Geography and Folklore

Overview:

Literature is an avenue for gaining insights into a culture. This lesson draws a connection between geography and folklore in several countries on the continent of Africa. It also asks students to read maps and to make inferences about a place based on maps and literature.

Connections to the Curriculum: Geography, Social Studies, and Language Arts.

Teaching Level: 4th to 8th grades.

Connection to State Standards for Geography:

1. Read, interpret and make maps, charts and graphs to explain spatial relationships.

2. Explain how humans and the physical environment impact and influence each other.

 

Connection to National Geography Standards:

Standard 1: How to use maps and other geographic representations, tools, and technologies to acquire, process, and report information from a spatial perspective.

Standard 4: The physical and human characteristics of places

Materials:
  1. Copy of a political map of Africa for each student (letter size);
  2. Large political map of Africa, desk size maps of Madagascar, Nigeria, Kenya, Mali and Ghana (climate, natural vegetation, and physical).  You can use the National Geographic Map Machine
  3. Picture book of a folktale from each of the aforementioned countries.

Introducing the Lesson:
  1. Using latitude and longitude, have students identify the countries they will be working with.
  2. Divide the class into five groups.
  3. Assign each group to a country and distribute appropriate maps to each group.
  4. Tell the groups they will have 3-5 minutes to record any information they can learn from the maps about their individual country.
  5. They will now have 3-5 minutes to brainstorm in their group about the kind of landforms, vegetation, climate, animals, they might see illustrated in their individual books.
  6. Distribute books to correlate with maps and instruct groups to look only at pictures and list the landforms, vegetation, climate, and animals they see.
  7. They may now read the story and list any relationships they see between the story and geography.
  8. Have students present their findings. Questions to examine would be:
Were your predictions correct? Can we make any generalizations about similarities or differences between countries?

Please note that folktales in Africa are an oral tradition and the landscape may or may not be a present day reflection of that particular African country. Depending on the class, the time appropriated for this assignment may vary.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Medearis, Angela S., Too Much Talk. Cambridge: Candlewick, 1995. (Ghana)
Mollel, Tololwa M., The Flying Tortoise- An Igbo Tale. New York: Clarion, 1994. (Nigeria)
Mollel, Tololwa M., The Orphan Boy. New York: Clarion, 1990. (Kenya)
Rappaport, Doreen, The New King New York: Dial Books, 1995. (Madagascar)
Wisniewski, David, Sundiata. New York: Clarion, 1992. (Mali)
Arlynn Tsugawa, Nancy Ryles Elementary, Beaverton Schools

Suggested Assessment

A scoring guide is not necessary for this lesson. Through brainstorming and discussion in small groups, the teacher can monitor students' understanding of the connection between geography and folklore. Through the groups' presentations of their analysis of the folk tales and maps, the teacher will be able to determine if the students can make inferences about a place based on maps and literature.