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How the World Was Formed on Turtle’s Back Lesson

How the World Was Formed on Turtle’s Back Lesson

“How the World Was Formed on Turtle’s Back” is an Onondaga creation story that features a team of vibrant animal characters who work together to save a young woman’s life and create the world as we know it. This lesson provides numerous opportunities for students to use their bodies and voices to create characters and practice transformation. You may also integrate Language Arts by discussing the importance of personification and character traits in the story.

Lon Po Po Lesson

Lon Po Po Lesson

Lon Po Po Lesson: Conflict

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Objective: students identify conflict, problem and resolution in a story while problem solving.

Lon Po Po by Ed Young is a Little Red Riding Hood story from another culture and is beloved by children who play this as a full class drama. The words Lon and Po Po mean wolf and grandmother, respectively, in Chinese. Students love playing the conflict and burying themselves in the blankets as the wolf knocks on the door. You might want to take a role in this drama yourself! For this lesson you need a basket, Gingko tree leaf (a handmade one is fine), wolf's paw, and a very large blanket or quilt as props. Before starting this lesson, review our anonymous casting tips for choosing students to play different characters. This lesson is part of our recommended sequence in the Second Grade Curriculum.

Second Grade Drama Journal: Lon Po Po

To maximize student achievement, download this drama journal for students to use as reflection or formative assessment. For each lesson in the curriculum, we have created a corresponding journal page for your students. A drama journal allows participants to reflect on their learning and artistic growth (metacognition). It also allows you, the teacher, to see how students are using the drama vocabulary, thinking about big ideas, and perceiving their own strengths and weaknesses. If you use the journal for assessment and would like more assessment tools, visit our Second Grade Curriculum. 

Baby Tar Rabbit

Baby Tar Rabbit story 

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This story is for small groups of 3-4 and is adapted from Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus. Participants can enact both animal characters and body objects.  If you tell the story in a slight dialect, the students might be interested in using that dialect in their drama, but it is not essential.  It is good before you begin to determine if the students know about a briar patch.

Sydney and Jojo

Sydney and Jojo story

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This story was written for third graders in an inner city Chicago Public school.  In the inner city, it is important for brothers and sisters to look after one another because the parents are sometimes absent from their lives--the story works with that narrative.  This drama story targets the concepts and skills of Believability, Cultural/ Multicultural, Imagination, Imitation, Movement, Repetition, Story Elements: Character, and Recall.

The Sacred Scarab Root

The Sacred Scarab Root story

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This original story was written specifically for use in drama focusing on the concepts of Balance, Imagination, Cultural/Multicultural, Narrator/Storytelling, Repetition, Story Elements: Character, Conflict, Plot, Setting, Theme/Idea, and Transformation: Human Characters. It can also be used in the Body Objects Lesson if you are just getting started with drama. 

A little background information about the sacred scarab:

The sacred scarab is a species of dung beetle known for its habit of rolling animal dung into balls, laying eggs inside, and burying them in shafts in the ground. In ancient Egypt, these habits of the sacred scarab gained symbolic and religious significance. It was believed that only male scarabs existed and the birth of the beetle from the ball of dung was thought to be an act of self-creation. Because of this “spontaneous” birth, the sacred scarab became aligned to the creation god Khepri and likewise became a symbol of self-creation, resurrection, and eternal life. Khepri was also a sun god and thought to renew the sun each day before rolling it from the eastern to western horizon. The scarab’s rolling of the ball of dung was perceived as an earthly manifestation of Khepri’s rolling of the sun. Images of the scarab were widely used in Egyptian art and hieroglyphics and small carved scarabs were worn as necklaces. But, perhaps, the scarab’s greatest significance was in ancient Egyptian funereal culture. Due to its symbolic connection to resurrection and eternal life, scarab amulets were buried with mummies. These scarabs were know as “heart scarabs” because they were placed over the heart and thought to keep the secrets of the heart from incriminating the deceased at his final judgment.