• Introduce students to the idea of using folklore or a tall tale to tell a story.

• Explain that authors use unrealistic ideas in stories to show what a character would want to do in a certain situation

• - Give examples of famous tall tales: Paul Bunyan, Babe the Blue Ox, Davy Crockett, Pecos Bill, etc
• - Explore the region where the tall tale was believed to have taken place
• - What takes place to make the story unbelievable?

• Create a chart that organizes the information that students collected.

• Engage students in exploring various authors’ renditions of the same tall tale. Discuss similarities and differences in the stories.

• Discuss how tall tales/folklore were passed down for generations as oral stories and how details change depending upon the storyteller. People elaborate to make the story sound more interesting and to gather an audience.
• Give students a chance to share a tall tale or create their own.

• Introduce the concepts of Plutchik’s wheel of emotions to describe and categorize contrasting emotions.

• Discuss the 8 primary emotions: anger, fear, sadness, disgust, surprise, anticipation, trust and joy.
  

• - Lead your students in describing instances of these emotions such as: How do they make you feel? Which emotions do you like to avoid? What are some purposes that emotions can serve? What are some positive outcomes of expression? What are some negative?
• - Look at the colors Plutchik assigns to each of the primary emotions.

• · Lead the students in a discussion about which colors they might assign to the emotions. Would they assign the same, similar, or different colors? Why might they assign different colors? Do they agree with the words Plutchik used to describe the different levels of intensity for the 8 primary emotions? Would they use different words? Why or why not?

Notes to Teacher

One purpose of this motivation is to create students’ awareness of different regions and cultures through the use of folklore or tall tales as a way to tell stories through history.

Another purpose of this motivation is to present students with an opportunity to explore motivation behind storytellers.

A final purpose of this motivation is to provide students with an opportunity to analyze an author’s motivation for elaborating or creating a tall tale.

Robert Plutchik (21 October 1927 – 29 April 2006) was a professor and psychologist whose theory of emotions is one of the most influential classification approaches for general emotional responses.

Teachers: Research Plutchik’s wheel of emotions to find online sites to order classroom posters of the wheel to visually enhance learning for students.