Myths, Stories, and Legends
Submitted by Connie Nelson, Tony Kienitz
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Standards:
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Unit Timeframe:
1-2 Weeks
Unit Overview:
FRENCH FOCUS:
This major unit in French includes several stages. Students learn about 15th century village life in France through lecture and viewing and discussion of the French film "Le Retour de Martin Guerre". We read "Le Petit Chaperon Rouge" (Little Red Riding Hood) in the original Perrault version and compare it with the later German and modern American versions. The final performance assessment in this French unit is student creation of a video. Small groups of students prepare their version of the tale type for class viewing and plan to share it with the Grade 11 language arts classes.
GERMAN FOCUS:
The German students set out drawing on their previous interdisciplinary experiences for our first collaborative project. The project was designed to use the vocabulary of analytical thinking skills that they had learned in their freshman and sophomore years in their interdisciplinary language arts, social studies, and science courses. Students traveled in small groups to the 11th-grade language arts classes to present their analysis of Hansel and Grethel to the class. Their analysis of the tale was to serve as a model for the other students who would now repeat the same steps using different stories while the German students acted as the "experts" and assisted their fellow students with their analysis.
Context:
Grade 11 Language Arts students read "Little Read Riding Hood," "Hansel and Gretel" and "Little Thumb" among other tales as part of their unit on Myths and Folktales. French students read "Le Petit Chaperon Rouge" and "Le Petit Poucet" in the original Charles Perrault version. German students read "Hansel und Grethel" in the Brothers Grimm version. In Grade 11, the Social Studies classes are also studying myths, legends, and stories.
Teachers in all departments are aware of the timing of work in each discipline but aren't always able to synchronize efforts and don't worry too much about it except for the German class presentation to the Language Arts classes and the French class/German class discussion day. We inform students that behind the scenes discussion and collaboration have taken place among the teachers and encourage the students to share information gained in one class with another class when appropriate. The first unit brought language arts and world language courses together. Our objective was for the students to learn the purpose of stories both for families and for the larger society. Students are to note the differences in fairytale translations and consider how they are related to the culture.
Language Arts:
From their Language Arts class, our students received background knowledge about the psychological interpretation of fairytales from Bruno Bettelheim's "The Uses of Enchantment."French:
We read documents that substantiate this legend and talk about the cultural value of legends and stories. This provides a visual and psychological context for discussing other legends and fairytales in French.This activity follows the traditional reading, note-taking, discussion, and testing of comprehension of Perrault's tale "Le Petit Poucet". Background on peasant life in France during the 15th and 16th centuries is necessary to understand the historical perspective of the Perrault translations of fairytales that came from "The Great Cat Massacre."
The particular French view of the world that emerges from our reading and discussion could be summarized in the following statements:
· Life is hard
· Clear-headedness and quick wit are necessary to protect what little you have
· Moral nicety will get you nowhereModern French literature abounds in characters who exhibit this particular view of the world - Scapin, Scaramouche, Cyrano, Robert Macaire, to name a few. The French film, Cyrano, is also part of our French curriculum, as is the text in language arts, and we hope to make a connection there in the future.
German:
German students researched the work of the Grimm brothers and shared that information with the Language Arts classes. Specifically, they were to apply the notions of reasoning, evidence, and conclusion to the analysis of a German fairy tale, in this case an original version of Hansel and Grethel in German as told by the Brothers Grimm. In addition to their analysis of the tale, they were to read it with an eye open to cultural differences or biases that may have been present in the original that are not now present in other, more modern versions. Then came the hard part.They prepared a worksheet (see appendix) showing how they analyzed the tale and discussed with their fellow students not only the conclusions that they had drawn but also discussed the interesting cultural bias they found that had been completely erased from more modern versions of the story.
Note: This was part of a larger project funded by NEH with the intent of connecting humanities curriculua. In this grant, the Language Arts, Social Studies and World Languages departments worked together to develop linked curriculum.
General Unit References and Resources:
Fairy Tales:
Bettelheim, B. (1976). The Uses of enchantment: the meaning and importance of fairy tales. New York: Knopf. Distributed by Random House. The Complete Brothers' Grimm Fairy Tales. New York: Gramercy Books, 1981.Darnton, R. (1985). The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History. New York, NY: Vintage Books.
The Brothers Grimm. National Geographic. December, 1999.
The Brothers Grimm and the Evolution of the Fairy Tale. German Life Magazine. February/March, 1996.
Links or files for unit content: A new window will open for each lesson.
French - Lesson 1 - Le Petit Chaperon Rouge
French - Lesson 2 - Le Petit Poucet
French - Lesson 3 - Fairy Tale Video
German - Lesson 1 - Haensel und Grethel
German - Lesson 2 - Fairy Tale Analysis
German - Lesson 3 - Fairy Tale Video
Unit Assessment