School Programs:
Tall Tales & Urban Legends
When folks back east first heard descriptions of the vast western frontier, they didn't know where the facts began and the fiction ended. The pioneers soon developed an exaggerated form of storytelling to present the BIG picture: The TALL Tale. Dressed as an 1840's trail scout, the Texas-born storyteller spins yarns taller, livelier, and wilder than any ever heard before!
Goals
The students discover the land and people of America's westward moving frontier. They'll learn about the hopes and hardships travelers faced on the Oregon Trail. Further, students encounter the reality of Plains Indian life in the 1900's. Fact and fiction will merge and untangle when students listen to legends of the figures who embody the American frontier. The students will write their own TALL Tale, and, time permitting, learn to tell their own exaggerated story.
Objectives
Students, fifth through ninth grade, will be immersed in basic facts about frontier travel, life on the trail, and homesteading. They'll see settlers from a Plains Indian point of view. Listening to TALL Tales dramatizes the art of exaggeration to students, giving ideas for improving writing. Techniques for writing and telling TALL Tales will be demonstrated and practiced.
Activities
The storyteller in costume opens the day with a 45 minute perform-ance, followed by a 15 minute question and answer period. Tales of various characters both real and/or imagined are told.
Performances may include stories of:
- Jim Bridger
- Davy Crockett
- Johnny Appleseed
- Annie Oakley
- John Henry
- Mike Fink
- Stormalong
- Pecos Bill
- Paul Bunyan
- Calamity Jane
- Bill Greenfield
- Anthony Van Corlear and others upon request.
Workshops
The performance leads each class to brainstorm a list of favorite examples of exaggeration. The list serves as a model for a class created TALL tale. We exaggerate a setting, characters, plot, and result, (again using brainstorm style), to compose the class TALL tale. Finally, given a 'story starter' (i.e. Once upon a time, the Hudson river did not flow both ways.... or, Once our town had a different name. Here's how our town got it's name....) students begin writing their own TALL tale . The performance stories, brainstorms and class tale, all serve to inspire and enable students to write an original TALL tale.
Further Ideas
Middle school students relish spine-tingling tales of real ghosts, true mysteries and strange doings. I propose to add to my traditional TALL tales contemporary urban legends. Gathered in three books by the folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand, these tales will provoke student interest in reading and writing. I may, then tell of The Vanishing Hitch-Hiker and Kentucky Fried Rat or The Choking Doberman.
- A storytelling swap, exhibition, or competition may be organized as part of a storytelling residency.
- Students may learn tales to tell younger students, boosting the confidence of all involved, while promoting education.
- A Bill Greenfield's Liars Lair, based on a theme, may be held to strengthen verbal, improvisation and exaggeration skills. (i.e. - My grandfather was so poor he had to sleep in a dresser drawer!' 'That's lucky! My grandfather slept in his father's shoe!' 'So, they had shoes...!')
- A TALL tale map depicting Paul Bunyan logging clear North Dakota, or Pecos Bill gouging out the Grand Canyon, etc., may also be developed as part of the storytelling residency.
Use some of the idoms below to start or develop a tall tale .....
- She's so skinny you have to shake the sheets to find her.
- He may look citified, but there's still a tick in his navel.
- Dirty work makes clean money.
- It's raining pitchforks and barn shoves.
- They are noisier than a boat load of calves floating down Hudson's river.