american folklife center >> educational resources>> folklife resources for educators >> all citations >> printer-friendly ![]() Folklife Resources for EducatorsPDF documents require the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. All Citations - Printer Friendly VersionThere are 190 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: African Immigrant Experience Multi-unit educational guide for K-12 grade levels with lesson plans and activities focusing on the life and experience of African immigrant communities in Pennsylvania. Topics featured include the refugee experience, why African immigrants are leaving their homes, and their work, families, and communities in Pennsylvania. The site includes transcripts of oral history interviews with African immigrants from Eritrea, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Mauritania, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Kenya, and Ethiopia. It also has a link to the online exhibit created by the Historical Society of Philadelphia entitled “Extended Lives: The African Immigrant Experience in Philadelphia,” that documents family life and experiences through primary source materials collected from community members. Materials in the guide are correlated to Pennsylvania Department of Education Standards for Reading and Writing, History, Geography, and Arts and Humanities.
Sponsoring Organization: Alaska Native Dance Curriculum resources for exploring similarities in the midst of diversity by introducing students to native dances performed by Alaskan cultural groups. Accompanying videos document a variety of dance forms performed by five native groups, with background about the characteristics of the dances and the cultural contexts and restrictions governing their performance. Curriculum ideas can be used in the classroom for teaching social studies, music, fine arts, geography, and physical education.
Sponsoring Organization: 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: American Sabor: Latinos in U.S. Popular Music Classroom curriculum and educator resources for middle and high school students focused on Latino music and culture found in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Antonio, Miami, and New York City. Topics include the social and cultural history of Latino music, Latino music's impact on American popular culture, the vocabulary and styles of Latino music, and Latino musicians. Although created to accompany an exhibition of the same name, the educational materials can stand alone. The site includes lessons, activities, and word games, video and audio recordings, biographical information on Latino musicians, interpretive maps, and bilingual accompanying resources. Most of the materials on the site can be found in both Spanish and English and in PDF-format.
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: Association for Cultural Equity - Teaching Resources Educational resources and activities for use in the Pre-K through 12 classroom, based on archival materials in the Alan Lomax Archive. Can be incorporated into the curriculum areas 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." The site also 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: Barn Again ! Celebrating an American Icon - Teacher's Guide Teacher resource guide with four lesson plans for grades 4-12 on the topic of the American barn as symbol, architecture, community gathering place, and window to the past. Created to accompany an exhibition of the same name developed by SITES, the materials can also function in a stand-alone capacity. They include research and activity-oriented lessons through which students gather information about barn raising, barn dances, corn husking, and quilting bees by reading oral history transcripts, examine architectural designs and historical photos of barns, and do interviews to learn more about barns and to hear barn stories. Lessons focus on the subjects of American Culture, American History, Architecture/Design, Folklife, Language and Visual Arts and address National Curriculum Standards for Social Studies. (48 p. PDF)
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: Bermuda Connections Cultural Resource Guide for Classrooms Educational guide for the K-12 curriculum with lesson plans, projects, and activities developed in connection with the 2001 Smithsonian Folklife Festival featuring the culture of Bermuda. The guide is composed of thirteen chapters introducing students to the cultural arts and heritage of Bermuda, including celebration, foodways, hospitality, play, performance, occupation, artistry, Bermudian identity, maritime life, musical traditions, and the effects of globalization. In addition, the guide provides guidance on doing interviews and fieldwork plus resources for further study and documentation of Bermudian community culture. Curriculum materials are intended for use in Bermuda, but could easily be adapted for classrooms elsewhere. (259 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: Bluegrass in the Schools Lesson plans and activities for the K-12 curriculum introducing students to bluegrass music. Topics include the musical instruments and sounds of bluegrass, vocal harmonies, song lyrics, bluegrass festivals, the history of bluegrass, and in-depth study of individual bluegrass songs and ballads.
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 Mountain Region. The five guides include: Module 1: Water Resources of the Catskills (208 p. PDF); Module 2: Geography & Geology of the Catskills (191 p. PDF); Module 3: Ecosystems of the Catskills (231 p. PDF); Module 4: Human History of the Catskills (165 p. PDF); and Module 5: Culture & Arts / Building Catskills Communities (192 p. PDF). Each module contains a bibliography of resource persons, publications, Web sites, and New York State standards-based lesson plans. A printed copy of the modules can be ordered at 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: Choctaw Baskets: Weaving the Past and Present Classroom activities, lesson plans, and web-based resources for the study of Choctaw baskets for grades 5-8. The materials focus on the geography and ecosystem of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, the ecology of canebreaks (river cane), the process of making Choctaw baskets, and the changes that occur in a culture as a result of interactions with other cultures. Curriculum suggestions conform to National Standards for Geography, History, and Language Arts.
Sponsoring Organization: Choctaw Dances Curriculum resources for exploring three types of Choctaw dances—social, animal, and war—that serve to bind Mississippi Chocktaw communities, honor the natural environment, and express cultural solidarity. An accompanying video illustrates some current traditional activities that connect the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians with their past, including dance, the use of traditional instruments, and participation in games such as stickball. Curriculum ideas can be used in the classroom for teaching social studies, dance, music, geography, and physical education.
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: The Colonia Mexicana of Bethlehem Steel Lesson plan with activities related to the influx of Mexican immigrant workers employed by Bethlehem Steel during the early 20th century and history in Pennsylvania. The unit is geared to the middle and high school classroom for use in the curriculum areas of history, geography, and the arts and humanities. The unit focuses on Bethlehem Steel's recruitment of workers from Mexico, beginning in 1923, with student activities centering on the analysis of a Mexican corrido and newspaper articles from the time. Background materials include a glossary, resources for teachers and students, and links to primary source materials, including photographs and oral histories, drawn from the collections of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and other materials. The lesson plan is correlated to the Pennsylvania Department of Education Standards for Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening, History, Geography, and Arts and Humanities.
Sponsoring Organization: Confino Primary Source Activity Lesson Plan - Elementary School Lesson plan with activities for elementary school grades to demonstrate how primary sources and documents can be used to piece together stories from the past. The primary source materials on the site include manuscripts and photographs pertaining to a young immigrant girl of Greek American heritage named Victoria Confino. In the early decades of the twentieth century, Victoria was a resident with her family at 97 Orchard Street, the current location of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. The lesson plan guides students in examining the primary source materials to learn about Victoria and her family. Appropriate for use with history, social studies, and geography curricula.
Sponsoring Organization: Confino Primary Source Activity Lesson Plan - Middle School Lesson plan with activities for middle school grades to show how primary sources and documents can be used to piece together stories from the past. The primary source materials for this lesson include manuscripts and photographs pertaining to a young girl of Greek American heritage named Victoria Confino who was a resident at 97 Orchard Street, the location of the current Lower East Side Tenement Museum. Students are guided in examining the primary source materials to learn about Victoria and her family. Appropriate for use with history, social studies, and geography curricula.
Sponsoring Organization: Corridos sin Fronteras: A New World Ballad Tradition Bilingual (Spanish and English) interactive educational website for elementary, middle, and high school teachers and students. Site introduces students to the historical and cultural importance of the corrido, a popular narrative poem or ballad found in Spanish-speaking areas of the Americas. The site includes lesson plans and historical and contextual background on the development of the corrido, including its use in expressions of social justice and the telling of stories of oppression and history. Examples of corridos are presented through video and audio recordings on the site and students are encouraged to create their own corridos. Subject areas covered include music, the performing arts, history, language arts, and Spanish-language traditions of Mexico and the United States.
Sponsoring Organization: Country Music Hall of Fame - Teacher Resource Guide Teacher resource guide with seven lesson plans for K-12 education focusing on the history of country music and its role in American culture. Materials are intended for pre- and post-visit lessons for classes coming to the County Music Hall of Fame, but can be used equally well in a stand-alone capacity. Lessons cover the topics of musical instruments, the characteristics and roles of museums, the public image of musical performers, country music in America, and music in general. The lessons contain curriculum connections to Language Arts, Music, the Visual Arts, Math, and Social Studies. (22 p. PDF)
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: Craft Revival: Shaping Western North Carolina Past and Present Educational website documenting the Craft Revival movement in western North Carolina from 1895 to 1945, drawing on a virtual collection of photographs, documents, craft objects, and artifacts maintained by Western Carolina University’s Hunter Library. The site includes over 25 accompanying lesson plans for grades 3-12, which focus on weaving, basketry, pottery, and other mountain crafts and traditions found in the Southern Highlands of North Carolina. Additional lesson plans cover cottage industries, industrialization, the Cherokee presence, and the social, economic, and cultural aspects of the Craft Revival in the Appalachian Mountain South. Curriculum areas covered include language arts, social studies, history, art, and math.
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 form highlighted includes streaming audio of interviews and musical performances or photos documenting the traditional form. For upper elementary and middle school.
Sponsoring Organization: Cultural Exchange: Jewish and Muslim Connections Curriculum guide designed to introduce middle and high school students to the dynamic cultural exchange that occurred between Jews and Muslims in medieval Spain. It also explores adaptations by Jews of motifs influenced by Muslim cultures in Turkey, Syria, Persia, Morocco, and Tunisia during the 19th and 20th centuries. Although the guide was created to prepare students for visiting the Jewish and Muslim Connections exhibit at the Jewish Museum, it can be used as a stand-alone resource. The materials focus on three subject areas: Cultural Folklore, Places of Worship, and Traditional Texts, each presented with historical background, suggested activities, and discussion questions. Individual themes and activities can be integrated into social studies, history, creative writing, geography, arts, and humanities curricula in the classroom. (28 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Cultural Protocols in Everyday Life Middle and high school classroom activities and web-based resources for the study of the cultural protocols or preferred behaviors that everyone uses in their lives. Using the themes of cross-cultural communication and cultural change, curriculum ideas incorporate examples of celebration and cultural forms of conduct from native groups in Massachusetts and Hawaii that can be used in the classroom to discuss these issues in a wider context. Includes links to photographs, video clips, and documents drawn from several museum collections. Curriculum materials conform to National Standards for Geography and can be used for teaching Social Studies, Language Arts, and History.
Sponsoring Organization: Culturally-Based Curriculum Resources Culturally responsive curriculum resources for the study of Alaska native knowledge systems and ways of learning. Database includes units, lesson plans, activities, and background material for use in the K-12 classroom, geared primarily for use in the curriculum fields of math and science. The materials are created within a culturally aligned curriculum framework reflecting indigenous knowledge systems, and incorporate oral tradition, learned skills, traditional practice, folk medicine, and native ecological perspectives which make them valuable for application in social science and humanities curricula.
Sponsoring Organization: Dakotah Storyteller: Mary Louise Defender Wilson K-12 curriculum ideas for studying the life and artistry of 1999 NEA National Heritage Fellow Mary Louise Defender Wilson, storyteller and performer of songs, dances, and legends of the Dakotah (Sioux) and Hidatsa people. These materials can be used in the curriculum areas of language arts, geography, social studies, history, visual arts, and science. Includes audio recording of Wilson telling the Dakotah story “The Woman Who Turned Herself to Stone,” a transcript of an interview with her, background on Native American storytelling and language, and additional resources.
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 were 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: Discovering the 9th Street Market: A Treasure Hunt for Clues to the Past Curriculum unit on the interactive PhilaPlace web site, (http://www.philaplace.org/), designed to encourage students to explore Philadelphia’s 9th Street market as a means to understand its hundred-year history and the transformation of its businesses and neighborhood over time. Unit includes teacher resources and classroom activities aimed for the middle and high school grades, aligned with Pennsylvania State Standards. A Treasure Hunt activity worksheet and map provide guidance for students visiting the Philadelphia market. (16 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Double Exposure Lesson Plan: Eye on Your Community Lesson plan geared to grades 3-7 for helping students learn how to use a camera to document people, places, and things that make up their neighborhood or school. Addresses the Illinois State Board of Education Goals and Standards for art and the tools, techniques, and processes used to create specific effects in the arts. (2 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: Ethnic Fraternal Societies and Mutual Aid: An American Tradition with Old World Roots Lesson plan related to the origins, functions, rise, and eventual decline of fraternal and self-help organizations among immigrants and African Americans with activities for middle and high school students. The lesson focuses on ways that immigrants and African Americans developed alternative social structures and mutual assistance organizations that served their social, psychological, cultural, and economic needs. It also explores issues of diversity, ethnic identity, and whether the government or the people are responsible for providing the social and economic safety net of mutual aid. Background materials include a glossary, resources for teachers and students, and links to primary source materials, including photographs and oral histories, drawn from the collections of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania The lesson plan is correlated to the Pennsylvania Department of Education Standards for Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening, History, and Geography.
Sponsoring Organization: European and Native American Mapping Activity Activity for grades 6-8 to help students distinguish and describe the differences and similarities between European and Native American mapping concepts and methods after studying and drawing in both styles to represent the same location. Activity addresses the Illinois State Board of Education Standards and Goals for Geography and History. (5 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Everyone Has Interesting Stuff: Teaching with Objects in the Classroom - Middle School Lesson plan and activities for middle school grades to demonstrate how studying physical objects can help students learn about people, places, and the past. Appropriate for use with history and social studies curricula.
Sponsoring Organization: Everyone Has Interesting Stuff: Teaching with Objects in the Classroom - Elementary School Lesson plan and activities for elementary grades to discover how studying physical objects can reveal stories about the people who used them. Appropriate for use with history and social studies curricula.
Sponsoring Organization: Everyone Has Interesting Stuff: Teaching with Objects in the Classroom - High School Lesson plan and activities for high school students to demonstrate how studying physical objects can reveal stories about people's lives. Appropriate for use with history and social studies curricula.
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 drawn 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: Family Tradition: The Williams Family Legacy Teacher's Guide Teacher resource guide with eight lesson plans for grades 3-12 designed to help classes prepare for a tour of "Family Tradition: The Williams Family Legacy," an exhibit held at the Country Music Hall of Fame. The materials can also be used as a stand-alone unit about Hank Williams and his family's contributions to American music. Lessons cover the topics of Hank Williams and his family, including their roles as songwriters, musicians, performers, and collectors of country music. The lessons address curriculum objectives in the Tennessee State Curriculum Standards in Language Arts, Music, Math, and Social Studies. (21 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: The Fisk Jubilee Singers: Singing Our Song -- Teacher's Guide The Fisk Jubilee Singers: Singing our Song Teacher’s Guide is designed to assist classroom teachers and youth leaders in introducing students to the story and significance of the Fisk Jubilee Singers. It includes nine lessons with accompanying CD, DVD, and sheet music which are incorporated into the lessons. A bibliography, discography, videography, and webography provide additional resources for further study. The lessons in the guide can be adapted for students of various ages. Topics covered in the guide include the history and music of jubilee, black spirituals, and African American choral music. It also considers how the evolution of these musical forms contributed to the development of musical culture in Nashville, the prominence of Fisk University, and the African American civil rights movement. The lessons can be used in music, social studies, and language arts classes and support the Tennessee State Curriculum Standards in these areas. Free hard copies of the teacher's guide, and an accompanying DVD & CD, are available upon request by contacting: Dana.Everts-Boehm@tn.gov (44 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: 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 and 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: Food and Culture, Past and Present in Choctaw Culture Curriculum resources for grades 4-12 that explore the effects of colonization, cultural interaction, and change on the local foodways of the Mississippi Choctaw culture. Topics covered include how food choices are influenced by the geography and ecosystems of a cultural group’s homeland, how cultural celebrations and ceremonies are related to available food resources, and how a group’s ways of obtaining food has changed since European contact. Curriculum suggestions and activities conform to National Standards for English Language Arts, Geography, and History.
Sponsoring Organization: German Settlement in Colonial Pennsylvania Lesson plan with activities related to German settlement in colonial Pennsylvania, geared to the middle and high school classroom, for use in the curriculum areas of history, geography, reading and writing. The lesson focuses on the hardships of the trans-Atlantic journey, immigration patterns and how they have changed over time, and reasons why people immigrated to the Colonies, especially from Germany to Pennsylvania. Background materials include a glossary, resources for teachers and students, and links to primary and secondary source materials drawn from the collections of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The lesson plan is correlated to the Pennsylvania Department of Education Standards for Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening, History, and Geography.
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: God Given: Cultural Treasures of Armenia - Teacher's Guide Teacher's guide for "God Given : Cultural Treasures of Armenia," a documentary featuring the metal repoussé artistry and life experiences of Norik Astvatsaturov, formerly of Azerbaijan and currently living in North Dakota. The curriculum materials provide an opportunity for students to examine issues related to the geography, history, and culture of Armenia, as well as ethnic conflict, the plight of refugees, and the experience of being an immigrant in the United States. The video is approximately 10 minutes long and is available on the website. Lesson plans in the teacher's guide (16 p. PDF) have benchmarks and standards for grades 9-12 for the Visual Arts, Language Arts, and Social Studies.
Sponsoring Organization: Good Food, Served Right: A Photographic Essay on North Country Food Traditions Teacher resource guide with activities (20 p. PDF) that accompanies an online photographic exhibit of foodways and their traditions in the North Country region of New York State. The curriculum materials can be used for a variety of ages and grade levels. Includes photographs, audio recordings of oral interviews, and background on the food cultures of diverse groups of people who live in the North Country.
Sponsoring Organization: The Grand Generation: Interviewing Guide & Questionnaire Educational website designed as a guide for collecting folklore and oral history from older tradition-bearers. It features a general guide to conducting interviews and a sample list of questions which may be adapted to specific needs and circumstances. The site also includes some examples of ways to preserve and present your findings and a selection of further readings. The site was produced to accompany the exhibition, "The Grand Generation: Memory, Mastery, Legacy," organized by the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and SITES, but can easily serve in a stand-alone capacity to instruct students in grades 3 through college in the documentation of family folklore and oral history collected from elders.
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: 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: Grenada and Carriacou Teaching Resources Educational materials for use in the K-12 classroom in the curriculum areas of music, dance, and language arts, based on archival collections from the Lesser Antilles in the Alan Lomax Archive. The site includes classroom activities focused on a variety of musical genres and characteristics, with video and audio examples recorded by Lomax in Grenada and Carriacou in 1962 and 1991.
Sponsoring Organization: Haiti Teaching Resources Educational materials for use in the K-12 classroom in the curriculum areas of music, dance, and language arts, based on Haitian archival collections in the Alan Lomax Archive. The site includes classroom activities focused on a variety of musical genres and characteristics, with video and audio examples recorded by Lomax in Haiti in 1936.
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: Interrelationships Between Humans and Plants Activities for students in grades 3-12 to introduce them to the field of ethnobotany in order to explore cultural diversity and ethnic traditions. Topics considered include cultural food preferences, the folklore of plants, and the historical relationships that different cultural communities have with plants. For use in social studies, science, and health curricula.
Sponsoring Organization: Harvesting the River Lesson Plan: Taking an Oral History Lesson plan for students in grades 5-12 to introduce them to recording and writing up an oral history from a family or community member after hearing and/or reading oral histories. Materials include a link to "Harvesting the River," an online audio, video, and image archive of the Illinois State Museum, based on research done on communities and activities found along the Illinois River. Lesson includes interviewing guidelines and procedures, as well as information on how to use the materials documented by the students. Addresses the Illinois State Board of Education Standards and Goals for History and Social Studies. (3 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Haudenosaunee Guide for Educators Teaching guide that provides background and activities on the Haudenosaunee, a confederation of six Native American nations commonly known as the Iroquois Confederacy. The nations include the Mohawk, the Oneida, the Onondaga, the Cayuga, the Seneca, and the Tuscarora. The Teaching Guide was created by staff from the Museum of the American Indian in collaboration with Haudenosaunee scholars and community members. It includes background information about the history, traditions, cultural life, arts, and patterns of social and civic interaction of the Haudenosaunee peoples, with suggestions for classroom discussion questions and activities, such as the making of cornhusk dolls. (24 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Heartfelt/Handmade Activity: Hand-Molded Pottery Pottery-making activity, geared to K-12 grade levels, with accompanying resources and images of 19th century folk art from the Illinois State Museum website. Introduces students to hand-molded and decorated pottery and folk art of the kind that was made before the age of electric equipment. Addresses Illinois Board of Education Goals and Standards for Art. (2 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: 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 and 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 four focus areas with lesson plans and activities: 1) Land, River, and Hispanic Settlements; 2) Building Community: The Roots of Adobe; 3) Foodways of the Rio Grande; and 4) Rio Grande Weaving. Curriculum materials are correlated to New Mexico State Content Standards for Art, Science, Social Studies, Language Arts, Mathematics, and Physical Education.
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: 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, and 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: Immigrants in Coal Country: Anthracite Mining in Pennsylvania Lesson plan with activities related to issues of work and immigration among ethnic workers in the hard coal region of northeastern Pennsylvania. The unit is geared to the middle and high school classroom for use in the curriculum areas of history, civics and government, geography, performing arts, and reading and writing. The unit focuses on the link between labor and ethnicity in a coal mining region, changes in the mining industry over time, and the culture of anthracite coal miners, including their music, working conditions, and life experiences. Background materials include a glossary, resources for teachers and students, and links to primary and secondary source materials, drawn from the collections of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and other materials. The lesson plan is correlated to the Pennsylvania Department of Education Standards for Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening, History, Geography, and Arts and Humanities.
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: Iñupiaq Whale Hunt Curriculum resources for grades 5-8 that explore the role of the whale hunt among the Inupiat people along the Chukchi Sea of northern Alaska. Topics covered include how the whale hunt nourishes the Inupiaq people and sustains and builds community. An accompanying video with discussion questions illustrates Inupiaq subsistence hunting and fishing and demonstrates how whaling fulfills many of the nutritional, economic, social and cultural needs of Inupiaq life. Curriculum suggestions can be applied to the areas of social studies, history, language arts, and geography.
Sponsoring Organization: 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: Journeys and Transformations: British Columbia Landscapes Teacher's guide that presents background, teaching ideas, and activities about the physical environments of British Columbia, including its mountains, forests, waters, grasslands, and cities. For each environment, sub-topics focus on the geography, natural history, First Peoples lives, and historical development of British Columbia. Materials include artifacts and historical accounts of indigenous inhabitants. Focusing on the theme of transformation, this interactive site provides curriculum background on the interactions of the physical landscape, native and newcomer populations, and culture.
Sponsoring Organization: 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: Junior Appalachian Musicians: Celebrating the Musical Heritage of the Southern Appalachians Web-based educational resources for grades K-12 providing lesson plans, instructional videos, and sound recordings to encourage students to participate in and learn about stringband, old-time, and bluegrass music and dance traditions of the Southern Appalachians. Includes instructional audio files and videos for performing old-time music on banjo, dulcimer, fiddle, guitar, and mandolin, plus interviews with old-time musicians.
Sponsoring Organization: Keeping Us in Stitches Activity: Be a Quilt Detective Research activity with accompanying resources, geared to grades 6-10, for uncovering history recorded in handmade objects by researching quilt patterns, fabrics, and colors. Site includes links to Illinois State Museum quilt collections. Addresses the Illinois State Board of Education Goals and Standards for artistic expressions of culture and analyzing and classifying art by style, period, and culture. (3 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: Keeping Us in Stitches Activity: Interviewing a Quilter Activity for students to help them understand the process of quilting by interviewing a quilter in a classroom setting. Guidelines offer suggestions for preparing interview questions, taking notes during the interview, and documenting what is learned from the experience. Site includes links to Illinois State Museum quilt collections. Activity addresses Illinois State Board of Education Goals and Standards for how the arts function in history, society, and everyday life. (2 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: Key Ingredients: America by Food - Teacher's Guide Teacher resource guide with five lesson plans plus handouts for grades 4-12 on the topic of family and local food traditions. Created to accompany an exhibition of the same name developed by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES), the materials can also function in a stand-alone capacity. They include research and activity-oriented lessons during which students gather recipes, interview family members, create an exhibition on their state's agricultural history, and examine the effects of the media on their food choices. Lessons focus on the subjects of American Culture, American History, Multiculturalism, and Technology, and address National Curriculum Standards for Social Studies and Health Education. (32 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: Lakota Winter Counts - The Teachers' Guide Teacher's guide to an online exhibit of Lakota "winter counts" for students in grades K-10. Lakota winter counts are pictographic calendars reflecting the history of a community, made by keeping track of the passage of years. Studying these creative historiographical tools offers a unique representation of the history of the Lakota Sioux people during the 18th and 19th centuries. The teacher's guide includes background information, lesson plans, resource lists, and primary sources from the Smithsonian's collections, plus instructions on navigating the online exhibit. Meets national curriculum standards for Social Studies. (33 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Latino Philadelphia Five-unit educational guide with lesson plans and activities in documenting and interpreting the history and experience of Philadelphia’s Latino communities. The materials in this guide are geared to the middle and high school classroom for use in the curriculum areas of history, geography, reading, writing, and the arts and humanities. The five units focus on Latino Identity and Diversity; Coming to Philadelphia; Labor and Struggle; Building Community; and Arts and Culture. Background materials include a glossary, resources for teachers and students, information on doing oral history, and links to primary source materials, drawn from the collections of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and other materials. The lesson plan is correlated to the Pennsylvania Department of Education Standards for Reading and Writing, History, Geography, and Arts and Humanities.
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: Lewis & Clark - The National Bicentennial Exhibition Teaching Units and Lesson Plans Curriculum materials for grades 4-12 with a virtual exhibit of the "Lewis & Clark: The National Bicentennial Exhibition" that explores the cultural landscape the explorers encountered in the early 19th century. The teaching units with lesson plans and suggested activities cover the topics of: Preparing for the Trip; Politics & Diplomacy; Women; Mapping; Animals; Language; Warriors/Soldiers; Trade & Property; and Plants, each comparing and contrasting Lewis and Clark's experiences with what those of the Native Americans they met might have been. The lessons are geared to upper elementary, middle school, and high school levels, are inquiry-based, and use primary source materials, artifacts, and Indian interviews featured in the online exhibition. Also includes video clips, maps, and a variety of documents. Units are linked to Missouri State Standards and National Council for the Social Studies and National Science Teachers Association standards.
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: Living Traditions: Museums Honour the North American Indigenous Games Activities and background for 8th grade students related to traditional North American indigenous games, such as lacrosse, Eastern Woodland games, archery, longball, paddling and canoe racing traditions, and the tag game known as wolf (or hunter) and moose (or caribou). The site also includes information about the North American Indigenous Games, a multi-sport event involving indigenous athletes.
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: A Lyrical Life: The Struggle and Hope of South Sudan -- Teacher's Guide Teacher's guide for "A Lyrical Life: The Struggle and Hope of South Sudan," a documentary about the culture, history, music, and dance of the Ma'di people of southern Sudan and northern Uganda. Issues brought up in the video and lesson plans include religious conflict, slavery, race, genocide, displacement, war, and refugee status in southern Sudan. Also featured are the renewal of hope and the reconciliation process that is taking place in Africa and in America in places like North Dakota, where the featured musicians currently live. The video is approximately 26 minutes long and is available on the website. Lesson plans in the teacher's guide (22 p. PDF) have benchmarks and standards for grades 9-12 for Language Arts, Social Studies, and Music.
Sponsoring Organization: The Maine Song and Story Sampler Educational website with thirteen lesson plans plus activities for K-12 teachers that focuses on the folklore, social conditions, history, politics, economics, and cultural life of the state of Maine. Includes access to the Maine Song and Dance Sampler Map with links to audio recordings of stories and songs from the Maine Folklife Center's archival collections, searchable by people or place. The curriculum suggestions are correlated to Maine educational standards for Social Studies.
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: Mapping Our Neighborhood History Curriculum unit on the interactive PhilaPlace web site, (http://www.philaplace.org/), that offers a guide to developing local history projects so that students can explore the history and culture of their own neighborhoods. It includes teacher resources and classroom activities aimed for the middle and high school grades, aligned with Pennsylvania State Standards. The unit provides information on incorporating mapping technology into the classroom through the use of Google Maps and also gives guidance on conducting oral histories to gather additional background information through the voices of neighborhood residents. (20 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Mapping South 4th Street to Fabric Row Curriculum unit on the interactive PhilaPlace web site, (http://www.philaplace.org/), that offers guidance in exploring maps using the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for a older commercial and residential area of inner city Philadelphia that includes many retail fabric stores to help develop interpretive and analytical skills for the study of history. It includes teacher resources, lessons, and classroom activities aimed for the middle and high school grades, aligned with Pennsylvania State Standards. The unit provides information on reading maps using GIS technology in connection with researching primary source material on census and land use to examine historical urban trends in immigration, occupation, ethnicity, and industrial and commercial development. Unit can be adapted to the study of the history of American urban areas other than Philadelphia. (75 p. PDF and 7 Excel spreadsheets with census information)
Sponsoring Organization: Master Cajun Fiddler: Michael Doucet K-12 curriculum ideas for studying the life and artistry of Michael Doucet, a Cajun fiddler, singer, and bandleader and a 2005 NEA National Heritage Fellow. Includes lesson and activity suggestions, an audio recording of an interview with Michael Doucet (with transcript), audio samples of his fiddling, and additional resources for the study of Cajun culture and music. These materials can be used in lessons in the curriculum areas of Language Arts, Social Studies, Folklife Studies, Visual Arts, Music, and History to examine Cajun culture in Louisiana.
Sponsoring Organization: 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: Mexican-American Corona Maker: Eva Castellanoz K-12 curriculum ideas for studying the life and artistry of 1987 NEA National Heritage Fellow Eva Castellanoz, master corona maker and healer, who has been making paper and wax flower bouquets and coronas, or crowns, in the Mexican-American community for over fifty years. These resources can be used in the curriculum areas of language arts, geography, social studies, and the visual arts. Includes an activity for making paper and wax flowers, background on her Mexican-American culture, her life in Oregon,including her role as a community curandera, or healer, and additional resources for background research.
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: Native American Lesson Plan: Someone's in the Kitchen Lesson plan for introducing students to Native American foodways, including information on how to measure ingredients and prepare traditional foods, as well as background on the role of food in Native American culture. Can be used with ESL students. Addresses the Illinois State Board of Education Goals and Standards for Math, Language Arts, and Social Science.
Sponsoring Organization: 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: Natural Dyes from Plants Lesson Lesson plan for grade levels 4-12 to learn about how fabric dyes were made from natural substances such as onion skins, walnuts, bark, and flowers by Native Americans and early European settlers. Includes guidelines for preparing natural dyes and dyeing fibers or fabrics. Additional background information is provided to help students understand how dyeing traditions express aspects of culture that may change when different peoples come into contact with each other. Addresses Illinois State Board of Education Goals and Standards for History, Social Science, and the Visual Arts. (10 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: 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 and 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: Ojibwa Sewn Bead Designs Activity geared to grades 6-9 to examine and recreate the Ojibwa sewn beading styles that were influenced by seventeenth-century French floral embroidery and fabric prints imported by French traders, using beaded objects found in the museum's collections and on the web. Includes discussion of Ojibwa beading styles and their motifs. Addresses the Illinois State Board of Education Goals and Standards for the Visual Arts and Social Science.
Sponsoring Organization: Oral Traditions Curriculum resources for the study of Tlingit oral traditions for grades 5-8. The materials focus on the interconnections of story and dance in the Tlingit culture of Southeastern Alaska and include a video that features Tlingit oral tradition. Topics covered include how oral tradition tells us who we are, where we came from, and how it serves to communicate important cultural values. It also focuses on how the Tlingit people use art, song, dance, and storytelling to express their identity. Curriculum suggestions conform to National Standards for English Language Arts.
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: Pass It On: Cultural Traditions of the Lower Eastern Shore K-12 curriculum and activity guide to the cultural life, history, landscape, and traditions of the Lower Eastern Shore of Maryland. Curriculum units with lesson plans and activities include: I) Following the Water (19 pp. PDF); II) Living Off the Land (36 pp. PDF); III) Sporting and Playing (14 pp. PDF) ; and IV) Folklore and Folklife (32 pp. PDF). There is also a map of the Eastern Shore, a glossary of terms, a bibliography for further research, and links to audio and video clips. The curriculum has been synchronized with Maryland state content standards for Social Studies, and can be used for classes in History, Geography, Science, Economics, and Art.
Sponsoring Organization: People and Fish: Angling, Fisheries Management, and Folkways Curriculum and activities for 4-H youth and leaders involved in conservation, sportfishing, and outdoor education. A multidisciplinary teaching resource focusing on “People and Fish,” with units on angling ethics, fisheries management, and the folkways of fishing. The folkways unit includes guidance on collecting fishing stories and interviews, information on regional fish foodways, and an exploration of the material culture of fishing. Resource includes activities emphasizing self-documentation, such as “Keeping a Fishing Field Journal.” This resource is available as part of a National 4-H Sportfishing Curriculum. (77 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Performing Asveq (The Walrus Hunt) Curriculum resources for grades 5-8 focused on how young people of Inupiaq and Yupick heritage express their cultural identity through song and dance. Topics covered focus on performing arts that provide a direct way to participate in one’s cultural community, to preserve culture for future generations, and to express joy in being a part of a culture. An accompanying video illustrates a song and dance describing a walrus hunt developed by students from an Anchorage high school. Curriculum suggestions conform to National Standards for English Language Arts and can be used in the classroom to teach social studies, music, and performing arts.
Sponsoring Organization: Philaplace: Sharing Stories from the City of Neighborhoods Interactive web site that connects stories to places across time in Philadelphia’s neighborhoods. The site uses a multimedia format and includes interactive maps (both contemporary and historical), photographs, and audio and video clips drawn from the collections of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. It encourages new historical and cultural interpretations and interconnections between community stories and the historical record. The site includes suggestions and activities for educators working with students in middle and high school.
Sponsoring Organization: Piedmont Blues Guitarist: John Cephas K-12 curriculum ideas for studying the life and artistry of John Cephas, a 1989 NEA National Heritage Fellow and Piedmont Blues guitarist. Includes lesson suggestions, a transcript of an interview with John Cephas, an audio sample of his music, and additional resources. These materials can be used in lessons in the curriculum areas of Language Arts, Social Studies, Geography, Folklife Studies, Visual Arts, Music, and History to examine blues music, race relations, and traditional culture in the Piedmont region of Appalachia.
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: Plum Stone Dice Game Activity geared to students in grades 4-8 in which they learn some background about the Native American plum stone dice game and also the rules for playing it. Addresses the Illinois State Board of Education Goals and Standards. (3 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: Poor Pat Must Emigrate: 19th Century Irish Immigration Lesson plan with activities related to the topic of nineteenth century Irish immigration to Pennsylvania, geared to the high school classroom, for use in the curriculum areas of history, the performing arts, reading and writing. The lesson plan focuses on the reasons why Irish immigrated to Pennsylvania and examines their patterns of immigration, including who came to the United States and who stayed in Ireland, plus community dynamics and discrimination faced in nineteenth century America. Background materials include a glossary, resources for teachers and students, and links to primary source materials such as ballads and correspondence, drawn from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. It is correlated to the Pennsylvania Department of Education Standards for Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening, and History.
Sponsoring Organization: Prairie Activity: Prairie Quilt K-8 unit on prairie life and quilting that introduces students to the prairie, including fauna, flora, land forms, settlement, and cultural life, linking it to its representation in traditional quilt patterns. Students are guided in using digital cameras to document images of the prairie that can be used in quilt blocks. Unit addresses Illinois Board of Education Goals and Standards in the Arts. (2 p.PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: Preserving the Past with Oral History Lesson plan to use with students in grades 4-12 that introduces them to the basics of collecting oral history. Includes suggested questions to ask, tips to remember while interviewing, sample release forms, guidelines for transcribing interviews, and considerations to take into account in choosing appropriate technology for recording. Included are also examples of oral history projects that classes can use with their completed interviews. The lesson is correlated to Arkansas Curriculum Standards for History and Social Studies.(12 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Puerto Rican Mundillo (bobbin-lace) Maker: Rosa Elena Egipciaco K-12 curriculum ideas for studying the life and artistry of Rosa Elena Egipciaco, a 2003 NEA National Heritage Fellow. Egipciaco is a master bobbin lacemaker of Puerto Rican heritage who lives in New York City. These resources and activities can be used in the curriculum areas of language arts, math, and the visual arts.
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: Rivers of Steel Curriculum The Rivers of Steel Curriculum offers an introduction to the study of the industrial and cultural heritage of southwestern Pennsylvania. Background information and activities in the curriculum are included in its four units: 1) Coal and Coke; 2) Folklife -- Hidden In Plain Sight; 3) Seeing Pittsburgh, and 4) Steel Heritage, all available in PDF format. Activities can be altered for classroom use as needed, according to age, ability level, or curriculum area. The site also has related video clips of traditional and industrial arts in the region in a section called "Open Hearth 5."
Sponsoring Organization: Rogarshevsky Primary Source Activity Lesson Plan Lesson plan with activities for students in high school to demonstrate how primary source documents can be used to piece together stories from the past. The primary source materials for this lesson include manuscripts pertaining to Abraham Rogarshevsky, a Russian immigrant, and his wife Fannie, who lived on Orchard Street in the Lower East Side of New York where the Tenement Museum is currently located. The lesson plan guides students in examining the documents to learn about the lives and occupations of the Rogarshevsky family. Appropriate for use with history, social studies, and geography curricula.
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: Rural Roads, City Streets: Italians in Pennsylvania Lesson plan with activities related to Italian American life and history in Pennsylvania, geared to the middle and high school classroom, for use in the curriculum areas of history, civics and government, geography, reading, and writing. The unit focuses on the history of Italian immigration, settlement, and ethnic identity in Pennsylvania and major themes in Italian immigrant life. Background materials include a glossary, resources for teachers and students, and links to primary source materials, including photographs and oral histories, drawn from the collections of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and other materials. The lesson plan is correlated to the Pennsylvania Department of Education Standards for Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening, History, and Geography.
Sponsoring Organization: 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: Sacred Places: California Missions from Different Perspectives Curriculum guide for grades 3-5 which explores the concept of sacred places by looking at works of art representing sacred space and studying the California missions. Includes lesson plan, activities, and links to photographs and art works from the J. Paul Getty Museum's collections. The guide addresses California state standards for Visual arts, Language Arts, History, and Social Studies.
Sponsoring Organization: The Seasonal Round Curriculum unit that provides a point of inquiry for K-12 students to explore how seasonal changes reflect and influence daily life and culture, holidays, festivals, and personal, family and community celebrations. Includes ideas and activities for examining and documenting how traditions vary from season to season, affected by weather, agricultural patterns, ecology, religious practice, and the recurrent yearly cycles of human life.
Sponsoring Organization: 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: Shapes, Sound Holes, and Strings Teacher's Guide Teacher resource guide with ten lesson plans for grades K-8 designed to help teachers introduce their students to some of the traditional instruments featured in country music and to the sounds they create. The materials can be used in connection with a tour of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum or as a stand-alone unit. Lessons cover the topics of sound, the voice, country music instruments, including the guitar, banjo, fiddle, mandolin, and also the playing of country music. They address curriculum objectives in the Tennessee State Curriculum Standards in Language Arts, Music, Math, Social Studies, and Science. (24 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Show-Me Traditions: An Educators Guide to Teaching Folk Arts and Folklife in Missouri Schools Educational guide with eight lesson plans and accompanying activities for fourth and fifth grade students that introduces concepts of folk arts and folklife in general and Missouri traditional art forms and artists in specific. The guide is organized as follows: Section I: Defining Folk Arts and Folklife; Section II: Discovering Folk Arts in Everyday Life; and Section III: Folk Artists in Missouri. Background information is provided on Missouri traditional arts and artists from the fields of Bluegrass music, Colombian-American dance and costume, Ozark riverways and boats, Irish-American music and dance, cowboy and spoken word poetry, German-American bobbin lace making, Missouri fiddling and old-time dance, and African-American storytelling. Site includes links to audio and video recordings plus additional background resources. Missouri curriculum connections are noted for Communication Arts, Social Studies, Fine Arts, Music, and Physical Education. (56 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: 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: South Philly Kaleidoscope: The 9th Street Market Mural Curriculum unit on the interactive PhilaPlace web site, (http://philaplace.org/), designed to encourage students to explore the mural at 8th and Christian Street to learn about the history and changes in the Philadelphia’s 9th Street market in Philadelphia over time and to examine the role of public art. It includes teacher resources and classroom activities aimed for the middle and high school grades, aligned with Pennsylvania State Standards. (18 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: The Spirit of Islam: Experiencing Islam Through Calligraphy Curriculum materials that introduce students to Islam and how it is perceived and stereotyped by exploring its philosophical and ethical background, its calligraphy, and the Muslim presence in Canada. The site includes six lesson plans with activities that allow students to gain an understanding of Islam and the role calligraphy plays in it. It also offers the outlines of a project designed to help students learn how to overcome cultural stereotypes. Included are links to a virtual exhibit about calligraphy, special spaces for prayer and Islamic learning, and significant objects in Islamic life.
Sponsoring Organization: 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 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 their 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, instructions for developing oral history questions, and guidelines on recording an interview.
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: Teaching Lewis & Clark: Tribal Cultures & Homelands - Elementary/Middle School Lesson plan with activities for grades 3-8 that explore the cultural aspects of the native peoples who Lewis and Clark met along the Columbia River in the early 19th century. Special focus is placed on foodways and how Native Americans in the region used the various physical environments they had access to for fish, game, and roots and berries. A seasonal round template can be downloaded for students as an activity. The materials are correlated to Washington State Benchmarks for Economics, Geography, and History.
Sponsoring Organization: Teaching Folklife: Educational Materials for Students and Teachers This educational resource contains lesson plans designed to introduce teachers and students to a basic understanding of traditional culture in Tennessee. It is most useful for students in the 4th through 7th grades. The guide includes five lesson plans: I) Introduction to Traditional Culture; II) Storytelling and Oral History; III) Folk Arts and Crafts; IV) Traditional Music; and V) Foodways. The resource includes a glossary of folklife terms and readings brought together from a wide variety of sources on the topic of Tennessee traditional arts. Materials in the guide can be used in the classroom for teaching Language Arts, Music, Visual Arts, Social Studies, and Math.(179 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: Tell Me Your Stories: An Oral History Curriculum Oral history curriculum for high school and middle school grade levels that links students with their families and communities. The site includes lessons for ten class periods, beginning with a description of what oral history is, and subsequently outlining the steps involved in planning, researching, and carrying out an oral interview. Included on the site are ideas for sample projects applicable to a variety of classroom subjects.
Sponsoring Organization: Telling My Story Oral History Lesson - Lower Elementary School A lesson with activities for students in grades K-3 to introduce them to oral history as a way to gather information about a person, time period, place, or event. The materials included guide the students in developing a list of questions to ask during an oral history interview and explain the basics of interviewing. Appropriate for use with history, social studies, and language arts curricula.
Sponsoring Organization: The Texture and Weave of the Traditional Arts Teachers' guide for middle and high school students focused on traditional life and folklore. Originally created to accompany a Nevada Arts Council exhibit entitled "The Texture and Weave of Traditional Art," the five lessons in the guide present general folklife concepts that can also be used in a stand-alone capacity, with examples taken from Nevada traditional culture. The guide explores how culture, traditional art forms, local history, and heritage are created by everyone and shared in communities and families. It also seeks to guide students in creating an awareness of cultural diversity in their local communities. Lessons meet the Nevada content standards for Visual Arts. (29 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: Tradition: Tennessee Lives and Legacies Teacher's Guide Teacher’s guide designed for grades 3-12 which enhances the understanding of Tennessee’s folklife heritage. Originally developed to prepare students for visiting an exhibition of the same name, the guide can stand on its own as an educational resource. The materials include profiles of Tennessee folk artists from a variety of regional and ethnic backgrounds, representing Cumberland Plateau old-time fiddling, Middle Tennessee buck dancing, African American blues, Choctaw beadwork, the making of Mennonite sorghum, and Mexican needlework. The guide also introduces students to the basic concepts of folklife, tradition, folk group, family folklife, tradition bearer, folk artist, and fieldwork. Accompanying forms and guidelines on interviewing family members and presenting findings in the classroom are included. The materials conform to Tennessee State Curriculum Standards for Art, Social Studies, Modern History, and Science. (24 pp. PDF) For a DVD of photographs of Tennessee traditional artists, including those in the teacher's guide, contact: dana.everts-boehm@tn.gov
Sponsoring Organization: Other Organizations: 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: Turtle and Pretty Crane - Teacher's Guide Teacher's guide for "Turtle and Pretty Crane," a documentary featuring Mandan and Hidatsa storyteller and flute player Keith Bear from the Forth Berthold Indian Reservation of northwestern North Dakota. The story told in the video is described by Keith Bear as an American Indian version of “Romeo and Juliet.” The video and lesson plans provide an opportunity for students to explore issues relating to music and culture, the analysis of legends, and the artistry of a Native American performer. The video is approximately 9 minutes long and is available on the website. Lesson plans in the teacher's guide (17 p. PDF) have benchmarks and standards for grades 9-12 for Language Arts, Social Studies, and Music.
Sponsoring Organization: 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: W is for Woods: Traditional Adirondack Music & Music Making Educational resource for the study and history of traditional Adirondack music in New York State. Includes lesson plans for middle and high school music, history, and language arts curricula. The resource focuses on dance music, ballads, fiddle tunes, folk singers, collectors of folk music, and indigenous and ethnic traditional music found in the Adirondack region. The site has accompanying audio and video recordings, musical transcriptions, and background resources for the study of Adirondack traditional music. The educational content correlates to New York State Learning Standards.
Sponsoring Organization: Waiting for a Train: Trains in Country Music and American Life Teacher resource guide with lesson plan for K-12 classes on the topic of trains and other forms of transportation and their intersections with American life and with country music. Lesson has curriculum connections to Language Arts, Music, and Social Studies.
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: Ways to the Heart: Food and Foodways in Hawai'i Classroom activities, lesson plans, and background information for the study of Hawaiian foodways, food resources, and the cultural importance of food. Curriculum ideas cover the topics of how food serves as a means for survival, builds community, marks cultural identity, and provides comfort. Materials include links to other web-based resources on the topic. Curriculum suggestions can be used in the teaching of geography, cultural anthropology, and history.
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: Weaving with Seed Beads on a Bead Loom Activity geared to grades 5-7 to demonstrate how Native Americans and others wove beads on a loom to create long, narrow bands for hair and bracelets in order to produce a patterned beaded bands using geometric patterns. Includes discussion of how color, shape, and value in Native American beading has changed over the years due partially to the influence of other cultures. Addresses the Illinois State Board of Education Goals and Standards for the Visual Arts and Social Science.
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: The Woman Who Turned Herself to Stone - Teacher's Guide Teacher's guide for "The Woman Who Turned Herself to Stone," a documentary featuring Dakotah and Hidatsa storyteller Mary Louise Defender Wilson from the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in south-central North Dakota. The story told in the video describes a young girl who loved nature so much that she found a way to remain in the midst of it forever. Materials in the guide offer an opportunity for students to explore issues such as the significance of language in culture and storytelling, the cultural expectations of adolescence, and the interactions between the physical environment and human activity. The video is approximately 6 minutes long and is available on the website. Lesson plans in the teacher's guide (22 p. PDF) have benchmarks and standards for grades 4-8 for Language Arts and Social Studies.
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: Words & Music Teacher's Guide Teacher resource guide with fifteen lesson plans for grade levels 3-12 to assist teachers in guiding their students through the basics of writing song lyrics. Materials are intended for pre- and post-visit lessons for classes coming to the County Music Hall of Fame, but can be used equally well in a stand-alone capacity. Each lesson includes Tennessee state standards and national standards and cover curriculum connections to Language Arts and Music. (29 p. PDF)
Sponsoring Organization: Work and Travel on the Rails Educational unit with lesson plans and activities designed to introduce students to the role and experiences of immigrant labor on the railroads in American history and the evolution of railroad travel from the perspective of the traveler. The materials in this guide are geared to the middle and high school classroom for use in the curriculum areas of history, geography, reading, writing, and the arts. The unit has two major areas of focus—Working on the Rails; and Public Space on the Rails. Background materials include a glossary, resources for teachers and students, and links to primary source materials, such as railroad ballads, travel accounts, and railroad reports, drawn from the collections of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and other materials. The lesson plan is correlated to the Pennsylvania Department of Education Standards for Reading and Writing, History, and Geography.
Sponsoring Organization: The World at the Fair: Experiences of the 1893 Columbian Exposition Curriculum materials with lesson plans and activities that introduce secondary school students to a variety of historical and anthropological issues related to the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The site includes primary source materials such as maps, photos, posters and articles from the late 19th century that allow students to analyze questions related to the event, including how different cultural groups and nations were exhibited and displayed on the fairgrounds and how this affected American attitudes towards immigration at the time. It also has three lesson plan modules for students: 1) Globalization Lesson Plan - China at the Fair; 2) Technology Lesson Plan - Electricity at the Fair; and 3) Anthropology Lesson Plan - Anthropological Exhibits at the Fair and the Midway. The curriculum materials address national standards for History and Educational Technology.
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.
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