World Mythology and Folklore for 3rd Grade Language Arts

Goal
My goal for this unit is to spark students’ curiosity as they learn about the differences
between mythological literature around the world. By the end of the unit, I would like
students to be able to place themselves within the mythology of their family or
community (or for older classes, come up with an idea about the folklore of our
classroom community).
Rational
Mythology consistently has and still does influence literature and film. By introducing
my students to this genre, they are getting a head start at understanding the origin for
many different aspects of their favorite literature. Furthermore, instead of limiting this
unit to something like Greek mythology, I have included lessons for mythological texts
from around the world. This is an important part of my curriculum so students of all
different cultural and ethnic backgrounds can feel like they are represented in the
curriculum. Similarly, it allows students to learn about cultures that are different from
theirs to help foster a healthy and positive understanding of those who are different
from them.
Overview
Students will learn about the different tropes in different mythologies from around the
world. We will touch on Greek, Egyptian, Indian, Native American, and Central
American mythologies. We will be specifically looking at Native American mythology in
the context of the Pomo tribe because they are the tribe that is local to our area.
Similarly, we will also be looking into Aztec mythology because there is a strong
Hispanic influence in our area as well. This unit plan is easily adaptable between 3rd,
4th and 5th grade classrooms.

READING:
Students will be reading excerpts from the book The Illustrated Book of Myths : Tales
and Legends of the World by Neil Philip. We will also be using Reader’s Theater stories
from the following authors: free online scripts from Aaron Sheperd, scripts from Carol
Pugliano-Martin’s book, Greek Myth Plays, and scripts from Linda Schwartz book,
Ancient Civilizations Reader's Theater. We will be using Philip’s book on world
mythology because it includes a wide range of culturally different myths from around
the world, as well as any necessary historical context. I also like that in the margins
there are definitions and images of new and challenging words. Similarly, there are also
illustrations of the myths to help students remain engaged.
Standards:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.3.1
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.3.2
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.3.3
 CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.3.4
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.3.5
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.3.6
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.3.7
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.3.10

WRITING: Students will engage in writing activities that help them develop and
strengthen their ability to think critically and comprehensively about a text, and develop
narrative and opinion writing skills. Please see the activity section for details on the
types of things students will be writing. I have specifically included writing activities
that develop students’ creativity in narrative writing. This is important to me because I
feel like this is a genre of writing that often gets overlooked due to many schools’ focus
on technical and essay writing.
Standards:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.3.1
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.3.3
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.3.5
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.3.8
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.3.10

LANGUAGE: As a part of the activities I have created (included below) students will
develop and strengthen their knowledge of standard English grammar and usage
conventions, learn how language affects the way ideas come across and expand their
vocabulary. These are important skills for students to learn because it affects them in
their day-to-day life. The stronger their grasp is on language, the easier it will be for
them to communicate effectively with others.
Standards:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.3.1
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.3.3
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.3.4
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.3.5

Activities
READER’S THEATER:
Upon receiving the reader’s theater script, students will break off into groups and read
through the play at their own pace. The purpose of this is to familiarize themselves with
the language and ideas presented in the script. After they have become acquainted with
the text, we will read through the text as a class, with volunteers (or assigned) to read for
each part. This should be engaging; encourage the students to have fun with it, make up
voices and personalities to go with the words. After this, we will have a class discussion
about what we have read, paying attention to the character details, plot of the story and
meaning.
- Greek: We will be using a TBD script from the book Greek Myth Plays by Carol
Pugliano-Martin.
- Egyptian: We will be using Ancient Civilizations Reader's Theater, “Land
Between the Rivers” by Linda Schwartz for this section of the unit.
- Indian: We will be using The Princess and the God: A Tale of Ancient India by
Aaron Sheperd for this section of the unit.
- Native Americans: We will be using The Hidden One: A Native American Legend
by Aaron Sheperd for this section of the unit.
- Aztec: We will be using Ancient Civilizations Reader's Theater, “A Special Day”,
by Linda Schwartz for this section of the unit.

MY BEST FRIEND THE MYTHOLOGICAL CHARACTER: To help students make

connections about the importance of characters in a story, there will be times when I
will ask them to work on an activity regarding character description. This is an exercise
that will help them with their end of unit project. Students are to pick a character and
pretend they are best friends. Students will describe the character’s personality traits,
feelings and challenges. Layout is similar to a mindmap, with the character’s name in
the center and the description around them.

DECODING VOCABULARY: One of the great challenges of this unit is the new words
that students will become acquainted with. Because we will be discussing ancient
societies, the language will be different than what they are used to. At the beginning of
each unit, I will introduce any new vocabulary I want students to focus on. We will have
a discussion about the words to see if they can come to any conclusions about what the
words mean. This helps to gauge where the students are at as well as pick out 3 possible
words that would be most beneficial for the students to use this activity. Additionally,
while they are reading other things during the week, students are to mark up at least one
word they aren’t sure of. Next, students would fill out a worksheet that helps them
commit the word to their productive vocabulary. The worksheet I would use comes from
the Florida Center for Reading Research website and can be found here.

STORY REVIEWS: This activity will be used to help students identify plot elements,
craft and meaning. Students will come up with an opinion about a text we have read and
list reasons with evidence to show how they came up with that opinion.

PAUSE...WHAT HAPPENS NEXT: This is a fun group and class discussion activity that
I was inspired to do from my colleagues at Chico State. Before finishing the story, stop at
some point and get students into groups. Then ask them to discuss what they think will
happen next in the story and why. Then, bring the class back together and have students
share out what they thought. After every group has shared, continue reading the story
and let them see how close they got. This is a fun way to check for attention and
understanding.

MY MYTHOLOGY: This is the end of the unit project. Guiding questions: If you were a
character from mythology what would you be like? Would you have special abilities?
What types of things would you do? How would other people describe you? What would
you teach others? Students will write a short story and draw pictures relating to their
writing.

Unit Calendar (Overview)

MON TUES WED THURS FRI

Greek -Introduce - Class Reader’s - Class -Video

Read: Theater Read: -Coloring
-Decoding Excerpt (Folktale/Le Excerpt Pages
Vocab from Philip gend) from Philip
(Myth) (Myth)
- Pause -My Best
What Friend
Happens
Next

Egyptian -Introduce Class Read: Reader’s - Class -Video

- Decoding Excerpt Theater Read: -Coloring
Vocab from Philip (Folktale/Le Excerpt Pages
- Story gend) from Philip
Review (Myth)
-My Best
Friend

Indian -Introduce Class Read: Reader’s - Class -Video

- Decoding Excerpt Theater Read: -Coloring
Vocab from Philip (Folktale/Le Excerpt Pages
- Pause gend) from Philip
What (Myth)
Happens -My Best
Next Friend

Native -Introduce Class Read: Reader’s - Class -Video

American - Decoding Excerpt Theater Read: -Coloring
Vocab from Philip (Folktale/Le Excerpt Pages
- Story gend) from Philip
 Review (Myth)
-My Best
Friend

Central -Introduce Class Read: Reader’s - Class -Video

American - Decoding Excerpt Theater Read: -Coloring
Vocab from Philip (Folktale/Le Excerpt Pages
- Pause gend) from Philip
What (Myth)
Happens -My Best
Next Friend

Project -Introduce My My My Present in

Mythology Mythology Mythology groups
Work Time Work Time Work Time

Sample Week:

WEEK 1

Monday.
- Introduction:
- Show this Ancient Greece Video to acquaint students with the time
period and culture that Greek mythology is centered around
- Show this video about myths to help students understand the type
of literature that we will be dealing with for the next few weeks. She
also gives a brief overview of the main Gods and Goddesses in
Greek mythology.
- Decoding Vocab:
- Prep: Pick out words from the texts for the week that you would flag
as advanced. I would put specific words here, but I do not have
access to the text due to the coronavirus.
- Give students a sentence or two with the words on the board and
have them try and figure out what they mean. Then, as a class, try
and come up with a correct definition.
Tuesday.
- Class Read: The Gift of Fire in Neil Philip’s book. (Greek Beginnings)
- Prep: When printing out stories, print it in two parts. Give the first
part to students before reading.
- Ask students to underline, circle, or highlight words they don’t
know as they are reading along.
- Pause, what happens next?: When the first part is finished being read,
have a discussion with students to point out some of the things that
 happened, the characters, and what the story is about after reading the
first part. Then have students get into groups (5 or 6 groups) and ask them
to talk about what they think is going to happen next. Bring the class back
after 5 minutes and ask each group to share out.
- Once everyone has shared, read the second half and see if anyone
was correct.
- After finishing, ask students if they found any words they didn’t
know and write them on the board. As a class, have students use
context clues in the text to try and figure out what they mean.
Wednesday.
- Reader’s Theater: TBD script from Greek Myth Plays by Carol Pugliano-
Martin. I don’t have access to this text, so I can’t provide a specific play.
- First break students off into groups (give or take 5 students per
group). Assign each group a section of the play. Give students time
(approx 30 minutes) to read through their section, and figure out
amongst themselves who should read which parts. Intervene only
when necessary to help with this process. Then, when they have had
time to read, decide and practice their parts, have students move
the desks and have them sit in a half-circle facing the front of the
classroom (multiple rows allowed). Each group will then take turns
standing in front of the class and read their part from their section.
Bonus points if anyone wants to act anything out, but this is
challenging stuff, so it isn’t required.
- At the end of this activity, wrap up by discussing what they think
the myth was about, and clarify any words they found challenging.
Thursday.
- Class Read: Theseus and the Minotaur in Neil Philip’s book. (Greek
Stories)
- Prep: When printing out stories, print it in two parts. Give the first
part to students before reading.
- Ask students to underline, circle, or highlight words they don’t
know as they are reading along.
- After finishing, ask students if they found any words they didn’t
know and write them on the board. As a class, have students use
context clues in the text to try and figure out what they mean.
- My Best Friend: Sometimes, when you read, you may find yourself really
liking a certain character. You may even wish this character was your
friend in real life. For this exercise, you are going to imagine exactly that.
- Ask students to call out names of characters from the texts or videos
you have read/watched throughout the week and write them on the
board. Then, ask them to choose a main character that they thought
 was interesting. This character can be a villain or a hero. Students
are to imagine this character is their best friend. They will then fill
out this custom made mind map. Students will write the character’s
name down on the character map below. Then, they will answer the
questions by filling in the boxes below them. It may be helpful for
students to go back to the story and highlight or underline all the
places where the character is mentioned, speaking or being
described.
Friday.
- Videos: Show students this playlist. Have students vote for 3 videos that
they want to watch in class.
- Coloring Page: Print out these coloring pages and have students pick out
which God or Goddess they want to color while watching the videos.

Reflection
Perhaps due to complications that occurred because of the Coronavirus pandemic, I
learned that it is of utmost importance to have physical access to the materials you think
you will be using for the unit. It was hard for me to determine whether or not a book or
activity would work, because I was limited to free internet resources, and sometimes
could not gain access to the whole thing.

The main thing that excited me about this unit is that I will be learning along with the
students. I love mythology, folklore and legends, but there are many cultures that I have
not yet studied. I am looking forward to this unit being a sort of “break” from the
technical, formulaic side of schooling, as the unit revolves around personal
interpretation. I am excited to see how students develop their own interpretations and
opinions of the text, especially ones that are culturally different from them.

I am a little concerned that I am covering things too fast (one week per culture seems
almost too brief), but it works fine as a survey of different mythologies. Furthermore, I
am concerned that I have either too much, or not enough, or will be moving too fast for
the age group that I am going for to grasp the concepts. It is hard, because the only way I
would be able to find this out is through trial and error. Other than that, I feel good that
the unit satisfies a good amount of common core state standards while still being
interesting and engaging.