5.2 Story and place: lessons from australian aboriginal storytelling

This is a lesson plan for helping improve students' writing and storytelling skills by encouraging them to give specific and descriptive information about the setting of a story. It was developed as part of the multidisciplinary Australia unit in Musical Travels for Children , but may be used separately. The activities included here - The Place of Place in Aboriginal Stories , Evoking Place in Descriptive Writing , and Sound and Gesture in Storytelling - may also be altered and/or used separately as needed. Also included below is some very basic information about Australian Aboriginal culture that will help you prepare the lessons.

Goals and requirements

• Goals - The student will become familiar with some aspects of Australian Aboriginal culture, and will practice techniques for evoking a strong sense of place when writing or telling a story.
• Grade Level - K-12 (adaptable)
• Student Prerequisites - Some introductory discussion and demonstration should precede the writing/storytelling activities. If you are not interested in discussing Aboriginal storytelling, you can substitute other literature that is more applicable to your class goals. There are many other cultures (including modern Western stand-up comedians!) who use gesture and sound effects in storytelling, and most literature genres, including nonfiction, include pieces that are good examples of how to ground a story in a specific place.
• Time Requirements - Allow ten to sixty minutes for the The Place of Place discussion (depending on the amount and depth of the information you want to give.), and ten minutes each to give the writing and storytelling assignments as homework or an entire class period for each to complete them in class. Allow time for in-class storytelling performances.

The place of place in aboriginal storytelling

Objectives and standards

• Objectives - Following this activity, students will be able to describe and discuss some aspects of Australian Aboriginal culture and storytelling practices.
• Subject Standards Addressed - National Standards for the English Language Arts standard 1 (Students read a wide range of print and non-print texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary works.) 2 (Students read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to build an understanding of the many dimensions (e.g., philosophical, ethical, aesthetic) of human experience.) 3 (Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics); National Standards in the Social Studies standard 1 (culture) and 3 (people, places and environments).
• Evaluation - Assess student participation in classroom discussion and/or include questions about the subject in a quiz or unit test.