Navajo Story Cord and People make a Difference

Using the story cord: the tassles and beaded parts act as prompts for the story teller.

• Give each student a macrome cord and three 3x5 cards each with a hole punched in the corner.
• Ask students to write the three most important moments in their lives, one on each card.
• Give them six more such cards, three of one color and three of another to take home to ask someone in their parents generation and someone in their grandparents generation to write the three most important times in that students life.
• Let the student tie all the cards onto the cord and practice telling his/her story using the cards with the different colors as prompts.

This is not only a practice for oral presentation but gives a real sense of history as in the eye of the beholder. It also gives family at home a reason for believing that school values them.

This technique can be used for any story/biography/history lesson.

Give each person a biography of someone known to have made a difference or have them search the web with a suggested list of historical figures the class has brainstormed.
http://womenshistory.about.com/sitesearch.htm, http://www.time.com/time/time100/heroes/profile/parks01.html or http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1931/addams-bio.html are three good sites.

In pairs or groups of three let each person summarize his/her bio and then help each other verbalize how these people would act today in terms of the immigration issue. Any other issue could be used.

Situation: Immigration officials come to your school to round up parents of the children they are bringing or fetching.

1. Define the dilemma
2. What position would the person take and why?
3. What action would he/she take?
4. What position would you take and what action would you take and why?

Biographies

Martin Luther King Jr.

Mahatma Gandhi

César Chávez

Sojourner Truth

Rosa Parks

Back to top   |  Back to Lesson Plans   |  Home   |  Site Map