Hook Them With Story
"When we’re teaching about the natural science that we love, I think we often deluge our students with answers to questions that they have not asked. Why should they care? Why do they need to know all this stuff that they’ve maybe never thought about before?
"I find that a good way to get them thinking is to tell a lively story from folk tradition. The story won’t offer a scientific explanation, but it does have amazing power to make students listen, pay attention, remember, and wonder. Once we have caught their interest and invited them to wonder “How does that work?" we can start talking science.
"A story is a “hook” on which we can hang a lesson. And I recommend traditional folktales (398.2 in your library) because they fall naturally on listeners’ ears and are easy for us to learn. Our ancestors long ago dropped out the uninteresting or difficult parts! My "Tales From The Earthteller" column offers stories that I hope you can use." -- Fran Stallings
Fran's EarthTeller Tales columns use a folktale to introduce an ecological lesson. They first appeared in The Environmentor, a free e-newsletter for environmental educators, published by Oklahoma City University. Editor Beth Landon always finds wonderful graphics to illustrate Fran's columns! Here is the plain text. To see Beth's illustrated version, click the Environmentor link, go to the indicated Volume and Number (7.2 = Volume 7, Number 2), and scroll to the indicated pages. Enjoy the rest of each newsletter too. Excellent material!
- Frogs
- Earthworms
- Vultures
- Small Changes, Big Results
- Beavers
- Good or Bad? King Midas' Chickens
- Resource Depletion
- Evergreen
- 1.4 Wind
- 2.1 Cicadas
- 2.2 Migration
- 2.3 Daffodils
- 2.4 Nest Building
- 3.1 Wonderful Water Plant
- 3.2 Working Cats
- 3.3 Acorns, Pumpkins, and Osage Oranges
- 3.4 Ananda Recycles
- 3.5 Beautiful Opossum
- 3.6 Spotless Lotus
- 4.1 The Caterpillars of Maria Merian
- 4.2 The Camel and the Green Menace kudzu
- 4.3 Three Silly Goats Gruff
- 4.4 Geckos and Mosquitoes
- 4.5 Be Careful What You Wish For callery pears
- 4.6 Turnips and Sundews Making the best of a hard situation
- 5.1 Bison's Race with Mustang bison, wild horses, and the Milky Way
- 5.2 Day and Night, Summer and Winter
- 5.3 The Repentant Ferret ferrets, prairie dogs, drones & M&Ms
- 5.4 Why Bear Sleeps All Winter torpor vs hybernation
- 5.5 Bats, Taxes, and Bananas white-nose disease
- 5.6 What's Useless? milkweeds and Monarchs
- 6.1 Mink & Sun solar eclipses
- 6.2 Monkey & Buzzard buzzards, dead stuff, and gas leaks
- 6.3 Playing Dead tricky fox, dormant trees
- 6.4 Mistletoe Oklahoma's state emblem
- 6.5 Cottontail, Cottonwood rabbits' tails; cottonwood trees, seeds
- 6.6 Frogs' Advice swamps, amphibians, Chytrid
- 7.1 Prickly pear Mexico City, nopal
- 7.2 Vampire plants Headley Kow, dodder
- 7.3 Lizards' tails some tails come off!
- 7.4 Killing the goose, erosion
- 7.5 Tornado eggs, Pecos Bill & Great Salt Plains selenite crystals
- 7.6 Mole cricket Snake, cricket, and focused sounds
- 8.1 Plastic pollution Rustle & Shelley
- 8.2 Eww, gross -- but amazing Burying beetles
- 8.3 Why spiders are bald Tarantulas
- 8.4 Fighting fire -- and fear
- 9.1 Where butterflies come from Host and nectar plants
- 9.2 Coyote & the powerful berries
- 9.3 How birds got their colorful feathers. Also: What's a "nativar"?
- 9.4 Giants and pollen: mono or di-oecious?
- 9.5 Alligators -- in Oklahoma?
- 9.6 Why moths rule the night, and the dangers of night lighting
• 10.1 Bees and other pollinators
• 10.2 Survival by the Numbers How many offspring?
• 10.3 Little Things Help Don't underestimate them
• 10.4 False Signals: of wolves and dormant fruit trees
• 10.5 Nutrient Dilution Soup of the soup
• 10.6 Sunflowers
• 11.1 Honey and Honeysuckle and deer ticks
• 11.2 Love the Weeds
• 11.3 From the Ashes: phoenixes and prairie fires
• 11.4 Drought
• 11.5
• 11.6