Author:
Brenda Beyal, Lorna Loy
Subject:
Literature
Material Type:
Lesson
Level:
Lower Elementary, Upper Elementary
Tags:
  • Coyote Story
  • Folktale
  • Lesson Plan
  • Native American Storytelling
  • Northwest Band of Shoshone Tribe
  • License:
    Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial
    Language:
    English
    Media Formats:
    Text/HTML

    Education Standards

    Handsome Coyote and Wildcat: A Tale from the Northwestern Band of Shoshone

    Handsome Coyote and Wildcat: A Tale from the Northwestern Band of Shoshone

    Overview

    "Handsome Coyote and Wildcat" is a Northwestern Band of Shoshone Nation tale. Coyote and Wildcate give us lesson in vanity.  Many Native American tribes have "Coyote Stories." Coyote stories are traditionally only told in the winter season. Coyote stories are meant to entertain or instruct, or both. After reading this tale, students will engage in a lesson of "summarizing" the story. 

    Details

    Time Frame: 45 minutes lesson

    Format: Whole group

    Authors: (if others contributed to the creation of this lesson) Orignal lesson by LeAnn Parker, modified by Brenda Beyal and Lorna Loy

     

     

     

     

    Goals and Outcomes

    As a result of this lesson, students will be able to: 

    • Read the story "Handsome Coyote and Wildcat" a Northwestern Shoshone tale to comprehend important events in the story, recount the story and determine it's central message, lesson or moral. 

    • Summarize the story - telling the  most important parts of the text in their own words. Students will take the story and write the main points. 

     

    Background for Teachers

    Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation

    The Shoshone, Paiute, Bannock and Ute people are related, and call themselves Newe or Neme (the People). Prior to contact with Europeans, the Newe groups formed small extended-family groupings that traveled extensively as semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers to survive in the harsh environment of the Great Basin desert. The Northwestern Shoshone traveled with the changing season. In the early autumn, the Northwestern Shoshone moved into the region near what is now Salmon, Idaho to fish. In the spring and summer, the Northwestern band traveled around southern Idaho and throughout Utah. During these months, they spent their time gathering seeds, roots, and berries and socializing with each other. Late summer was root digging time and smaller-game hunting time. Around late October, the band moved into western Utah and parts of Nevada for the annual gathering of pine nuts. The nutrient-rich nuts were an important part of the Shoshone diet. The area around what is now called Franklin and Preston, Idaho, was a permanent wintering home of the Northwestern Shoshone. It was known as Moson Kahni, which means Home of the Lungs. The rocks in the area looked sponge-like and made the Shoshone think of lungs. In this area and the rest of Cache Valley were natural places for the shoshone make their homes. More information about the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation can be accessed in the resources below. 

    The teacher needs to be familiar with the Shoshone tale, "Handsome Coyote and Wildcat." Teachers need to be familiar with the theme of the story and the purpose of traditional Native American tales. Teachers need to be able to explain to students that Native American traditional storytellers used legends, folktales and fables for many reasons. These stories recount the history of the people, they are used to entertain children, to educate children about morals and values, to teach life lessons through the characters and the consequences of thier choices. The resource, "Native American Storytelling" gives a summary of storytelling for teachers to use in picking main points that they feel are important to teach to thier students. 

    Summarizing

    In student-friendly terms, summarizing is telling the most important parts of a text, in your own words, in a much shorter way. Teaching summarizing shows students how to discern the essential ideas in a text, how to ignore irrelevant information, and how to integrate the central ideas in a meaningful way. Teaching students to summarize improves their memory for what they read and acts as a check for comprehension. Summarizing is a complex skill that will continue to develop over time, as students read increasingly complex texts.

    Try transitioning from structured routines for teaching story sequence, such as “Beginning, Middle, and End” and “First, Next, Then, Last”, to structured summarizing routines such as “Someone Wanted But So Then” or “Five-Finger (5Ws)” summarizing. These scaffolds give students a visual representation of their thinking and a way to structure their responses while prompting them to think about more than just the sequence of events.

    Related Resources:

    Lesson Preparation

    Initial Preparation

    • Do you know the eight tribal nations of Utah?

    • Read "Handsome Coyote and Wildcat" a Northwester Band of Shoshone tale. Coyote's experience teaches us about how to behave in the world. Coyote teaches us lesson in vanity. 

    • Teachers need to be able to explain to students that Native American traditional storytellers used legends, folktales and fables for many reasons. These stories recount the history of the people, they are used to entertain children, to educate children about morals and values, to teach life lessons through the characters and the consequences of thier choices. The resource, "Native American Storytelling" gives a summary of storytelling for teachers to use in picking main points that they feel are important to teach to thier students. 

    • How to teach "summarizing" - summarizing can be tricky, even for adults. The leap from retelling — which asks readers to recall the events in a story in logical order — to determining what is important or essential in a story and condensing the information into a summary, is a big one. A good way to scaffold young readers’ growing ability to summarize is to model and practice summarizing routines. The routine or structure that makes the most sense will be different depending on students’ age and experience.   

    Material Needed:

    Lesson Proceedure

     

    Vocabulary: appendage, bristle, haunches, sprawling, vain

    Lesson Procedure:

    1. Tell the students they will be reading a Native American traditional story, retold by the elders or storytellers from the Northwest Band of Shoshone tribe who are locate in Utah. Show them a map of this location - Utah - Indian Tribal Lands and help students locate the tribal lands. Give other background information to help students become familiar with the Northwestern Band of Shoshone Nation. 

    2. Share the purpose of Native American storytelling - pdf document "Native American Storytelling"

    3. Make predictions. Preview story or pre-teach vocabulary words from the booklet. 

    4. Preview the story: "Handsome Wildcat and Coyote"   You may say, "This is a traditional Shoshone folk tale. This tale's main character is Coyote. Many Native peoples use Coyote stories as a means of teaching morals and lessons. In this story Coyote and Wildcat pride themselves in being the most beautiful creature. They argue and fight over who is the most good looking. Their vanity gets the best of them. " or come up with your own  introduction for the origin of this tale. 

    5. Explain vanity to your students as a negative quality that means someone thinks too much of themselves, cares too much about themselves (at the expense of others), and is too focused on their own outside looks and outwardly appearance rather than caring about how they are in the inside. Coyote and Wildcat are the embodiment of vanity in the story.

    6. Read aloud the story to the whole group.

    7. Either as a whole group or individually, summarize the story, using a strategy called - "Somebody/Wanted/But/So"
      • Have students fold a sheet of paper in fourths (or use our graphic organizer) and write the following headings on the four sections: Somebody, Wanted, But, So.
      • Using a story that the students have read, have students complete their individual charts by writing a statement under each section: • Somebody (identify the character) • Wanted (describe the character’s goal) • But (describe a conflict that hinders the character) • So (describe the resolution of the conflict)
      • Remind students to focus on information that is most significant.
        • Somebody - indentify character(s) 
        • Wanted - describe the character's goal
        • But - describe the conflict that hinders the character
        • So - describe the resolution of the conflict
        • REMIND students to focus on information tha tis most significant

    Extension:

    More experienced students  - For students who are comfortable with the concept of main ideas and important details:

    1. Begin by reading or by having students listen to the text selection to be summarized.

    2. Ask students the following framework questions:

    • What are the main ideas?
    • What are the crucial details necessary for supporting the main ideas?
    • What information is irrelevant or unnecessary?

    3. Have them use keywords or phrases to identify main points from the text.

    Diverse Learners:

    • Provide sentence frames for oral and written summarizing lessons and activities.  
    • Keep in mind that different summarizing routines can be used for the same text. If students are working independently or in pairs, you can vary the method they use to summarize.  
    • Use visuals. Incorporate graphic organizers that use pictures rather than text as prompts and/or have students draw their summaries. 
    • Guide students throughout the summary writing process. Encourage them to write successively shorter summaries, refining their written piece until only the most essential and relevant information remains.
      Have students work together to answer summary questions and write responses. Consider pairing writers with emergent-writers and asking the writers to take dictation. This work prompts discussion about what’s important in the text and lets both students do the thinking work of summarizing.

     

     

    Assessments

     

    Informal Assesment

    1. Observation of class and student participation
    2. Exit slips - ask student to repsond to a question or prompt. 
      • write one thing you learned today
      • discuss how today's lesson could be used in the real world
      • write one question you have about today's lesson
    3. Ticket-out-the-door: students will be asked to define one of the three new terms learned in the lesson.