The Soldier’s Tale Study Guide

The Soldier’s Tale by Igor Stravinsky tells in music, narration, and dance the Russian folktale of a soldier on leave who trades his violin — and his soul — for wealth in the form of a book that foretells changes in the stock market. The soldier agrees to go home with the Devil for a couple of days to teach him how to play the violin. At the Devil’s home, he tastes a life of luxury, and when he continues on to his village, he discovers that three years have passed, not three days. His fiancee has married another, his mother thinks he’s a ghost, and his old life is gone. The Devil appears again in another guise and persuades the soldier to enjoy his wealth. The soldier becomes rich, but not happy, and destroys the magic book.

A second episode begins with the disconsolate soldier coming to a new town where, in common fairy tale fashion, a princess lies ill and her father, the King ,will give her hand in marriage to anyone who can cure here. The soldier tries his hand, and then the Devil appears again in yet another form. The soldier plays cards with the Devil, losing all his money but winning back his violin. The music of the violin cures the princess and defeats the Devil, but the Devil tells the soldier that he will — if he leaves the kingdom — belong to the Devil again. The soldier marries his princess and they live happily until they decide to go visit the soldier’s long-lost mother. As soon as he steps out of the kingdom, the soldier becomes a statue and is lost to his princess forever.

Maestro Classics has prepared a new CD of  The Soldier’s Tale with narration and music, as well as information about Stravinsky and a dance remix that should have your students up and moving. Hear samples of the recording at the Maestro Classics website, where you can also have a look at the 24-page booklet that comes with the CD. It has the story with fun illustrations, plus background information, pictures of the seven orchestral instruments in the performance, and a crossword puzzle.

The recording is excellent, weaving the music in and out of the story beautifully. The music, using the handful of instruments for which Stravinsky originally scored the piece, conveys the feelings and action of the story equally with the narration, and the whole thing is well suited to listening practice. Begin your study simply by listening to the recording.

Have the class retell the story by drawing illustrations for the events in the story, or by acting them out.

Once the basic story is clear, dig a little deeper. Share this movie clip with the class:

In this scene from R. O. Blechman’s 1983 film of the story, the soldier meets the Devil and makes a deal with him. The cartoon shows the soldier’s simplicity and uncertainty well. The soldier is tempted and gives in to that temptation, but he’s not sure he’s making the right decision.

Ask students whether they think the soldier made the right decision. If not, what should he have done differently? Have the students had a similar experience, when they were tempted to do something they thought might be unwise? Identify clues in the film or the recording that should have given the soldier a hint that the old man wasn’t quite what he seemed.

In the following video, artists from The Aurora Theater talk about their production of this piece. At the beginning of the video, they talk about how the soldier likes his bargain with the Devil at first, but then discovers the price of his choice.

Watch the discussion and then ask students what might have been pleasant about the soldier’s deal with the Devil: having wealth, knowing the future, having adventures. Then list the consequences of the decision.

With the story clear in everyone’s minds, explore some cross curricular activities.

Music

• With only seven instruments in use, it’s easier to hear the individual instruments. This is a nice piece for listening to identify each instrument in the performance. The booklet that comes with the recording pictures each instrument used.
• Learn about Igor Stravinsky, one of the most important composers of the 20th century. The recording includes a lecture on the subject. Have students listen and practice their note taking skills. There are also a couple of children’s books that can add layers of understanding. Mike Venezia’s Igor Stravinsky tells Stravinsky’s life story lightly with cartoons, but includes everything students will want to know about. Stravinksy is also included in Lives of the Musicians: Good Times, Bad Times (and What the Neighbors Thought), a wonderful book to have in your classroom library.
• Listen to specific parts of the piece at All Things Trumpet. There you will also find some discussion of the music and the final moral of the story, not included on the Maestro Classics CD.
• The Soldier’s Tale was written in 1918, and it included three dances: ragtime, waltz, and tango. The tango and ragtime were both new at that time, and the waltz, while not new, was still considered a bit racy in some circles. Jazz was becoming important, but Stravinsky had never heard jazz. He had seen some sheet music for jazz brought back from America with a friend. Have students explore music from this time period (one resource is Public Domain Music) and discuss whether Stravinsky’s music was typical of its time, or innovative.

English

• C.F. Ramuz wrote the story for The Soldier’s Tale. It’s generally claimed that the story is based on a Russian folktale, but we haven’t found it. The closest we’ve come is the Magyar Soldier’s Tale.  Use a Venn diagram to compare the two.
• There are several points in The Soldier’s Tale which could have been happy endings, but the story continues to an unhappy ending. Give students the option of rewriting the story with a happy ending, or of writing an essay explaining why they like the ending as it is.
• The Soldier’s Tale has been filmed a few times, but it had  never been made into a Walt Disney movie or a Barbie or Muppets version. Usually,this kind of movie version of a folktale will have the rough parts taken out and a clear moral lesson of some kind added. Students may be familiar with the Disney and original versions of tales like Beauty and the Beast, Rapunzel, The Little Mermaid, and The Frog Prince. Divide the class and have each group choose a fairy tale and compare the original to the Disney version. Then assign each group an episode from The Soldier’s Tale to rewrite in a popular movie version.

Social Studies

• This piece was written in Russia, at the end of World War I and in the midst of the Russian Revolution. Times were very hard, and this is probably why there were only seven instruments.  It also puts a soldier and the idea of “pre-war prices” in context. Add events from the Russian Revolution to your class timeline.
• While many Faust stories (stories about making a deal with the Devil) involve a cask of jewels or a bunch of gold, the Devil gives the soldier a glance into the economic future so he can invest wisely and make his fortune in that way. Study the stock market with our Stock Market Lesson Plans.
• The soldier plays cards with the Devil, losing all his wealth but getting back his gift of music, the opportunity for love, and his chance at happiness. Use this scene as a writing prompt for students to think about the relationship between money and happiness. Can money buy happiness? Does it prevent people from being happy?

A Soldier’s Tale is a wonderful way to introduce classical music — and something a bit different in the way of classical music — to your students along with an intriguing folktale with a lot of teachable moments.

Entrepreneurship Education Contests

At this writing, there are two entrepreneurship contests going on. Use them to focus your entrepreneurship lesson plans, or recreate them just for your class or school.

Interview an entrepreneur

The first is the Hot Shot Entrepreneurs Video Contest for students.This contest clebrates Entrepreneurship week (February 18-25 in 2012), and entries are due on February 13th. Click the link for the full rules of the contest.

This is essentially an oral history project. Students must identify an entrepreneur, interview him or her about business accomplishments and obstacles overcome, and produce a video to upload to YouTube.

Here’s how we see this project:

• Research local entrepreneurs through newspapers, online search, or visits to business organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce or business incubators.
• Choose an entrepreneur and conduct further research on this individual.
• Write a letter or email requesting the interview.
• Prepare for the interview by developing questions.
• Conduct the interview.
• Get required permissions and upload the files, if taking part in the contest.
• Edit the video.
• Upload the video to YouTube.
• Send the submission forms electronically, if entering the contest.

That’s a lot of technology practice! Plenty of research, writing, and art as well. Students can work in small groups, gaining skills in collaboration as well.

If you’re not entering the contest, plan a day for students to share their videos with the class or the school.

Resources:

• Making Movies in the Classroom
• Collaboration Skills
• Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education

Inventive entrepreneurs

There is also, at this writing, a contest to find the best new consumer products being run by Walmart, the world’s largest retailer. The “Get On the Shelf” contest, accepting entries till February 22, lets people vote for their favorite product, much as people vote for their favorite singer on American Idol. Just as the winner on that TV show gets a recording contract, the winner of “Get on the Shelf” will get a contract to sell their product.

Current entries include dog shoes and zombie repellant spray, so we see no reason that your class shouldn’t enter, or at least play along at home. Click the link above to see examples of video entries people have already created.

The plan here is to come up with an idea for a new product (an item people would buy) and to make a video showing how it works.

FreshPlans talked with the experts at 8th & Walton, a company that provides training for entrepreneurs who want to see their products on the shelves, and for suppliers. They told us that this contest was ” tremendous opportunity.” It can take years to get to see a Walmart buyer in the usual way, and inventors typically have just one chance to impress the buyer. They also told us that a new product invention needs to be really new, but also something that people want. It needs to be safe. It has to be possible to make the new product for a price people are willing to pay.

Have students begin by coming up with an idea for a product. One of the best ways to start inventing is to think of a problem that could be solved by a new invention. Brainstorm with the class to identify pet peeves that could be solved by something bought at a store. Examples of problems solved by inventions:

• Ordinary light bulbs use too much electricity.
• People get cold when they have to take their arms out of the blankets to use the remote control.
• Women have nowhere to put their purses when they’re eating at a restaurant.
• The Earl of Sandwich didn’t like to stop playing cards long enough to eat dinner.
• People get lost while driving, and can’t read a map while they drive.

Check out a collection of problems needing solutions if you need help thinking of ideas.

Once students have come up with an idea, they should do some market research. Draw  a model, using SketchUp (you could then have a 3d print made) or classroom art supplies, and show it to lots of people, asking their opinions. Help students practice listening and taking notes instead of defending or explaining their products — paying attention to feedback is a useful skill! Students should also ask what people would be willing to pay for their inventions.

Have students incorporate the feedback into the invention and perfect their inventions. If possible, have students create a working prototype of the invention. If this is not practical, encourage students to be as realistic as possible in planning their inventions. They should, for example, think about what materials could be used to make the invention and how they could keep prices in line with what people would be willing to pay.

Now to make the video. SketchUp allows you to create 3d models and fly around them, as in this video from the “Get On the Shelf” site:

Students can also create live videos. If you’re not planning to enter the contest, students might enjoy making an infomercial type video, beginning with the problem they plan to solve and then showing the happy users of their imaginary product.

Art, technology, writing, critical thinking, and research skills are all required for this project.

Either of these contests — whether students actually enter or you just produce videos simulating the entries — will make a great introduction to entrepreneurship.

Florence Kelley

Florence Kelley worked for laws to improve working conditions in the United States and for civil rights. She was important in the fight to get children out of factories and into schools, and the fight for safe working conditions for factory workers.

Kelley was a fighter. She was one of the first factory inspectors, becoming the Chief Factory Inspector for the state of Illinois in 1893, and she was known to be very tough when she found children working in factories, or people working in dangerous conditions. At that time, factory workers — including children — often worked for 12 or 14 hours a day in dangerous conditions for very little money. Workers might be locked into a room, as were the people who died in the Triangle Factory Fire, or working with dangerous machines, or with too little air or light for their health and safety.

Kelley was instrumental in passing laws that protected workers, but the laws were not very effective. There weren’t many factory inspectors, and workers who complained might lose their jobs, so the laws were not always enforced. Some of the laws were even repealed when factory owners complained that they couldn’t afford the new rules.

So Florence Kelley took another approach. She spoke to women’s groups about the terrible working conditions in the factories, and helped make sure that special tags were added to clothes that were made under safe and decent conditions. She persuaded the women, who bought most of the clothing, to buy only clothes with the labels showing they had been made under safe conditions. These women couldn’t vote for changes in laws, but they could “vote with their pocketbooks” by choosing where to spend their money. Gradually, factory owners were forced to make changes because their customers insisted.

Kelley didn’t give up on making changes in laws, though. She worked for equal funding for schools in poor neighborhoods and for all children. She worked for laws allowing women to vote. She fought for minimum wage laws and an eight hour workday.

She did this in spite of personal tragedies. All her sisters died as children, and Florence Kelley herself was often ill. She was divorced at a time when this was very uncommon, and was a single mother. One of her children died young. There were threats against her life, and many people disagreed with her. She didn’t have TV or the internet to spread the word about her causes, and she couldn’t even vote. She began her crusade when she was 12 years old and kept it up till she died at the age of 74.

Florence Kelley was one of the first people to use scientific data to persuade people to make social changes. She gathered information about the effects of poor working conditions and these facts were presented to the Supreme Court. This was the first time this kind of information was considered by the court. Later, when the Supreme Court considered segregation in schools, they looked as this kind of evidence again.

Florence Kelley was also one of the first to organize consumer boycotts. Kelley graduated from Cornell University and received a law degree from Northwestern University, and she spent many years working for legal changes. However, she also organized people and shared information  which allowed ordinary people to make a difference. Kelley was one of the organizers of the NAACP and also of several organizations supporting women and children.

Learn more about Florence Kelley:

• Primary sources on Florence Kelley’s work in Chicago
• Biography of Florence Kelley at Harvard.edu

Athlete Heroes Lesson Plans

Our students admire athletes, from their teammates in school sports to professional sports figures. Athlete heroes are a varied group, so that every student can find someone he or she can admire. Use our lesson plans to work on research skills and to learn about health.

Create an ad.

Instead of an ad for soft drinks or shoes, let your athlete heroes support a character trait they embody. We put Wilma Rudolph on a cereal box to advertise persistence. Rudolph grew up in poverty, suffering from severe illnesses including polio, which left her without the use of her left leg. She wore a leg brace till age 9, learned to walk normally again by age 12, and won her first Olympic medal in track at age 16. Learn more about this heroic athlete:

• Wilma Rudolph biography
• Online quiz on Rudolph’s life
• The official Olympics page for Rudolph includes video and background information about the events in which she competed.

Have students choose an athlete they admire and research that athlete’s life and work. They should then choose a character trait which their athlete could represent. Use any art techniques to make a cereal box ad for this character trait.

Write an essay.

Get to know the classic 5 paragraph essay form with an essay about an athlete hero. Hve students research their hero and write three sentences explaining this person’s admirable traits. For example, here’s our list for climber Jordan Romero:

• At 13, Romero became the youngest person ever to climb Mt. Everest, showing dedication to a difficult goal.
• Romero inspired his family to join him in his goal of climbing the world’s highest mountains.
• Romero gives credit to his family and his team, not just his own efforts.

Students should expand each of their sentences into a paragraph. Have students write each sentence at the top of a notecard and list events that show evidence for the sentence. For example, Romero’s interview at Athletic Capital has many quotes in which Romero gives credit to his family and his team. Once students have a good list of evidence for their claims, they can write each one up into a paragraph.

Have students put their three paragraphs together to form the body of the essay, and add an introduction and a conclusion.

Develop goals.

Sports heroes inspire students with their dedication, persistence, and hard work. They should also be health role models. Help students learn how to create SMART goals by choosing a health goal inspired by their athletic hero.

Olympic snowboarder Hannah Teter has plenty of good health habits, but one she’s famous for is eating a healthy breakfast every day. Students who start their day with a Coke and a candy bar can learn from Hannah. Use this example for a SMART goal.

SMART stands for

• Specific: A goal can’t be something vague like, “I want to eat better.” “I’ll eat a balanced breakfast every day” is a specific goal.
• Measurable: Without a quantifiable goal, you can’t tell whether you succeeded or not. A healthy breakfast, according to WebMD, should contain 5 grams of protein and 5 grams of fber. That cuts out the Coke and candy bar, but still leaves plenty of options from fruit and yogurt to eggs and veggies in a whole wheat tortilla.
• Achievable: A good goal is something the student can actually accomplish. Not all students have the capacity to win Olympic medals, but all students can make healthy breakfast choices.
• Realistic: A SMART goal is not only within a student’s power, but can also be achieved with the resources available. Examine the breakfast choices available in your school cafeteria or in local groceries to identify realistic healthy breakfast options.
• Timely: A goal is a dream with a timeline. Add a timeframe to the goal.

A student who chooses to follow in Hannah’s footsteps when it comes to breakfast might end up with, “I’m going to improve my health by having a balanced breakfast with 5 grams each of protein and fiber, such as the oatmeal and fruit in the cafeteria, each day beginning January 7th.”

Gather students’ goals and post them on the bulletin board.

Ancient Mesopotamia Lesson Plans

Mesopotamia, meaning “between the rivers,” was the cradle of civilization. Explore the people who lived here thousands of years ago with a couple of our favorite Mesopotamia lesson plans. These two lessons are designed to give a sense of time and place for ancient Mesopotamia, while integrating critical thinking, math, and social studies goals.

Books for this study:

• DK Eyewitness Books: Mesopotamia
• Gilgamesh the King
• You Wouldn’t Want to Be a Sumerian Slave!: A Life of Hard Labor You’d Rather Avoid

Online resources:

• The British Museum has an interactive site with extensive basic information and images.
• University of Chicago‘s interactive site
• Mr. Donn’s Mesopotamia
• Discover Babylon game
• LookLex timeline

Economics: Needs and Opportunities

The area called Mesopotamia is a stretch of land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers:

View Larger Map

Have students identify this area on modern maps and list the nations that currently exist in this area.

In 3100 BC, when people in Mesopotamia began writing, people had already lived there for a long time. The Sumerians lived there some 7500 years ago, and the Assyrians, Babylonians, and ancient Persians were among the other civilizations that made this part of the world their home. The region became part of the Roman Empire in 114 or so. Later the Ottoman Turks controlled the area, and it has been part of Iraq since 1932.

It was a good place to live all that time because it allowed people to meet their basic needs. Try our Cookie Geography lesson to make this point. Have students cut the shape of your state from gingerbread (there’s a recipe at the link), use icing to show the rivers or other bodies of water, and add chocolate chips to show the major cities. You’ll find that the oldest, largest cities are nearly always on the water, and usually on a river. Discuss the ways in which rivers satisfy basic human needs for food, water, and transportation. Then look at the map of Mesopotamia and note how the rivers made it a good place to live.

Older students can research the weather in the area. They’ll find that there was regular rainfall and predictable growing seasons, a set of circumstances which encouraged agriculture. While hunting, fishing, and gathering wild plants will produce enough food to sustain life, agriculture is a more reliable and efficient way to produce food.

Propose this as a hypothesis and have students figure out how they can support or reject it. For example, they might compare the amount of food produced by wild plants with the amount produced by cultivated plants. They might calculate the amount of time searching for 1,000 calories of wild foods would take, compared with the amount of time required to produce 1,000 calories of food from a garden. They could estimate the amount of fish or game an individual with simple tools such as a spear or net could bring home in a day, compared with the amount of food a day’s farming could produce.

Once students are convinced that agriculture is an efficient means of satisfying people’s need for food, point out that the rise of agriculture allowed specialization. If all the people have to spend most of their time coming up with food, they won’t have the leisure to develop other special talents. If fewer people can be farmers and produce enough food for all, then some people can work on pottery, metalcrafting, and even just coming up with ideas for useful things like ships and calendars.

This is what happened in Mesopotamia. With enough leisure to specialize, people came up with writing, laws, new forms of transportation, government, and other technologies. The rivers allowed trade with other growing civilizations, bringing new goods and also new ideas to the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians who lived there.

Have students use resources like Material World: A Global Family Portrait to identify nations or areas where much of people’s attention has to be devoted to basic survival. Compare the level of specialization in careers in these places with that in more affluent nations. Use this information to develop context for a discussion about how the natural resources and climate of Mesopotamia influenced the history of the societies there. The resources linked above will provide background information.

Play Civilization or any other history simulation game and discuss how the game’s creators have tried to replicate the effects of differing access to resources.

Alternatively, have students use Google Earth with cities and building layers turned off to identify good places for building a civilization. They could imagine that they are beings from another planet coming to what they think is an uninhabited earth and choosing a likely spot to form a colony. Have students create a Google Earth Tour to show the places they recommend to their commander back on their home planet.

Calendars

Mesopotamia is the home of mathematics. People began to count, using their fingers and thus coming up with a base 10 system of arithmetic. They also developed a calendar. At first, they divided their years by agricultural events, deciding that a new year would begin with the barley harvest in what we would now call May and June. Events like the time to plant could be identified as a fairly regular and predictable time. This led to the development of the 360 day year.

360 is a tidy number that can be divided in many ways. We still divide a circle into 360 degrees, and Math Forum has an interesting discussion of this fact which includes Mesopotamia’s relationship to it. Have students draw or cut big circles and divide them into 360 days– and they’ll notice a striking resemblance to an analog clock, which has 60 minutes, each with 60 seconds.

360 divided by 12 gives 30, roughly the number of days in a month measured by the changes of the moon. And it takes just about 360 days for the earth to circle the sun, so it seemed to be a pretty good length of time for a year.

It’s not perfect, though. After some years of using this base 60 calendar, people would find that the harvests weren’t falling at “harvest time” any more. Various lunar and solar calendars were used in different places, and then the Julian calendar became popular in much of the world. It has largely been replaced by the Gregorian calendar, which has been in use in the United States since September of 1752.

Students can find a lot of detail about various calendars at Calendar FAQ.

There is a new proposed calendar called the Hanke-Henry Calendar which would have 30 days in each month and then have an extra week every few years.

Divide students into groups and assign each one a particular calendar from the links above. Have each group prepare a timeline showing an overview of the history of Mesopotamia using their assigned calendar. Compare the various timelines.

Finish up by determining how a change of calendar might affect your lives. For example, the new Hanke-Henry calendar would put an end to Hallowe’en as we know it, and what would we do with the extra week in 2015?

Add all the Mesopotamian information you’ve discovered to your classroom timeline and map.

Ancient Greece Lesson Plans

A study of Ancient Greece stirs the imaginations of students, and provides essential background for understanding history and government.

There are lots of excellent books for this study:

• Ancient Greece (DK Eyewitness Books) is, like all DK books, richly illustrated and filled with information. Some people find DK books “busy”, but we’re fans.
• D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths is written for kids — clearly, without anything inappropriate for the classroom, but also without leaving out any essential bits. The drawings are wonderful, too.
•  National Geographic Treasury of Greek Mythology is  a particularly beautiful book, with illustrations by Christina Balit and very clear retellings of the ancient tales by Donna Jo Napoli. The book also includes  lots of additional data on the stars and planets, literary traditions, and Ancient Greek culture.
• Spend the Day in Ancient Greece: Projects and Activities that Bring the Past to Life is a fun book with hands-on activities that help make the information clear.
• Classical Kids: An Activity Guide to Life in Ancient Greece and Rome is another activity-based book, with everything from costumes to food to games.
• Ancient Greece!: 40 Hands-On Activities to Experience This Wondrous Age is one more hands-on activity book — there’s just so much in a study of Ancient Greece that lends itself to this approach!
• History Pockets: Ancient Greece has a nice collection of reproducible projects that can be done separately or combined to make a book. Great for Open House!
• Ancient Greece has writing prompts ad thought-provoking activities for middle school and up.
• Ancient Greece Thematic Unit from Teacher Created uses the D’Aulaire and Eyewitness books discussed above, plus hands-on activities.

Online resources:

• Discovery Education has a research-based lesson plan that gives a great foundation for a study of Ancient Greece.
• Dartmouth’s Hood Museum of Art has a set of lesson plans combining art, mythology, and science in creative ways.
• Universal Artists has a good basic resource site at AncientGreece.com.
• Mr. Donn’s Ancient Greece unit
• Emory University’s Odyssey Online is a fun multimedia experience

Some of our favorite lesson plans for Ancient Greece:

• Explore Greek mythology with Persephone and Demeter Lesson Plans and the Weather Gods Smackdown. Have students choose their favorite god or hero from the Greek pantheon and create a trading card or poster board presentation about him or her.
• Connect Greek mythology with your study of astronomy. Start with Pluto Lesson Plans. Use Google Sky to explore heavenly bodies, and then have students look up the corresponding stories in Greek mythology. Note that some of our planets and constellations use Roman names for characters also found in Greek mythology.
• With the Olympics coming up, spend some time learning about the Ancient Greek Olympics and comparing them with the modern Olympics. Use Venn diagrams to capture the differences and similarities. Then have students write a report about the modern Olympics from the point of view of an Ancient Greek time traveler.
• Family relationships in Ancient Greece were very different from those in modern American families. Challenge students to write a situation comedy set in Ancient Greece. Analyze modern situation comedies centering on families to understand how modern families are portrayed. Research Ancient Greek family dynamics. Then have students create an overall plan for a Ancient Greek family situation comedy and write a trailer for the new series coming up on TV. Create a script and a storyboard for the trailer — film it if that’s practical for your classroom.
• Have students enjoy a Google Earth tour of the Acropolis and visit the Heritage Key collection of related photos. Many people believe that Ancient Greece is in many ways the foundation of our civilization, while others would say that our modern society is completely alien from Greece. Organize a debate on this question, having students on both sides research and  present evidence for their positions.

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