A Study of Heroes

A study of heroes gives opportunities for working on research skills, reading, writing, critical thinking, and more. You can work within the content areas of social studies, science, literature, math, and even physical education. It suits Veteran’s Day, heritage months, the birthdays of famous people, and character education themes.

Begin with a chart. You can use incentive charts or a spreadsheet as we did:

We add the names of the heroes we study throughout the unit along the Y axis, and the characteristics of  those individuals along the X axis. Then we note whether each of those individuals has each characteristic. In many cases, we just didn’t know, so we used a question mark to identify things we felt we needed to look into further.

At the end of the unit, have students write a definition of a hero using the chart. Artsedge has a multimedia resource that would enrich this lesson.

Along with the chart, create a timeline and a world map for a bulletin board that grows as you work on the unit (or click the links in this sentence to put your timeline and map in the cloud). Seeing where and when the heroes you study did their heroic deeds will help to give students a more complete understanding.

With the visual organizers in place, move on to study your selection of heroes. We recommend reading first, adding information to the chart, timeline, and map, and then moving on to research to fill the gaps in knowledge revealed by the use of the graphic organizers.

Books for this study:

• Heroes for My Son is a collection of brief discussions of people the author wanted his own son to know as heroes. For younger students, it’s a great introduction to the topic. With older students, be sure to discuss why the author chose these individuals and whether they would have made the same choices.
• The Children’s Book of Heroes is another collection of biographical sketches, stories, and even epics (we’re glad to see the epic hero Roland brought to life for a new generation).
• Goddesses, Heroes, and Shamans: The Young People’s Guide to World Mythology is an introduction to the wonderful hero tales found around the world. We have so many favorite books in this category that we can’t begin to make a proper list of them, but this book gives you an overview which you can then use to search for more.

Online resources for fictional and mythical heroes:

• Artsedge heroes theme resources
• Exploring American Tall Tales, also from Artsedge
• Paul Bunyan Lesson Plans
• Pecos Bill Lesson Plans
• Fairy tale heroes
• Superheroes

Resources for historic heroes:

• Bio.com, a good starting point for biographical research
• Martin Luther King, Jr. Lesson Plans
• Galileo Lesson Plans
• Thomas Edison Lesson Plans
• John Muir
• Science Heroes

While all the lesson plans we’ve referenced have activities for specific heroes, we want to share a couple of activities that we like to use for this unit.

Chronology

The Chronology Card Game is very fun game which isn’t made any longer, as far as we can tell. Nevermind — make your own for the classroom! Use blank playing cards or flashcards and have each student choose a hero or two to study more thoroughly as an individual project. Have students create collages for the heroes they choose. Make sure that each collage has the name and dates for the hero in question.

You can have students make physical collages, or you can bring in technology skills by having students create their collages with MSPaint or another graphics program. We made the example below in Photoshop.

To play, shuffle all the cards together and pass out a few to each player. Players put their cards into chronological order. One player will pick a card a random and read the name of the individual aloud. If the next player can correctly place the card among his or her cards — that is, say where in chronological order it would fit among the cards that player already has — then he or she keeps the card.

The first player to collect 10 cards in this way is the winner.

Mini History Day

Have students study a hero thoroughly and create a presentation on that hero. You can use presentation boards, but you can also have students use file folders so that all the presentations will fit onto a table in your classroom, or even onto the bulletin board.

Invite local heroes in to judge the presentations, or grade them as individual projects. Either way, be sure to consider the accuracy and thoroughness of the research, the quality of the presentation, and the thoughtfulness of the analysis.

Follow up with a Hero Sandwich writing assignment. It’ll give you a great bulletin board, too.

The Ugly Duckling Lesson Plans

“The Ugly Duckling” is not a fairy tale, since there are no magical elements, and it is not a folk tale, since we know that it was written by Hans Christian Andersen in 1844. It is probably best described as a fable, that is, a story that makes a point by having non-human animals or even objects behave like humans.

In the story, a swan’s egg turns up in a duck’s nest. The foreign egg takes longer to hatch than the duck’s eggs, but eventually the baby swan is hatched out and raised along with the duck’s own offspring. The unfortunate cygnet is scorned by the ducklings for being different. He runs off and tries different parts of the farm with the same results, but at last finds his way to the pond where the swans are, and is relieved and happy to be with his own kind. He also discovers that he is not an inferior duck after all, but a perfectly good example of what he actually is: a swan.

Jerry Pinkney has done a picture book version of The Ugly Duckling which was chosen as a Caldecott Honor book, Harriet Ziefert has done an easy reader version, Rachel Isadora has done one in her characteristic style, Robert Ingpen has done a beautiful one as well, and Lorinda Bryan Cauley has done a charming retelling with witty, detailed pictures that will be great for “reading the pictures.”

You can also find the story online:

• Here is a long version.
• Here is a shorter one.
• Here is a vintage picture book version in a series of JGEP files, with several different languages to choose from.

We usually like to act stories out after a reading or two, but you might want to be careful with this one. Some young students will be upset by being ganged up on, even in a pretend situation. Here are some links for masks, puppets, and some alternatives to reenacting the story.

• Activity village has a duckling mask to print out.
• Here is a PDF file for making a swan puppet.
• Here are general directions for sock puppets, with suggestions for making goose and duck puppets.

One of the interesting things about “The Ugly Duckling” is that the phrase has almost become more famous than the story. Here are a few examples that use the term in ways that go beyond Andersen’s fable:

• A lesson plan on Eleanor Roosevelt examines ideas about beauty in our culture through time.
• Callisto is known as the Ugly Duckling among heavenly bodies. Try making “Callisto in a Bottle” with directions at this website.

Character Education

• “The Ugly Duckling” is just about the perfect story for looking at questions of kindness and fairness. The other animals are downright mean to the cygnet, they judge him on the basis of his looks, and they exclude him for being different. Since there is a happy ending, these points can be discussed with even the youngest children. Thinking about how the Ugly Duckling felt, and rewriting the story so that the other animals behaved better, can be a very good lesson to stave off bullying.
• While it is pretty clear in the story that the other animals are wrong to be so unkind to the Ugly Duckling, there is also a suggestion that the creatures are happiest with their own kind. The Ugly Duckling’s solution is to leave the ducks and stay with the swans, not to figure out ways to live happily with the ducks. Divide the class into several smaller groups. Challenge students to work out a brief drama that shows how the Ugly Duckling could have remained in the group and improved it, instead of leaving. Have the groups present their dramas to the class and discuss the various solutions.
• It is generally agreed that “The Ugly Duckling” was autobiographical, and expressed how Andersen felt growing up. Research Andersen’s life to see the connection. Challenge students to write an autobiographical fable of their own, about a negative feeling or experience they have had. Did reframing the feeling as a fable make it better?
• To what extent do humans in your school or nieghborhood reject or accept people on the basis of their appearance? A study at the University of Buffalo found that people who worry about being rejected because of their looks are more likely to be unhappy and self-conscious than those who don’t. Brainstorm ways to lessen “looks-ism” at your school. Create graphic organizers or a bulletin board of the suggestions, or develop a plan. Follow through!

Science

• Soundstax is a site where you can see and hear ducks and ducklings, cygnets and swans, and some other water birds as well.
• Match the names of baby animals with the names of the adults. Swan-cygnet, duck-duckling, chicken-chick, and cat-kitten are in the story, but students may be able to add lots more. Use a two-column graphing pocket chart for this research project, and keep it going till the chart is full.
• Seasons and life cycles are natural fits as science topics to go with this story.

Critical Thinking

• Critical Thinking Company’s Critical Thinking, Book 1 includes “The Ugly Duckling” among a group of fairy tales used to practice critical thinking and questioning.

The Princess on a Glass Hill Lesson Plans

“The Princess on the Glass Hill“ is one of the more obscure fairy tales, but the image of the suitors trying to get up the glass hill to the princess is familiar to most of us. Since our state frameworks mandate the use of of folk and fairy tales up to grade 7, I like to have some unusual and challenging stories to pull out for middle school students.

In this story, a boy called “Cinderlad,” the youngest of three brothers, braves a supernatural earthquake while guarding his father’s fields and thus acquires three magic horses: a copper one, a silver one, and a golden one. Meanwhile, for no apparent reason, the king of the country where Cinderlad lives has put his daughter the princess on top of a glass hill with three apples in her lap. Whoever gets the apples from her will get to marry her.

Cinderlad’s older brothers go to the hill-climbing contest, but leave Cinderlad at home, since he sits in the ashes and is dirty. He follows, though, with his magic horses and some equally marvelous armor, and is able to to climb the hill. This he does first as a copper knight, then as a silver knight, and finally as a golden knight. As the golden knight on the golden horse, he goes clear to the top of the hill and takes the golden apple from the princess’s lap.

The princess is so charmed by the mysterious and shiny knights that she throws the first two apples to the disguised Cinderlad and cheerfully gives him the third. However, he rides off each time. The king, once all the apples are taken, sends word all over the countryside seeking the knights with the apples. When he comes to the brothers of the Cinderlad, they say the king shouldn’t even bother to ask the Cinderlad, but he steps forward, shows the apples, and claims the princess.

We like to bring out the Venn diagrams and compare this story with Cinderella. The test, the cinders, and the search for the mysterious suitor all are obvious shared elements, but your class may also notice the animal friends, the patience and beauty of the protagonists, and the way both the Cinderlad and Cinderella deceive their siblings.

While I haven’t found this story in picture book form, there are a couple of uses of it in books that older students might enjoy. Cinderellis and the Glass Hill by Gail Carson is based on this story. Sam Pickering’s Letters to a Teacher uses the story as a metaphor for accomplishing things by going against common wisdom.

This is a great story to illustrate. It is also complex enough to be a good one to have older students retell. Combine the two responses by having students retell the story with illustrations for a bulletin board. Divide the tale up into episodes and divide the class up into groups, and give each group an episode to illustrate.

Once everyone is completely clear on the story, consider some cross-curriculum connections.

Science

• This is definitely a physical science story. The first point to explore would be the characteristics of substances. It is assumed in the story that climbing a hill made of glass would be much harder than climbing a hill of dirt or some other substance. You can set up an experiment to test this with shelves made of wood, glass, and other substances (ask around for a shelf from an old medicine cabinet if finding a suitable piece of glass is difficult). Try getting toy cars up the “hills” of different materials. As always in science experiments, determining how to measure and track results is an important part of the experimental design.
• Next, check the question of steepness. The glass hill is particulary hard to get up because it is steep. Raise the shelves from the first experiment to different angles to test this point. Review the measurement of angles. Determine what angle is too steep for something like a battery-operated toy car to travel on successfully, and then challenge students to figure out ways to increase the angle. Does the surface make a difference? Can changes to the vehicle make a difference? You could have teams of students compete to get a toy up the steepest possible angle.

• In the story, horses rather than people are climbing the glass hill. Could people have had an advantage over horses? Human rock climbers climb steep surfaces regularly. Is the smoothness of the surface then the main problem? A climbing science project uses the kind of data collected in the first couple of explorations, plus allowing students to attempt to climb doorways. This could be a very popular experiment, as long as you have spotters on hand.
• Once you’ve determined the precise factors that made the hill hard to ride up, challenge students to use their imaginations to explain the mechanism that allowed the magic horses to get up the hill. Since this is a fairy tale, no such explanation is needed, but suppose that it were science fiction, so that some explanation is required, even if it relies on unrealistic premises or technology that doesn’t yet exist. Drawings, models, and stories will give students a variety of media they can use to convey their imaginative ideas.
• Another question for imaginative speculation might be this one: how did the princess get up there? How did she get safely back down in time for the wedding?
• Returning to the topic of characteristic of substances, have students make a chart comparing the suitability of copper, silver, and gold for armor.

Character Education

• It has been suggested that the princess in this story is completely passive, but she does throw the apples to the Cinderlad. Given that she has somehow been placed on top of a tremendously slippery glass mountain, what more active role could she have taken in her future without sliding down the hill to her doom?
• It is clear in the story that the Cinderlad gets the magic horses by being brave in the face of the earthquake-like experiences that scare off his brothers, yet he claims that he wasn’t bothered by anything. Is he being brave and modest when he makes this claim, or just fooling his brothers so he can get the rest of the horses? Debate the question.
• In fact, it could be said that Cinderlad is not a very honest young man. He lies about his experiences in the field, hides the magical horses, sneaks off to climb the glass hill, and pretends to have no information about the knights clad in precious metals. Write, discuss, or debate the ethics of his behavior.
• Finally, a writing prompt on a character topic: was the princess brave to sit calmly on the slippery hill in a chair?

The Elves and the Shoemaker Lesson Plans

The Elves and the Shoemaker is a tale from the Brothers Grimm.

In it, a poor shoemaker has only enough leather for one pair of shoes. He cuts the shoes out and leaves them ready to make in the morning. In the morning when he gets up, he finds (usually) two pairs of completed shoes. He sells them and buys leather enough for two pairs of shoes, and the next day he finds four pairs of completed shoes. In some tellings of the story, the elves just make the shoes he has cut rather than doubling them. Things continue in this way until the shoemaker becomes rich. At that point, he waits up to see how the shoes are being made, and sees that it is a couple of elves who are doing the work. He and his wife make the elves some clothes as a thank-you gift, and the elves dress up and take off in a happy ending.

The BBC has a version of the story to read or to print. Make copies for your classroom, and students can color them and make their own books to read.

Brownielocks has a version of the story from the “Fractured Fairytales” series. Pull out the Venn Diagram and compare it with the original.

Paul Galdone has done a very nice picture book version of  The Elves and the Shoemaker. Fair warning: the elves are naked at the beginning of the book. When Kathy used this in her classroom, she gave the elves some britches with a marker.You know your class, and can decide the best approach for your students.

Math

• There is no evidence that the Brothers Grimm wrote this story for the purpose of teaching multiplication, but they sure could have. The number of shoes produced (whether the elves magically increase the leather in the version you read or not) doubles each day. Then, since the shoes come in pairs, the total number of shoes is double the number of pairs. This is perfect for studying doubling, the 2s fact family, and the difference between addition and multiplication. For young students, provide a stack of shoe cutouts and let them count out the shoes as they listen to the story.
•  Here is a PDF file with a modern retelling of the story and a reproducible worksheet that could be used with the traditional story just as well. It includes charts to lead students to notice the pattern.
• Here is a lesson on graphing that happens to involve shoes. If you need to do some graphing, why not bring the shoes in?

Social Studies

• Comparing clothing from different times and places is in the frameworks, and the Bata Shoe Museum is one way to meet that requirement. Not only are there lots of cool pictures, but they are labeled with excellent new words like “kabkab,” “bachouche,” and “mokhwa.” Students will have a great time exploring this site. Add some shoe drawings to your classroom timeline or world map.
• Here is a five-minute promotional video showing the process of making custom shoes. This shows how the flat leather pieces are made into shoes, something that students in a modern classroom might find hard to imagine. The video shows hammering and sewing, but it also shows the use of computers. This video could provide a starting point for an interesting discussion on how the use of computers has changed the work world. Here is a description from Colonial Williamsburg of the work of an 18th century shoemaker for comparison.
• Shoemakers still exist, and so do cobblers (generally nowadays a cobbler repairs shoes), but most shoes are made in factories.That doesn’t mean that there aren’t plenty of people working in the field of footwear! Here is a brief reading on what it takes to become a shoe designer. Other workers in the field include tanners, plastics or leather production workers, machine operators, cutters, managers, clerical workers, transportation workers, and retailers. Here is a chart from the U.S. government showing what these folks earned in 2000.
• Elves are found in Scandinavian and Germanic folklore, where they can be kind and helpful or mischievous. Challenge students to think of other, similar creatures in the folklore of other countries. This could be a good library research projects, but is less suited to online research, as searches will tend to turn up computer game and Lord of the Rings sites more often than traditional folklore. If you are teaching older students, though, this could be a good time to compare traditional folklore and modern folklore-based games.

Economics

• Some of the social studies connections lead into discussions of economics, particularly with regard to labor and resources.
• Here is a lesson plan using the story to convey the concept of capital resources. 
• Modern machine-made shoes can be made in less than one man-hour (which is to say, the total amount of time all the humans operating the machines spend on one pair of shoes, added together, totals less than one hour), while the traditional method discussed in the story produced less than one pair of shoes a day for each worker. Except elves. Divide your class in half. Let one side make paper bag puppets for the story, or a book of the story from the link above, individually while the other half does the same project as an assembly line. Here is a PDF template of elf ears, collar, and hat for a paper bag puppet. For the assembly line, “hire” one student to color the pages, one to cut them out, one to glue them to the paper bag, one to draw the faces, one to color the faces, one to check the quality of each step of the work, one to gather the finished puppets and stack them, and so on until each student has a job. There can be more than one worker in each position, of course. On the “cottage industry” side of the room, just have each student make a paper bag puppet. Compare the output of both sides. For example, was one side faster than the other? Is one set of products more uniform? Is the quality level the same? Were the workers equally happy with their jobs? Did one group end up with more puppets per worker than the other? Have older students write about their experience with the division of labor. With all the puppets completed, have the the class consider how they might best plan a play. Would the assembly line method work for that as well?If so, repeat the assembly line vs. cottage industry experiment with the preparation of the play. Ask older students to write essays based on their experience.

Character Education

• The elves are helpful and hardworking. The shoemaker is hardworking (most versions of the story specify this, and say that he is poor “through no fault of his own”) and grateful to the elves. The shoemaker’s wife is generous and thoughtful. This story is just full of good examples for character lessons. Make awards in the name of each of the characters (human-shaped cutouts would work, and the students can make them) and give them to the students when they show generosity, gratitude, helpfulness, diligence, and so on throughout the unit. Take this a step further and have students give the awards to one another. Maybe they’ll give one to you, too! 
• One of the keys to the story is that the elves do their good deed secretly, without expecting a reward. Have the students put all their names in a hat and have each pull out another kid’s name. Each student is the Secret Elf for the classmate whose name they chose. Explain that the object of the game is to do kind and helpful things for the other student without letting him or her know who is doing it.  Continue this for a week, a day, or the length of the unit. At the end of the activity, discuss how the game affected the atmosphere of the class.
• At the end of the story, when the elves find the clothes that the shoemaker and his wife made for them, they conclude that they are now so rich that they no longer need to work, and they dance away. The shoemaker, who was also rich at this point in the story, must have continued working, because the story says that “everything he did prospered.” As a writing prompt, ask students whether they would have quit working if they were in the elves’ place.

The Snow Queen

The Snow Queen is a lesser-known tale by Hans Christian Andersen. It’s a collection of stories, really. The first is about a mirror made by an evil sprite, which shows everything reflected in it at its worst. This mirror is broken, and bits of it fly into people’s eyes and hearts and so on, causing them to perceive things in the worst possible ways. The next story tells of Kay and Gerda, neighbors and friends, and the happy times they have together at different seasons. Kay gets a bit of the mirror into his heart and another into his eye. He goes sledding, is lost in the snow, and is rescued — or perhaps kidnapped — by the Snow Queen. In the third through sixth stories, Gerda sets off to look for Kay and has adventures with talking flowers, a raven, and a robber maiden. In the seventh story, she finds Kay, who has grown cold and unfeeling, and frees him with her love from the spell of the snow queen.

There are lots of wonderful picture book versions of The Snow Queen:

• Amy Erlich and Susan Jeffers have done a pretty book with a faithful retelling of the story.
• Naomi Lewis has a sparkling version with a briefer story.
• Pavel Tatarnikov has kept the full text.
• Mary Engelbreit’s The Snow Queen can be hard to find, but may be more appealing to younger kids.

There are also some online versions:

• The BBC/PBS version of the story is an interesting adaptation. The website has some interesting things to explore.
• Storynory has the whole thing to listen to, in three parts.
• SurLaLune has an annotated versionof the story.
• A reading comprehension quiz for the story.

English

• Jeanine Gailey Hall’s poem will be great for reading with teens. After reading the original story, use this poem to spark discussion and writing.
• Kelly Link has a list of characters. Use this list as a starting point for character maps.

Art

• Enjoy a slideshow of Vladislav Yerko’s wonderful illustrations, presented by the Anderson House Foundation.
• Blogger One Crabapple shows the progress of a collage inspired by the story. Share this with students and challenge them to create their own collage showing what the story means to them.

Music

• The Snow Queen has been popular among composers. Check out a collection of songs with good recordings and history notes.
• Tchaikovsky’s composition may be the most famous, and it is readily avaliable on CD. Tchaikovsky: The Snow Queen op 39 includes narration by ballerina Natalia Markova.
• Hear samples of Tobin’s ballet.
• Use any of these pieces for extensive or intensive listening practice, as background music for art projects, or for analysis using Venn diagrams.

Math

• When Kay is frightened, he tries to pray but can only remember his multiplication tables. If your class still needs to review the multiplication tables, shamelessly seize this opportunity.
• We hear also that Kay can do mental arithmetic “up to fractions.” Some writers claim that Kay’s aptitude for math is part of his coldness after the shards of the mirror enter his heart. Is this a stereotype about math and mathematicians? Is a quantitative approach to life necessarily cold or negative? See if you can prepare a debate on the subject.

Science

• A distorting mirror is one of the important elements of the story. Check out the science of fun house mirrors. If you have Java on your classroom computer, try this computer-based experiment on curved mirrors.
• Moira Li-Lynn Ong has written that The Snow Queen is a metaphorical view of depression. PBS has a science-oriented lesson plan on depression.
• There is a feature on Mars known as the Snow Queen. Read the article and check out the NASA photos for some science-related reading practice.

Character Education

• One interpretation of The Snow Queen is that it is about friendship. Use a snowflake graphic organizer to explore the characteristics of a good friend.
• Some say that Kay’s decision to go play with the boys is a rejection of his early friendship with Greta. Ask students whether they went through a spell of rejecting their early neighborhood friends for classmates who seemed cooler for some reason. How do they feel about it now? Use this as a writing prompt.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf Lesson Plans

“The Boy Who Cried Wolf” is the story of a young shepherd. Growing bored with his work, he shouts “Wolf!” to make the townspeople come running. He laughs at them and at their anger when they find he has tricked them. He repeats the joke, so at last when a wolf really comes, he calls for help but they don’t come, thinking he’s playing tricks on them again.

While you can just tell this story to the class, there are other options:

• Tony Ross has done a great picture book version of the story.
• An online version is suitable for elementary school readers.
• Listen to the story at Storynory
• Find printable story cards for young children.
• The story is also included in the Evan-Moor Literature Pocketsbook for grades 2-3, with reproducible activities.

Once you’ve read or told the story and made certain that your class understands it, consider these cross-curricular connections (as always, these include ideas for all grades — folk and fairy tales are in the standards for our state up to 7th grade):

Character Education

• This story is usually understood to have a moral about honesty; sometimes it’s included in the story, with phrasing like “No one believes a liar, even when he tells the truth.” Ask students to rewrite or act out the story, having the shepherd boy choose to be truthful instead.
• An early English version of the story ends with a moral about keeping play separate from work: larking about and playing tricks are fine, this retelling says, but not when you’re supposed to be working. Workplaces even now often have rules about “horseplay.” Think of examples of kinds of pranks that could be dangerous or costly at work. Have students make posters illustrating and warning against unwise tricks at work.
• Watch The Style Council’s music video of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” and discuss its connection with the story. While there are no literal wolves or sheep, there are a number of images of selfishness. Could selfishness be one of the moral concepts of the story?
• Another song by this name is by Val Emmich. Read the lyrics and decide whether they could be used in a musical play of the original story. Challenge students to write songs for the other characters.

Social Studies

• People are often accused of “crying wolf” when they give repeated warnings about things that may never come to pass. Have older students search online for political issues that have brought up accusations of crying wolf.
• The hero of this story is a boy, a child, and yet he has a job — or maybe a chore to help out his family. Explain that in other times and places, children have often worked instead of gone to school. Many people now are working toward a time when children all over the world can study instead of working to support their families. Use this idea as a writing prompt. Depending on grade level, students might write about whether they’d rather work than play, research and report on kinds of work children did in the past, or propose ways to help end child labor in our modern world.

Critical Thinking

• It’s possible to see this story as being about how boredom can cause someone to get in trouble. Ask students whether they ever have this problem. If so, brainstorm ways to cope with the problem. Rewrite the story so that the shepherd uses another approach to deal with the problem of boredom in his job.
• The shepherd’s plan A for the appearance of a wolf in this story was to call for help. When his pranks made that plan fall through, what did he have for a plan B? In some tellings of the story, he gets eaten by the wolf. Challenge students to come up with other plans for dealing with the wolf.

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