Tortoise and Hare Lesson Plans

The Tortoise and the Hare is one of Aesop’s fables, also done by Jean de La Fontaine.

• You can read it, and admire one of Rackham’s illustrations for it, here.
• A shorter and easier version is online here.
• Here‘s a brief printable version.
• Here’s a short illustrated one.
• Here is a retelling of the story as it would have one if there had been Chinese bureaucrats involved. A similar take from an American perspective can be found in James Finn Garner’s Once Upon a More Enlightened Time, in which the race is preceded by the appointment of a Commissioner of Kinetic Wellness and Overland Velocity Contests.
• Here is a nice printable coloring page for “The Tortoise and the Hare.”
• Disney did a cartoon version in the 1930s: Disney Animation Collection 4: Tortoise & The Hare.

D.L. Ashliman’s cross-cultural variants include ants and elephants, foxes and crabs, and various other mismatched racing creatures. These stories give a great opportunity for using charts and graphic organizers to make comparisons. In fact, there are so many variants on this tale that you can do some sorting and categorizing as well.

This is a great story for dramatization. Make paper-plate masks of all sorts of animals, and let everyone in the class join in — no audience needed!

Science

• A study of tortoises and turtles, hares and rabbits fits perfectly with this story. The national standards call, when we study animals, for a study of their morphology (shapes), life cycles, habitat, and relationship to humans.
• A Sierra Club article for older students examines whether the tortoise or the hare has the best chance for survival during climate change.
• Classification of animals is a good science connection. Compare mammals and reptiles. Have students find and chart the speeds of various members of the two groups.

Math

• The obvious math connection is speed. Since the measurement of speed involves measuring both time and distance, this is a great opportunity to review or introduce all kinds of things about measurement.
• This can also be a great chance to work on word problems. Divide the class into teams and let each team make up Tortoise and Hare word problems for the other teams. “If the hare ran 12 meters before taking his first break, and the race was a 50 meter race, then how many feet did the hare have left to run after his break?” Insist that the team that makes up the problem must have the correct answer to it. Then you can gather up all the problems and answers for a center to use in future studies.
• Zeno’s paradox is under critical thinking below, but it’s also a neat math problem and a way to think about fractions.

Economics

• A lesson on specialization compares the tortoise and the hare, suggesting that by specializing, each can make best use of his particular strengths.
• The story is often used as a metaphor in economics news. Right now, China and India and Linux and Mac/Windows are being described in these terms. Have students do internet research to find examples of Tortoise and Hare economics metaphors, have them summarize the stories, and make a bulletin board showing cases in which slow and steady wins the economic race.

Critical Thinking

• Shodor Interactive has a cool demonstration of Zeno’s paradox using the tortoise and the hare.
• Most of us have had or known (or been) quick, flashy students whose grades were not as good as those of the earnest plodding student who worked hard and steadily. Is it time for a study skills lesson? A brief essay making this point might be a good choice. If you cut and paste to print this out, you might want to bowdlerize it a little bit.

Character Education

• The essay linked above questions what the moral of the story really is. “Slow and steady wins the race” is how we usually hear it, but it may also be, “Work hard” or “Don’t be overconfident,” or “Don’t boast.” Have students come up with as many morals as possible and have them present their favorites orally.

Dental Career Lesson Plan

Think of all the people involved in taking care of your teeth! Here’s a lesson plan that works for career day, community helpers lessons, or dental health lessons. It’s intended to help students move beyond the most obvious career choices (such as dentists) and realize how many different jobs there are and how interconnected they are.

You’ll need a ball of yarn or two for this, internet access, and art supplies for making collages (old magazines, glue, paper, scissors, poster board or construction paper).

In fact, begin by asking students to come up with a list of all the jobs involved in dental care.

One group can think about medical professionals who care for teeth:

• ThinkQuest on dental careers

There are also dental insurance workers:

• underwriters
• risk assessors
• salespeople
• brokers
• analysts

What about the people who make toothbrushes and toothpaste?

• researchers
• designers
• factory workers
• office workers
• salespeople
• truck drivers

Visit Macleans to get an idea of how toothpaste is made. This is an interactive video suitable for small children, but most students will learn something, and older kids can just move through it more quickly.

Once each group has a list, have each student to choose one of the jobs. Give name tags to each student with the job title written on them.

Now, give a big ball of yarn or string to the student representing the dentist. Have the dentist hold onto the end of the string and then toss the ball of string to another worker with whom the dentist would need to interact. For example, the dentist will need to work directly with the hygienist. The hygienist will then hold onto the strong and toss the ball to a worker with whom he or she would interact, such as an insurance analyst or a toothpaste salesperson who is offering samples for the dental office.

Can you get all the students interconnected? It might take quite a few passes, but you probably can. However, you might want to start another ball of yarn at a different point.

Now, have each student do some research to determine how people prepare for the jobs, and the skills and traits required to succeed at each job.

Finally, have students create collages showing what they’ve learned about the various careers involved in caring for teeth.

Commercial Jingles Lesson Plans

Poetry is an art form, and poets like Shakespeare, Yeats, and Dr. Seuss bring pleasure to millions. Poetry is central to songs, too, from ballads to rock.

But there’s another use of poetry which might be more familiar to your students: commercial jingles. Study them as a fun diversion in National Poetry Month.

First, listen to some examples. Give students a homework assignment to find a good example of a song or chant written for advertising purposes and make a class list, or go directly to the classics.

YouTube is a great source of old commercial jingles. Some of these may be offensive, though; discussing the way commercials reflect the culture of the time can be great for older students, but you may not want to introduce this element into this lesson. Spinner has a collection of more recent ones.

My personal favorite is the Rice Krispies quodlibet:

Once you’ve heard a few examples, make a class list of the characteristics of a catchy jingle. Discuss rhythm, rhyme, and wordplay in the examples you’ve examined. Discuss the content, too: what sales points are being made. In the Rice Krispies song, no features or benefits of the product are mentioned. Is that typical of jingles?

Think about the music and the delivery, too. Is there a genre of music that seems more effective for jingles, or is the commercial jingle a genre of its own?

Ask students, too, whether they think they’re influenced by commercial jingles. Most think they aren’t, but research shows that people are 10 times more likely to remember a jingle as to recall a slogan.

Now it’s time to write your own. Perhaps your school could do with a good jingle!

• Decide on the main points you want to cover. Perhaps the awesomeness of your sports teams or the unbeatable cafeteria will be the focal points, or maybe you have more AP class offerings than most. Maybe you, like many commercial jingle writers, don’t have a serious point to make but just want to get your jingle stuck in people’s heads.
• Come up with some rhymes that make your point.
• Fill in with enough words to complete the jingle.
• Choose a tune from those the class already knows, or make up a new one to go with your words.

Spread your jingle around!

Combine this lesson with our classroom logo lesson plan and do some thinking about economics, marketing, and branding.

Wedding Theme Lesson Plans

Customs related to love, courtship, weddings, and marriage vary significantly from one culture to another and throughout history. Consider this theme  as a way to approach standards in social studies.

Young children enjoy dramatic play involving weddings. Add a bride costume to your dramatic play area, or an assortment of wedding veils (available inexpensively at craft shops) and artificial flower bouquets. Have a few fun wedding themed picture books:

• Eve Bunting’s The Wedding tells of a cow on the way to her wedding helpfully providing transportation for the various animals who will be helping out at the wedding.
• Angelina and the Royal Wedding has Angeline Ballerina attending a very posh wedding.
• Miss Spider’s Wedding continues the story of Miss Spider with luminous pictures and romantic verse.
• Uncle Peter’s Amazing Chinese Wedding incorporates traditional Chinese wedding customs and the universal experience of jealousy among young children when someone else gets to be the center of attention.
• Snapshots from the Wedding by poet Gary Soto gives a wonderful portrait of a traditional Mexican American wedding from a child’s point of view.
• There are also many, many books of the ___ at the Wedding variety, from Cam Jansen to Barbie to Biscuit the puppy. If your class has favorite characters, the chances of finding a wedding themed book for them are pretty good.

Wedding customs vary from one country to another, and from one U.S. tradition to another.

• Have students ask to see their parents’  or other relatives’ wedding albums and draw a labeled picture of their favorite photo from the album.
• Divide students into groups to research wedding customs in different countries, either online or at a library. A number of very interesting customs continue to be observed in the context of weddings, such as the fish skin wedding dresses of the Hezhe people and the old Scottish custom of breaking bread or cake over the head of the bride.  Because quite a few questionable websites (websites that may damage computers with malware) will come up for searches on “wedding customs,” we recommend that online research be conducted in the school computer lab or library with strong security settings, rather than being assigned as homework.
• Interviewing individuals is another good way of gaining this information; a survey of wedding customs will make a very good oral history project.
• View clips of weddings from movies. As you watch, create a class list of customs observed. If you’ve done any of the other projects from this section, compare the customs shown in movies with the real life customs you’ve discovered.

Weddings and marriage customs have changed through time. One difference is that modern couples in the United States and much of the rest of the world now expect to choose their own marriage partners. This hasn’t always been true. Examine the idea of who should choose the spouse:

• A lesson plan introducing Romeo and Juliet asks students to compare their ideas of a perfect spouse with those of their parents.
• A transcript of a story on arranged marriages from Religion and Ethics Newsweekly examines Hindu and Orthodox Jewish examples of arranged marriages. Use the transcript as a reader’s theater script to introduce the topic of arranged marriage in the modern world.

Weddings can be simple or complicated. Look into the economics and logistics of weddings with one of these projects:

• A Webquest challenges students to plan a wedding for Romeo and Juliet. Not only does this provide some happily ever after for the star-crossed lovers, it also send students into research on the customs and mores of the time.
• Many modern couples employ a wedding planner. Research this career and create a business plan for someone starting up a business as a wedding planner. Use templates from the Small Business Administration and research online or in your community.
• As part of the oral history project discussed above, or through direct research, figure out the cost of a wedding. Students can be divided into groups and given budgets to work with, or the class can attempt to find price ranges for ordinary wedding expenses such as a cake, bridal gown, or wedding invitations.
• A Royal Wedding took place recently, as England’s Prince William married Kate Middleton. Collect news reports and study how the event was covered and how it affected people. There’s also an economic effect from a highly-publicized wedding, as tourists visit the area and interest increases. Compare the royal wedding with U.S. celebrity weddings.

A wedding is a terrific opportunity to think about design. A wedding must be a beautiful and special event, with lots of photographs and spectators. Yet the works of art created for a wedding also are intended to be worn, carried, thrown, eaten, and used for various ceremonial purposes. Challenge students to design a wedding cake, dress, bouquet, or other traditional item, keeping in mind the practical aspects as well as the aesthetic ones.

Johnny Appleseed Lesson Plans

John Chapman, who became known as “Johnny Appleseed,” was born on September 26th, 1774. He left home at eighteen and traveled around the Midwest planting nurseries and doing good deeds.

There are a number of good picture books for this American legend, including versions by favorites Steven Kellogg and Carol Ottolenghi.

You can also read the story online:

• Enchanted Learning has a very simple story with links to printable pages.
• The Library of Congress has a comfortable elementary-level online reading passage.
• A discussion of Johnny Appleseed’s business approach and character from Mass Humanities has an interesting perspective.

Go multimedia:

• The Census Department has a podcast to listen to.
• There’s a Johnny Appleseed glog at Glogster. Is this the day to take up glogging in your classroom?
• Watch Disney’s 1948 cartoon version of the story on YouTube.

Once you’ve read or watched the story, consider some cross-curricular activities on Johnny Appleseed:

Science

• While storybook versions of John Chapman’s life sometimes show him scattering apple seeds willynilly, he actually trained as an orchardist and planted his nurseries carefully, going back to visit them regularly. Ask an orchardist or agriculture expert to visit the class, or visit a local orchard  and learn what’s involved in planting an orchard successfully.
• Compare the nutritional value of apples with that of other snacks.
• Johnny Appleseed is considered a conservationist by many modern thinkers. Have students conduct research on his life and decide whether this is true or not.

Economics

• Chapman’s business practices were very unusual by modern standards. He extended credit to everyone, never pressed people for payment, accepted old clothes and cornmeal as barter, gave shares in his nurseries to lots of people without formal contracts, and didn’t show much concern for profit. Have students form groups and write up reports of what advice they as business consultants would offer Johnny Appleseed.
• Read this article making a counterclaim: that John Chapman was an astute businessman who got rich from the liquor trade, and was only turned into an American icon by the apple industry in the early 20th century. Comparing the two tales could make an excellent activity for research skills.
• The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World, Michael Pollan’s fascinating meld of history, economics, and science, has an interesting discussion of Johnny Appleseed. Check out the PBS website and see the PBS The Botany of Desire DVD (if you buy the DVD from Amazon, you can watch the film instantly online as well. The section on apples, and Johnny Appleseed, is suitable for classroom viewing). There are lesson plans and a teacher’s guide at the PBS site.

Character Education

• A recent poll found that Americans in general no longer think of self-sacrifice as a virtue. Johnny Appleseed’s life showed a definite tendency toward self-sacrifice: he gathered used clothing and gave away the best he found, wearing the worst himself. He gave away most of his earnings, and never settled down to have a home and family and enjoy the fruits of his labors. Was this a good choice on his part? Hold a class debate.
• In honor of Johnny Appleseed’s contributions, have a bit of a party. But an ostentatious celebration wouldn’t be in the Johnny Appleseed spirit. As a class, discuss what kind of party Johnny might have chosen to have and why. Use Venn diagrams to compare the party you imagine he’d have planned with those students would choose for themselves.

Foolish Jack Lesson Plans

“Lazy Jack,” or “Foolish Jack,” is a “noodlehead tale” found in many different countries. The basic story is of Jack, a foolish and lazy fellow who goes out to find work. He is paid each day in various goods. When he is paid in money, he loses it, and his mother tells him he should have put it in his pocket. When the next day he is paid in milk, he puts it in his pocket, and his mother tells him he should have carried it on his head. The next day he is paid in butter or cheese,which he puts on his head. Each day, he does with his new item what he should have done the day before.

On the last day, Jack is struggling home with a donkey over his shoulder when he passes the home of a princess, or at least a rich girl, who never laughs. Her father has sworn that he will give her hand in marriage to anyone who can make the girl laugh. Seeing Jack with the donkey, she bursts into laughter, and is married off to Jack, who never has to work again.

This is a fun story to act out and to illustrate. Encourage students to retell the story with different items, giving small groups time to work out their own versions and present them to the class.

This story is told in many countries, and there are several picture book versions, including Tony Ross’s Lazy Jack. None of these versions has quite the same narrative, but they are all similar enough to be recognizable.

• Juan Bobo Goes to Work is Marisa Montes’s easy reader version of  the Puerto Rican folktale. Here is a Reader’s Theater version of a Juan Bobo story.
• Read “Epaminondas” retold by Rick Walton here, or enjoy Colleen Salley’s picture book Epossumondas , in which the main character is a possum.
• The Grimm brothers’ story “Prudent Hans” is a German version of the story, involving a courtship rather than work. Chaucerian Girl has done a very nice retelling of this story, adding herself as the sister of Hans. You may need to explain that “casting sheep’s eyes” at someone means to look at them adoringly.
• The similar character in Portugal is known as “Joao Pateta.” He is sent shopping for his mother, and each time brings the items back in the manner appropriate to the previous errand.
• Silly Saburo is the Japanese take on this story, and there is a picture book including this story by Florence Sakade, Peach Boy and Other Japanese Children’s Favorite Stories.
• We find Amelia Bedelia , in the wildly popular series of beginning reader chapter books by Peggy Parish , very reminiscent of Foolish Jack.
• Noodlehead Stories is a collection of similar tales from around the world.

Writing

• Consider whether “Jack” in this story could have been the same Jack as in “Jack and the Beanstalk.” If so, have students write a narrative bridge between the two stories, first determining which seems more likely to have come first. If not, challenge them to write a story in which the two Jacks meet and have an adventure together.
• Noodlehead stories and trickster tales sometimes overlap. Study and compare the two genres.
• Here is a PDF lesson for writing noodlehead stories.
• Jack doesn’t go look for worked until he is forced to, and none of his employers keeps him on for more than one day. Have students pretend to be Jack’s employment counselor, and write a report on how he needs to improve his work habits.
• The princess or rich girl in the story isn’t usually a very important character. She appears only briefly, and we do not know why she was so sad, or whether Jack cheered her up permanently. Rewrite the story from her point of view.

Economics

• Jack doesn’t negotiate payments for his work ahead of time, but just works and accepts whatever is given to him at the end of the day. Is he getting wages, or are these payments gifts or charity? Debate, or use this as a writing prompt.
• Have students role play Jack and his employers negotiating wages. Encourage students to use economic factors such as return on investment, productivity, and supply and demand in their arguments.
• What place do casual laborers such as Jack have in the economic system? If you have been studying economics, this should lead to a rousing class discussion, and some good responsive writing.

Critical Thinking

• Classification is a skill that would have made a big difference to Jack. Write the names of the items Jack received in payment on word cards and have students use grouping circles, pocket charts, or other physical divisions to categorize them in as many ways as possible.
• Having determined all kinds of ways to sort the items, challenge the students to create a flow chart that would help Jack figure out how to get his payments safely home, given that he will have new items every day. If the students need help, you might start them off with the question “Is the payment alive?” Encourage them to make use of the sorting experience to do this task.
• Jack seems to have a very simple rule for learning from previous experience. His rule is reflected in the name of one of the folktales in this group, “I’ll Know Better Next Time.” Discuss other ways to benefit from experience. Can students state Jack’s rule? Can they come up with a better one?

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