folkvine Folklore-oriented interdisciplinary website featuring documentation of Florida art and artists, from such traditions as lacemaking, quilting, painting, shoemaking, and sculpting using papier mache, bones, and other materials. The site also incorporates circus traditions and cultural arts representing African American, Peruvian American, Puerto Rican, and Hawaiian backgrounds. The documentation of the selected traditional artists and their communities is available through audio and video clips, photographs, and background textual materials.
Sponsoring Organization: Folkwriting: Lessons about Place, Heritage and Tradition for the Georgia Classroom Curriculum materials created in 2002 that combine the teaching of folklore concepts and fieldwork with the development of writing skills. Using lesson plans, activities, and resources for K-12 classrooms, background is given in the writing process and the concept of folklife as a subject for writing assignments. The guide includes instructions for doing folklore fieldwork and interviews, geared to different grade levels. Although written with Georgia traditions and curriculum standards in mind, the curriculum materials are applicable to the study of other states or regions. (354 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Ghetto Life 101 In 1993, two teenagers from Chicago's South Side collaborated with public radio producers to create the radio documentary "Ghetto Life 101," based on audio diaries of life in the Ida B. Wells housing projects. A study guide (24 p. PDF) was written for classroom use to accompany the audio segments. It adds new voices and historical perspectives to the original radio documentary. Topics covered in the study guide include growing up in the ghetto, the character of urban neighborhoods, and responding to violence in the inner city. In addition to the study guide, the Ghetto Life 101 web site includes the original audio documentaries, their transcripts, and photos.
Sponsoring Organization: Grand Generation Discussion Guide Discussion guide for grades 10-12 to accompany the film “The Grand Generation,” created by filmmakers Marjorie Hunt, Paul Wagner, and Steve Zeitlin in 1993. The 28-minute film, available as streaming video on folkstreams.net, is a portrait of six older Americans from Maryland, Mississippi, New York, Washington, D.C., New Mexico, and Tennessee, each with their roots in a unique cultural heritage and their own distinctive perspectives on the nature of aging. The discussion guide and film consider the issues of creative aging, diversity, race relations, gender roles, hard times and resilience, creativity, the cycle of life, and technological change in the lives of the featured elders.
Sponsoring Organization: Harvest Ceremony: Beyond the Thanksgiving Myth Study guide that assists teachers in preparing lessons about the first Thanksgiving, from the Native American perspective. It includes information about the Wampanoag Indians, their initial encounters with the "pilgrims," the importance of corn, instructions on how to make johnny cakes, and information about the Wampanoag today, with suggested classroom discussion topics. (5 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Harvesting Activities Activities for students in grades 3-12 related to ethnic markets and gardening in order to explore diversity in plants and its relationship to cultural diversity and ethnic traditions. For use in social studies, science, and health curricula.
Sponsoring Organization: Heritage Arts Build-A-Picture Activities Activities to introduce students in grades 3-12 to New Hampshire traditions and heritage arts. Puzzle activities on traditional arts topics include ash basket making, blacksmithing, dog sledding, fly tying, contra dance, and sheep sheering. The activities are designed to help students learn about traditional arts and artists, broaden literacy skills, develop basic research interests, and nurture writing skills. Background information is provided to expand on the activities in the classroom and community.
Sponsoring Organization: Hispanic Exploration in America --
Primary Source Set Maps, drawings, a sound recording, paintings, written documents and presentations outline the role of Hispanic explorers in the discovery, exploration, and development of America. The resources in this primary source set are intended for classroom use. Includes a Hispanic Exploration in America teacher guide (7 p. PDF), and audio recordings, maps, and other manuscript materials drawn from the Library of Congress' online digital collections. There is also a link to primary source analysis tools.
Sponsoring Organization: Hispanic Folk Arts & The Environment: A New Mexican Perspective Curriculum guide in English and Spanish on aspects of Spanish exploration and settlement in the Rio Grande corridor of New Mexico. Includes three focus areas with lesson plans and activities: 1) Land, River, and Hispanic Settlements, 2) Building Community: The Roots of Adobe, and 3) Foodways of the Rio Grande. Curriculum materials are correlated to New Mexico State Content Standards.
Sponsoring Organization: Hmong Cultural Tour Teacher's guide for organizing cultural tours for students in the upper elementary grades, developed as an educational resource for a Madison Children's Museum exhibit, Hmong at Heart, created in 2004. This site documents a class trip of 4th and 5th graders to seven cities in Wisconsin to introduce them to Hmong culture and communities firsthand. Includes a "How We Did It" section, to help teachers plan their own cultural field trips, and students' essays about the trip. Hmong traditions and history, including music, foodways, crafts, games, healing practices, and textile arts are described in the "Field Guide to Hmong Culture," (91 p. PDF). Links to the "Teachers' Guide to Local Culture" (69 p. PDF), which includes a generic lesson plan for grades 3-5, with adaptations for K-2, plus teaching strategies. Also links to the "Kids' Guide to Local Culture," (139 p. PDF), which includes student activities.
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: Honky Tonks, Hymns, & the Blues: American Music from Back Roads to Big City Study guides for NPR radio series on southern musical traditions in the U.S. The website provides audio of original radio presentations, including interviews and musical sound clips. Each section deals with a different theme, including: "Honky Tonk Women: The Changing Role of Women in Country Music," "Riding the Rails to Stardom: The Maddox Brothers and Rose," "Country Guitar: The Music Meets Technology and Changing Times," "A Pure Sound: Country Music and the Moral Message," "Thomas A. Dorsey: From 'Georgia Tom' to the Father of Gospel Music," "Música Norteña: Accordion on the Texas Border," "Country Fiddling: From Back Porch to Big City, "The Rise of the Country Blues," "Jimmie Rodgers: Birth of the Country Superstar," "Lone Star Swing: Bob Wills and the Texas Tradition," "Black and White: Crossing the Border, Closing the Gap," and "The Carter Family on the Air: Border Radio and Country Music." Appropriate for use in the secondary school classroom.
Sponsoring Organization: In the Wake of the Hurricanes -- Helping Students Document Hurricanes: Interviewing and Fieldwork in the Classroom Classroom resource for teachers working with 5th through 12th grade students to help them understand and cope with the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The unit involves teaching students to interview each other, community members, and family about hurricane experiences. Includes lesson plans, activities, and handouts correlated to Louisiana Content Standards. (64 p. PDF) In addition, three art lesson plans provide guidance on working with students and hurricane recovery.
Sponsoring Organization: Indivisible Educator's Guide An educator's guide for K-12 students that combines photography and first-person narratives to explore community life, identity, and civic action (72 p. PDF). Lesson plans are available on taking documentary photographs, collecting oral histories, and analyzing gathered fieldwork documentation. It includes descriptions of twelve community documentation projects undertaken throughout the United States. Created in 2000 in connection with a national documentary project called "Indivisible: Stories of American Community." A selection of slides and an audio cd of excerpted project interviews accompanies the lessons.
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: Iowa Folklife: Our People, Communities, and Traditions Learning guide for middle and high school students plus elders in senior centers based on field documentation of Iowa traditional culture, communities, and groups done in preparation for the Festival of American Folklife and the Festival of Iowa Folklife, both held in 1996. The guide includes lesson plans with objectives, background, conceptual and hands-on activities, and handouts, arranged by subject matter: Social Studies, Language Arts, Music, and Art. Accompanying the lesson plans are activities with guidance on developing a community research archive, collecting field recordings, and creating exhibitions, festivals, and publications based on fieldwork done by students. On the site are two streamed videos for classroom viewing, streamed audio of a CD exemplifying a variety of Iowa traditional musical styles, and "Inherit Iowa," a senior citizen activity guide.
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: Iowa Folklife -- Volume II Online curriculum resource guide for K-12 students and educators that explores the traditional music, foods, dance, rituals and crafts of Iowa's diverse cultures. A companion resource to "Iowa Folklife: Our People, Communities, and Traditions," it includes content pages, audio samples, suggested readings, lesson plans and other online resources. Lesson plans and accompanying materials focus on the blues, Gospel, Latino music, Old Time music, Polka, First Nations Peoples, Vietnamese Tet, and cultural traditions from Laotians, Danes, Bosnians, and Asian Indians who have settled in Iowa.
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: Jubilation! : African American Celebrations in the Southeast Educator guide that explores the special nature of African-American celebrations within the family and community, and encourages students to discover their own cultural heritage. It focuses on rites of passage and community celebrations among African Americans in the Southeastern United States, with guidance in documenting celebrations and doing oral history. Includes lesson plans, activities, teacher background, and a bibliography of adult and children's literature. The guide is geared towards students in grades 3-12. (51 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: Kids' Guide to Local Culture Educational field guide that offers guidance to students doing local cultural research. It was developed as part of a packet of teacher resources for a Madison Children's Museum exhibit, Hmong at Heart, created in 2004. The guide includes the following chapters: 1) "Seeing Local Culture;" 2) "Tools & Skills for Ethnographers;" 3) "Cultural Elements;" and 4) "Presenting Culture." The guide will give students the skills and tools to help them observe, interview, and understand people, plus ideas for presenting their collected cultural research. (139 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: King County and Western Washington Cultural Geography, Communities, Their History and Traditions Ten-week curriculum unit of forty lesson plans (85 p. PDF), with accompanying essays on cultural background and traditional art forms, plus a searchable database of Washington state traditional artists. Designed for use by 7th and 8th grade Social Studies teachers for the Washington State Culture and History curriculum. Curriculum unit focuses on the traditional art forms of Cantonese Opera, Kathak Dance, Hmong Basketry, and Oud Music of the Arabic World. Cultural background essays describe communities of Puget Salish, Chinese Americans, Asian Indians, Laotian Americans, and Arab Americans living in Washington state.
Sponsoring Organization: The Kwakwaka'wakw: A Study of a North Pacific Coast People and the Potlatch Teaching poster for grades 6-8 with accompanying lesson plans and activities that explore cultural traditions and values of the Kwakwaka'wakw people of British Columbia, Canada that express concepts of wealth and the importance of cultural continuity. Curriculum materials focus on this North Pacific Coast People's potlatch practice, its history, the values inherent in it, and the important role it plays in establishing and maintaining family connections to the past, to ancestors, and to the spirits of all living things. Poster meets national curriculum standards for Social Studies. (9 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Learn NC K-12 teaching and learning resources from the School of Education at the University of North Carolina. Includes lesson plans and learning materials (text and multimedia) on all curriculum areas for use by students independently or as part of classroom instruction. Resources can be browsed by grade level, subject area, and curriculum objective. Lesson plans include folklore, traditional culture, and many other topics. All lesson plans are aligned to the North Carolina Standard Course of Study.
Sponsoring Organization: A Life in Beads: The Stories a Plains Dress Can Tell Teaching poster for grades 4-6 with accompanying lesson plans and activities that explore the traditional art of dressmaking and dress decoration among women of Native American tribes from the Great Plains region. Through the stories and art of contemporary women from the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes in Montana, students will learn about materials used in the past and today, as well as the cultural values and meanings behind dress decoration. Meets national curriculum standards for Social Studies. (10 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Lone Dog's Winter Count: Keeping History Alive Teaching poster developed for 4th through 8th grades to explore the oral culture and history-keeping techniques of the Nakota people who made the Lone Dog Winter Count. Originally, languages of the Northern Great Plains Indians were not written, but spoken. Using oral tradition, Native communities developed creative tools to help them remember their complex histories. A "winter count" was one way that Nakota storytellers recorded their histories and kept track of the passage of years. Poster includes lesson plan on the Native American practice of making winter counts and activities for creating pictograph calendars as mnemonic devices. Meets national curriculum standards for Social Studies. (10 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Louisiana Foodways Unit Activity Classroom resource for teachers working with elementary and high school students to introduce the wide variety of food customs found in the state of Louisiana. The unit includes teacher background on Louisiana's food traditions, plus lesson plans and activities for engaging students in interviewing and documenting local and family foodways, correlated to Louisiana Content Standards. (39 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Louisiana Voices : An Educator's Guide to Exploring our Communities and Traditions Comprehensive resource guide for K-12 educators on the folklife of Louisiana. Although written for Louisiana, lessons and activities are adaptable to any region. The guide contains forty two lessons and many activities in nine units, correlated to Louisiana Content Standards, particularly those in English Language Arts and Social Studies. Units include: 1) Defining Terms; 2) Classroom Applications of Fieldwork; 3) Discovering the Obvious; 4) The State of Our Lives; 5) Oral Traditions; 6) Louisiana's Musical Landscape; 7) Material Culture; 8) The Worlds of Work and Play; and 9) The Seasonal Round and the Cycle of Life. It includes over 1000 pages, some in PDF-format, and links to many essays, slide shows, video and audio clips, and other web resources.
Sponsoring Organization: Lucreaty Clark, White Oak Basket Maker Lesson plans, photographs, and audio interviews with Lucreaty Clark, basket maker, about the history and practice of making white oak baskets. Correlated to Florida State Standards, the lesson plans were created for grades 6-8 in a Social Studies or Language Arts curriculum. The primary source materials in this educational unit belong to the State Library and Archives of Florida's Florida Folklife Collection, available on the Florida Memory Web site.
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: Masters of the Building Arts Activity Guide Adapted from a family activity guide to accompany the 2001 Smithsonian Folklife Festival program focused on the building arts and the artistry and skill of craftspersons. This guide offers activity suggestions for persons of all ages related to making stone walls, stained glass windows, and architectural terra cotta, and to working with ornamental ironwork, adobe, stone carving and masonry, and timber framing. (41 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: The Men Who Dance the Giglio - Teaching Guide Teaching guide for grades 10-12 to accompany an excerpt of the film “The Men Who Dance the Giglio,” created by filmmaker Jeff Porter in 1995. Nine minutes of the 28-minute film are chosen as a focus for the teaching guide. The film excerpt documents the Saint Paulinus Festival and its 2.5-ton giglio statue carried by 125 men in a Catholic religious procession through the streets of the Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn, N.Y. The teaching guide and film explore the topics of community and neighborhood festivals, Italian American culture, ethnicity, and sacred and secular celebrations found in urban areas. The entire film is also available as streaming video on folkstreams.net.
Sponsoring Organization: The Music District - Teaching Guide Teaching guide to accompany an excerpt of the film “The Music District,” created by filmmaker Susan Levitas in 1996. Nine minutes of the 56-minute film are chosen as a focus for the teaching guide. This excerpt profiles the "Junk Yard Band," a Go-Go group who explain and perform a pop music genre popular among African American youth in Washington, D.C. As Go-Go bands became popular in D.C. clubs and communities in the 1980s and 1990s, young people started break dancing contests and developed a distinctive musical style combining call-and-response lyrics with funk, jazz, rhythm and blues, and popular music. The discussion guide and film explore the topics of African American popular music and dance found in a vibrant urban youth culture noted for its creativity and improvisation. The entire film is also available as streaming video on folkstreams.net.
Sponsoring Organization: Native American Dolls Teaching guide for K-12 education with lesson plan and activities on diverse traditions of Native American dolls and dollmaking. Native doll makers describe how their work keeps old traditions alive and helps in developing new traditions. Includes examples of Navajo, Inupiat, Ojibwe, Seneca, and Seminole dolls exhibited in the National Museum of the American Indian and transcripts of interviews with their makers. The lesson is useful for teaching about cultural differences where students are encouraged to compare and contrast Native dolls with those from their own background. It meets national curriculum standards for History and Geography. Lesson plan originally published in the fall 2004 issue of "Smithsonian In Your Classroom." (28 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: A Native Place Teaching Guide for grades 4-8 that celebrates the establishment of the Museum of the American Indian on the National Mall in Washington, DC and the cultures and achievements of American Indian peoples. Included in this guide are three lesson plans with activities: "A Place of Pride," "A Welcoming Spirit," and "The Peoples' Knowledge." Curriculum materials focus on issues of Native history, museums, cultural representation, worldview, beliefs, philosophy, and material culture. They also encourage an understanding of, and respect for the strength, richness, and diversity of Native cultures. The Teaching Guide meets national curriculum standards for Language Arts, U.S. History, Social Studies, Geography, Science Literacy, and Fine Arts/Visual Arts. (5 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: Native Words, Native Warriors Interactive curriculum website for grades 6-12 that explores the lives and experiences of American Indian Code Talkers, the servicemen who used their traditional tribal languages to transmit secret messages for the US military during World War I and World War II. Includes lesson plans, correlated to National Curriculum Standards for Social Studies and National Standards for History, captioned photographs, maps and documents, discussion questions, activities, and audio recordings of spoken word and Native American music.
Sponsoring Organization: Nebraska By Heart A multidisciplinary instructional unit developed in 2007 for grades 6-8 designed to explore folk and traditional arts and folklife, generally and as they exist in Nebraska. The unit includes four lesson plans: 1) An Exploration of Folklife and Folk Arts; 2) Folk Arts and Folklife in Nebraska Culture; 3) Understanding the Folk Process; and 4) Reflecting on Folk Arts, Folklife, and Culture.
Sponsoring Organization: Needles & Pins: Textiles and Tools Education guide designed for teachers to use with grades 1-8, focusing on themes of an exhibition, "Needles & Pins: Textiles and Tools," on display at the Museum of International Folk Art from 2007 to 2009. The lesson plans and art activities focus on textiles and the tools used to make them. It includes background on the art and technology of weaving and permanently coloring cloth, including the techniques of printing, stamping, and painting. Activities in the guide include the making of a Ghanaian Adinkra banner and a weaving project. The lesson plans are correlated to the New Mexico State Art Content Standards.
Sponsoring Organization: Netmaking and Net Fishing in Florida Lesson plans, photographs, and audio interviews with longtime net maker and Fernandina, Florida resident Billy Burbank III about the history and practice of the net making trade. Correlated to Florida State Standards, the lesson plans were created for grades 6-8 in a Social Studies or Language Arts curriculum. The primary source materials in this educational unit belong to the State Library and Archives of Florida's Florida Folklife Collection, available on the Florida Memory Web site.
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: Neutrogena Curricula Two lesson plans for grades 1-8 related to objects from around the world found in the Museum of International Folk Art's Neutrogena collections. The first lesson plan deals with hats and headdresses and the second with resist-dye techniques used in textile design. Both include background information for teachers, resource lists, and ideas for extending the lessons into other curricular areas. The lesson plans are both correlated to the New Mexico State Content Standards for Art and Social Studies.
Sponsoring Organization: Nevada Folklife: A Curriculum Unit for Junior High and Middle School Students Curriculum unit created in 1991 for the study of folklife in junior high and middle school, with examples drawn from Nevada traditional culture. It provides background lesson plans on What is Folklore?, Family Folklore, Folk Groups, and Community Folklife. In addition, the guide includes lesson plans and classroom activities on the topics of Oral Traditions, Music and Dance, Folk Crafts and Art, Occupational and Recreational Lore and Skills, Material Culture, Folk Beliefs and Medicine, and Foodways. The curriculum is geared to teaching language arts, history and social studies, though it suggests opportunities for other areas. The unit includes additional resources and bibliographies and is available through ERIC. (42 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Our Arts, Our Land: A Young Reader's Guide to Selected Folk Arts of Hawaii Music, photographs, and interviews of traditional master artists from Hawaii designed as an introduction to folk arts for young people. The audio recordings were originally aired on Hawaii Public Radio as part of the "Pacific Visions" radio series. Hawaiian traditional arts represented include chant, lauhala weaving, fishnet knotting, quilting, slack key and steel guitar music, medicinal herbs, gourd carving, and hula ki'i puppetry. Also included are practitioners of Chinese Opera, Okinawan koten music and dance, Filipino dance, Korean pansori singing, and Japanese Mingei pottery. A folk arts quiz is provided for students.
Sponsoring Organization: The Painted Bride – Teaching Guide Teaching guide for grades 10-12 to accompany the film “The Painted Bride,” created by filmmakers Amada Dargan and Susan Slyomovics in 1990. The 25-minute film, available as streaming video on folkstreams.net, features traditional wedding customs practiced among Pakistani Muslim immigrants in Queens, New York. It follows a mehndi body painting artist as she creates intricate designs on the hands and feet of a bride-to-be while the bride’s friends sing humorous songs mocking the groom and future in-laws. The teaching guide and film explore tensions between American and Pakistani ideas of gender roles, identity, clothing, and ritual, including issues of cultural diversity in an immigrant community.
Sponsoring Organization: Papel Picado: A Traditional Mexican Folk Art Lesson plan with art activities created by the Museum of International Folk Art on the topic of traditional cut paper folk art called "papel picado," found in former Spanish colonies. For most holidays in Mexico, the brightly-colored strings of cut tissue paper banners are strung in homes and across streets. Curriculum materials are geared towards grades 1-8 and are correlated with the New Mexico State Content Standards for Art.
Sponsoring Organization: Pilebutts: Working Under the Hammer – Study Guide Study guide for middle and high school students to accompany the film “Pilebutts: Working Under the Hammer,” created by Maria Brooks and Archie Green in 2003. The 28-minute film, available as streaming video on folkstreams.net, features the camaraderie and tough, risk-laden work of men and women of Oakland, California’s Pile Drivers Local Union Number 34, who drive the pilings for structures such as bridges, docks, freeways, and skyscrapers in the San Francisco Bay Area. The guide can be integrated into social studies and language arts curricula and serves as an introduction for students to labor culture and history in its focus on an occupational community in the Bay Area.
Sponsoring Organization: Place as a Mirror of Self and Community Lesson with activities for students in grades 3-5 in a Social Studies curriculum that explores the intersection of cultural and human difference and community by looking at the role special places of all kinds play in people's lives.
Sponsoring Organization: Quilts in Women’s Lives – Teaching Guide Teaching guide for grades 10-12 to accompany an excerpt of the film “Quilts in Women’s Lives,” created by filmmaker Pat Ferrero in 1981. Fifteen minutes of the 28-minute film are as a focus for the teaching guide. This excerpt features three women quilters -- artist and teacher Grace Earl, artist and Bulgarian immigrant Radka Donnell, and African American traditional quilter Nora Lee Condra. The teaching guide and film explore the lives, art, work, and philosophy of the three women quilters from different backgrounds. The entire film is also available as streaming video on folkstreams.net.
Sponsoring Organization: Red Alexander: Shipwright and Folk Artist - Study Guide Study guide for middle and high school students to accompany the film “Red Alexander: Shipwright and Folk Artist,” created by Archie Green and Chris Simon in 1998. The 25-minute film, available as streaming video on folkstreams.net, focuses on the life and craft of a retired shipwright whose exquisite models of working ships mirror his fifty-year career building ships on the Oakland Estuary in California. The guide can be integrated into social studies and language arts curricula and serves as an introduction for students to labor culture and history in its focus on an occupational community in the Bay Area.
Sponsoring Organization: Row Upon Row: Sea Grass Baskets of the South Carolina Lowcountry Educator guide that introduces students in grades 1-12 to the sea grass basket making tradition of the South Carolina lowcountry. Lesson plans address the basic concepts of tradition, folk groups, and folk art, with examples drawn from lowcountry basket making and basket makers. In addition, the guide focuses on the value of studying one's own local history and emphasizes the connections between African American hairstyles and heritage. The units of the guide include student activities and teacher background, geared separately towards elementary, middle and high school levels. Curriculum covered is useful for classes in social studies, art, language, and South Carolina history, and is correlated to the South Carolina Basic Skills Assessment Program. (100-page PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: Sacred Harp Lesson plans, photographs, and audio recordings documenting sacred harp singing in Florida. Includes field recordings by Alton Morris recorded in 1949 in Gainesville. Correlated to Florida State Standards, the lesson plans were created for a Music curriculum for grades 6-8. The primary source materials in this educational unit belong to the State Library and Archives of Florida's Florida Folklife Collection, available on the Florida Memory Web site.
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: Seminole Doll Making Lesson plans, photographs, and audio interviews with Seminole doll maker Mary B. Billie and her daughter, Claudia C. John, about the history and practice of Seminole doll making. Correlated to Florida State Standards, the lesson plans were created for a Visual Arts curriculum for grades 6-8. The primary source materials in this educational unit belong to the State Library and Archives of Florida's Florida Folklife Collection, available on the Florida Memory Web site.
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: Silk Road Encounters Education Kit Teacher's guide (48 p. PDF) and sourcebook (48 p. PDF) that explore the diverse yet interrelated topics of trade, art, music, religion, history, and geography along the Silk Road to supplement classroom materials for students from elementary through high school. The teacher's guide has six lesson plans: 1) The Silk Roads Big Map; 2) Creating a Three-Dimensional Timeline; 3) Trading in the Silk Road Cities; 4) Belief Systems of the Silk Road; 5) Musical Innovation along the Silk Roads; and 6) Treasures of the Silk Roads.) Activities tiered for different educational levels accompany the lessons. A sourcebook provides background information for the lessons on the geography, history, belief systems, arts, music, and the travel of ideas and techniques along the Silk Road.
Sponsoring Organization: A Singing Stream: A Black Family Chronicle - Curriculum Guides Three curriculum guides to accompany the film “A Singing Stream: A Black Family Chronicle,” created by filmmaker Tom Davenport with Daniel Patterson and Allen Tullos in 1986. The 57-minute film, available as streaming video on folkstreams.net, traces the history of the Landis family of Granville County, North Carolina, over the lifetime of its oldest surviving member, 86-year-old Bertha Landis. In the film, her sons' gospel quartet, "The Golden Echoes" rehearses and performs during a Landis family reunion. Family members also describe their migration North, work, race relations, music, and family ties. The site includes a film study guide by Beverly Patterson for 8th and 9th grades that explores African American history, music, family life and culture, and film as a social and historical document. Also available is an intergenerational film discussion guide by Paddy Bowman that offers ideas for considering issues of Jim Crow segregation, voting rights, gospel music-making, and faith and resilience in African American families. In addition, the site includes a teaching guide for grades 10-12 by Paddy Bowman focusing on aspects of the film mentioned above plus background essays on gospel quartets, Bertha Landis, and Granville County, North Carolina.
Sponsoring Organization: Skeleton Esqueleto Puppets and Día de Muertos Ofrendas Two activities associated with Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) for students in grades 1-8. Also known as All Souls' Day, Día de Muertos is rooted in both indigenous and Catholic religious belief and is increasingly being celebrated throughout the United States. The Skeleton Esqueleto Puppets activity will help students learn how puppets can reflect the cultures from which they come from, using Mexican skeleton puppets as an example. The Día de Muertos Ofrendas activity will give students an understanding of how ofrendas, or altars, are set up in people's homes for dead relatives during this holiday. The activities correlate to New Mexico State Content Standards for Art and Social Studies.
Sponsoring Organization: The Smithsonian Folklife and Oral History Interviewing Guide Interviewing guide for collecting folklife field research and oral history from tradition-bearers, and family and community members. Created in 2003, it provides guidelines on conducting interviews, with sample questions that may be adapted to specific needs and circumstances. Also includes ideas on preserving and presenting field research findings, a selection of further readings, a glossary of key terms, and sample forms, such as release forms, tape and photo logs, and interview information forms. (35 p. PDF) Can be used for classroom projects.
Sponsoring Organization: The Sonic Memorial Project--For Educators Based on programs created for National Public Radio's Lost and Found Sound, the Sonic Memorial Project developed as a cross-media collaboration of independent radio and new media producers, artists, historians, and people from around the world who contributed recordings to the September 11 Digital Archive. SonicMemorial.org is an open archive with an online audio installation of the history of the World Trade Center, New York City. In addition to the audio recordings, the site includes a curriculum for educators with modules of lesson plans on the following topics: 1) History and Time; 2) Memorials; 3) The Places and Stories of Our Lives; 4) Civic Ideals and Practices; 5) Culture and Identity, and 6) How to Talk about 9/11. Accompanying follow-up activities and resources can be used with the lesson plans. The curriculum materials were written to support national standards in Social Studies education.
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: Sweet is the Day: A Sacred Harp Family Portrait - Teacher's Guide Teacher’s guide for grades 6-8 to accompany the film, “Sweet is the Day: A Sacred Harp Family Portrait,” created by Jim Carnes and Erin Kellen in 2001. The 59-minute film, available as streaming video on folkstreams.net, tells the story of the Woottens, one of the key singing families who helped Sacred Harp music survive and flourish for more than 150 years in the South. The film intertwines scenes of family gatherings, singing conventions, and farm life in the Sand Mountain region of northeast Alabama with family recollections and songs from the shape-note tradition. The teaching guide and film explore shape-note music and Sacred Harp singing, including the importance of the tradition in the lives of families in the Sand Mountain community.
Sponsoring Organization: Teacher Lesson Plans Lesson plans for the home and the K-12 classroom on such topics as Wisconsin folklore and regional history, the arts and social change, and visionary environmental art. The lesson plans are divided into "Constructed Realities Lesson Plans," and "Environmental Builders Lesson Plans," and are based on exhibits that the John Michael Kohler Arts Center has featured. Included are lessons with activities, in PDF format, focusing on traditional, ethnic, and visionary artists, and legendary figures from Wisconsin folklore.
Sponsoring Organization: Teacher's Guide for Nevada Folk Arts Roster Folk arts education guide created to accompany the Nevada Folk Arts Roster program and to provide an overview of the traditional arts and folklife of ethnic communities in Nevada. Includes lesson plans for the general study of folklife and also lessons on Mexican, African, Asian, Western European, Central and Eastern European, Hawaiian, and Native American cultures in Nevada, plus information on individual traditional artists working in the state. Accompanying worksheets and activities provide guidance in doing fieldwork. Lessons are designed for 4th and 7th grade students, but may be adapted for other age groups or skill levels. Correlated to Nevada Standards for Education for the areas of History, Social Studies, Geography, Library, Music, Physical Education, Visual Arts, and English Language Arts. (46 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Teacher's Guide to "In My Heart, I Am a Dancer" Curriculum guide to accompany the publication, "In My Heart I am a Dancer," about the Cambodian community in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Topics include Cambodian classical dance and costume, and the history and culture of Cambodia. Created for use with children in grades K-4 and also with older students. The guide includes background for teachers in working in the classroom with folk arts plus lesson plans, activities, and questions for students as they read the text.
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: A Teacher's Guide to Kentucky Folklife Teacher's guide to Kentucky folklife written in 2004 with lesson plans, student activities, and background essays. The guide has individual units on folklore in general and Kentucky folklife in the following areas: fieldwork, interviewing, folk art, foodways, occupational folklife, traditional music, and recreational folklife. The lessons can be used separately or together and are intended for use in the upper elementary and middle school classroom. (87 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: Teacher's Guide to the Teen Reporter Handbook Teacher's guide accompanying the "Teen Reporter Handbook: How to Make Your Own Radio Diary," a publication created by NPR's Radio Diaries project to train young people in interviewing and making sound recordings about their own lives, their communities, and families. (14 p. PDF) Includes link to the "Teen Reporter Handbook" (22 p. PDF). Also includes an Oral History Unit for classroom teaching and other resources related to doing oral history, such as oral history websites, lesson plans, how to create oral history questions, and guidelines on recording an interview.
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: Teachers' Guide to Local Culture Teacher's guide created in 2004 to enhance field trips for students and teachers attending the Madison Children's Museum exhibit, "Hmong at Heart," though it can be used independently in the classroom. The guide focuses on researching local culture and doing cultural field projects. It includes activities and lesson plans written for grades 3-5 with adaptations for K-2 on the topics of photo albums, clothing, home remedies, family folklore, rites of passage, storytelling, and foodways. (69 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Thanksgiving -- Primary Source Set Study photographs, paintings, letters, and official proclamations to discover historical perspectives on American Thanksgiving holiday traditions, beginning with the pilgrims who came to North America on the Mayflower. The resources in this primary source set are intended for classroom use. Includes a Thanksgiving teacher's guide (6 p. PDF), and photographs and manuscript materials drawn from the Library of Congress' online digital collections, and a link to primary source analysis tools.
Sponsoring Organization: The Ties that Bind Multi-media resource created in 2006 for K-12 classroom teachers to address Colorado model content standards in History, Geography, and other disciplines. The tool contains the following: Written essays (Sections 1 and II); Lesson plans (Section III); Lists of additional resources (Section IV); plus audio and video resources that can be downloaded from the site. Eleven lesson plans include: "The Art of Interviewing" (14 p. PDF), "Colcha Embroidery" (8 p. PDF), ""Exploring Cowboy Life Through Cowboy Poetry," (30 p. PDF), "Folklore Bingo" (10 p. PDF), "Hmong Cultures" (12 p. PDF), "Introduction to Folklore for Grade 12" (6 p. PDF), "Latino Cultures" (10 p. PDF), "Quilts across Cultures" (12 p. PDF), "St. Patrick's Day and the Irish" (12 p. PDF), "Take a Trip to a Special Place" (6 p. PDF), and "Wheat Weaving" (10 p. PDF).
Sponsoring Organization: To Honor and Comfort: Native Quilting Traditions Study guide developed by the National Museum of the American Indian to accompany a 1997 exhibition of the same name. It can also be used as an independent resource for educators. Includes four lesson plans that correspond to the exhibition sections: Origins, Honoring, Design, and Community. Curriculum focuses on quilters from eight Native American communities and has accompanying study questions, handouts, and activities. (36 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Traditional Arts and Culture in the Cambodian Community in Philadelphia A grade 6 module developed for use in the School District of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, aligned with the District's Core Curriculum on the folk arts of the Cambodian community in Philadelphia, with emphasis on Cambodian classical dance. The module includes background information on the country of Cambodia. (31 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: Unbroken Tradition – Teacher’s Guide Teacher’s guide for grades 3-6 to accompany the film “Unbroken Tradition,” created by Joey Brackner, Erin Kellen, and Herb Smith in 1986. The 29-minute film, available as streaming video on folkstreams.net, is a portrait of Jerry Brown, a ninth generation potter from Hamilton, Alabama, whose forebears first set up a potter’s wheel in Georgia around 1800. The film takes the viewer through the steps of making a churn from digging the clay and preparing it for the potter’s wheel, to actual turning and firing of the piece in the kiln. It also includes Jerry’s explanation of how he came to the potter’s trade relatively late in life. The teacher’s guide and film explore issues relating to the continuation of this family tradition over generations, the making of stoneware pottery, and the importance of pottery in daily life in the past in the American South.
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: Other Organizations: Veterans' Stories: Struggles for Participation -- Primary Source Set Primary source materials from the Veterans History Project Collection at the Library of Congress that support teaching about U.S. history and social studies. Women and people of color have often had to overcome obstacles in order to participate fully in the U.S. armed forces. In these materials, veterans tell their stories of discrimination and struggles for recognition in the U.S. armed forces through interviews, memoirs, and photographs. Materials on the site include an accompanying Teacher Guide (8 p. PDF), and audio and video recordings. For the Veterans' History Project, go to: http://www.loc.gov/vets
Sponsoring Organization: Veterans' Stories: The Veterans History Project -- Primary Source Set Primary source materials from the Veterans History Project Collection at the Library of Congress that support teaching about 20th-century U.S. history, social studies, and oral history. Materials on the site include a Veterans History Project teacher guide (8 p. PDF), photographs, drawings, letters, memoirs, and video interviews of American veterans. The primary source set links to "Primary Source Analysis Tools" and "Especially for Educators and Students," a guide on how to conduct interviews with veterans and submit them to the Library of Congress for inclusion in the Veterans History Project Collection. For the Veterans' History Project, go to: http://www.loc.gov/vets/
Sponsoring Organization: A Village of Painters: Narrative Scrolls from West Bengal Lesson plan with activities for grades K-12 created in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name held at the Museum of International Folk Art in 2006-2007. The focus of the curriculum materials is the artistry of the West Bengal, India community of patuas, who wander from village to village singing their own compositions while displaying painted scrolls that include religious songs, social commentary, and personal experience narratives. The curriculum materials correlate with the New Mexico State Content Standards for the Visual Arts. (11 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Walking on Solid Ground: Understanding the Chinese-American Experience in Philadelphia Educational module for 7th grade on the traditional arts, culture, and history of the Chinese American community in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Includes lesson plans and activities for creating neighborhood maps, studying what makes a community, learning how to read and understand census reports and immigration patterns, and working with the concept of "ghetto," using Philadelphia's Chinatown as a model. (19 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: We Have a Story to Tell: Native Peoples of the Chesapeake Region Teacher guide for use with students in grades 9-12 that provides information and primary resource materials related to key periods and events in the history of the Algonquian communities of the Chesapeake Bay Region, especially the Powhatan, Nanticoke, and Piscataway peoples. Curriculum materials cover the period from the 1600s to the present and focus on how colonial settlement and the establishment of the United States have affected Chesapeake Bay Native Americans. With lesson plans, small group projects, and activities, the guide also introduces contemporary issues that are critical for these communities' survival, such as civil rights and the importance of legal recognition. Meets national curriculum standards for U.S. History and Social Studies. (28 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Wisconsin Folks Website for students, educators, and the general public featuring traditional artists, art forms, and cultures of Wisconsin. Includes background on regional and ethnic traditional crafts, foodways, music, and dance. Information on the site has content for 4th, 8th, and 12th grade themes in Social Studies, the Visual Arts, Music, Dance, English, Information and Technology Literacy, and Business, correlated to Wisconsin Model Academic Standards and Benchmarks. Also includes contact information for engaging Wisconsin traditional artists and performers for public and classroom presentations.
Sponsoring Organization: Wisconsin Weather Stories Interdisciplinary curriculum featuring the science and stories of weather. It offers units, lesson plans, and activities for the K-12 classroom on weather narratives such as severe weather stories and predictive sayings, and explores the occupational folklore of meteorologists. Developed in 2003, these resources include examples from Wisconsin weather and guidelines on collecting weather stories with an introduction to doing folklore fieldwork.
Sponsoring Organization: Woodsmen and River Drivers – Teaching Guide Teaching guide for grades 10-12 to accompany the film “Woodsmen and River Drivers,” created by filmmakers Michael Chalufour, Karan Sheldon, and David Weiss in 1989. The 28-minute film, available as streaming video on folkstreams.net, features men and women who worked for a lumber company in Maine before 1930 and who share their recollections of the logging industry. Documentary footage illustrates the dangerous and exhausting work of cutting trees by hand, hauling logs to the river with horses, and floating them down to the mill. By encountering firsthand accounts of arduous physical labor and the seasonal round of old-time logging in the film and teaching guide, students gain perspective on work and occupations in their own lives and communities, including how occupational folklife contributes to a sense of place.
Sponsoring Organization: Youth Portraits The Youth Portraits project was established to teach young people recently released from New York City's Rikers Island correctional facility how to use audio to tell stories about their lives. With the help of Sound Portraits producers, the young people crafted short audio documentaries by conducting interviews, cutting their own tape, adding music, and using computers to create finished pieces that were aired on public radio in January 2002. The Youth Portraits web site features their photos, streamed audio pieces with transcripts, and curriculum materials. The educational resources include a study guide (62 p. PDF) plus a recording and interviewing tutorial. These materials can be used in the classroom or as part of a life skills curriculum with youth.
Sponsoring Organization: Zora Neale Hurston, the WPA in Florida, and the Cross City Turpentine Camp Lesson plans, photographs, and writings related to Zora Neale Hurston's work for the Florida division of the Work Projects Administration (WPA) when she went on a recording expedition in 1939 to the turpentine camps in Cross City, Florida. Correlated to Florida State Standards, the lesson plans were created for grades 9-12 for a Language Arts and Social Studies curriculum. The primary source materials in this educational unit belong to the State Library and Archives of Florida's Florida Folklife Collection, available on the Florida Memory Web site.
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Back to
Top
| |||