Teaching Theme & Comparing Events

RL 4.9 Compare and contrast the treatment of similar themes and topics and patterns of events in stories, myths, and traditional literature from different cultures.

This one was tricky for my students.  The stories are from two completely different authors, two completely different cultures and events, and two completely different story lines...or were they?

"Wading Pool"

At first, I started small.  We had to get our feet wet, before we could dive head first into this one. I found similar fairy tales written from different cultures' perspectives.  Cinderella is one of the easiest to find!  There are many versions of Cinderella from almost every culture and while this is not meeting the standard exactly, it was a starting point.  It allowed my students to focus on the the overall shared theme, and even pattern of events, but to try to find the unique characteristics of each culture first.  And for my Midwest group with little diversity, a window into other cultures was vital before we jumped into the deep end. 

"Tippy-Toes Touching"

Once I felt like my students could pull apart small cultural differences between stories they were well familiar with, I was ready to introduce them to new folktales that shared a similar theme, however, each culture had their own way of achieving that theme.  

I began with this discussion handout to lead our thinking about each text that we come to:

This helps students develop vital vocabulary to help them
analyze these folktales at a deeper level.
Click here to download this resource!

It became evident that each culture showed specific behaviors that were especially valued through the arrival of a universal theme.

For instance...

I always begin my instruction with this Japanese folktale.  I fell in love with the culture, their values, and the events that lead us to the theme.  "Mr. Lucky Straw" is  a folktale that tells of a young man who has very little at all.  This is key to the theme.  We follow him along his journey as he meets many people along the roadside.  Each person he meets, he offers them something of his own, and without expecting anything in return, he receives something in greater value than what was given.  

Throughout this story, I have my students collect the behaviors that are clear the Japanese culture values.

Such as: generosity, caring, resourcefulness, kindness, etc.

We used these behaviors to discuss the behavior shown throughout the text:  generosity.  This was used to develop a theme statement.  We decided on 

When you give to others, you get more in return.

This could mean literally, or figuratively.

"Deep End"

Next, we jumped into another folktale that showed great generosity from the Native American folktale.  "The Legend of the Bluebonnet" also begins with a young girl who has little and no family.  The spirits ask her to sacrifice the only thing that matters to her at all:  the doll left behind from her family.  She does and saves her people from a seven year drought.  

This folktale shows similar behaviors that are valued as the Japanese culture.  We used this similarity to find in what ways both cultures show generosity. 

We plotted each event that showed us the theme for each story.  We then found similarities between each and synthesized them into concise statements.  The events in each story became our evidence to explain the similarities, but naturally, they were done in different events so that also became our differences.

We continued this process using other folktales from different cultures, displaying similar themes. 

Like what you saw?  Check out my TpT store, Teaching Littles, to purchase this complete 2 1/2 week unit, including all the resources you saw in the post!

How do you teach RL 4.9?  

Comment below to share your strategies!