Sherry Norfolk ~ Study Guide: "Pacific Rim"

Program Description

Ring Around the Pacific Rim is a fast-paced interactive romp around the Pacific Rim which includes beautifully-crafted folktales from Japan, Australia, Mexico, Canada, South and Central America, Asia and Oceania. Highlighting the people, animals, habitats and customs of these diverse cultures, students will be able to enlarge their dreams and desires of traveling to faraway exotic countries. NOTE: This program can be tailored to focus on one or more of the countries listed.

Artist Bio

Sherry Norfolk is an acclaimed performer, appearing in Hong Kong, Anchorage, the Bahamas, Honolulu, Grand Canyon National Park and hundreds of points in between. With a B.A. in Elementary Education and a Masters in Library Science, she performs and teaches storytelling residencies through Young Audiences Woodruff Arts Center, Springboard to Learning / Young Audiences of St. Louis, and several state arts councils. Sherry is co-author with her husband Bobby of The Moral of the Story: Folktales for Character Development, 2nd Ed. (August House, 2006), and co-editor of The Storytelling Classroom: Applications Across the Curriculum (Libraries Unlimited, 2006).

Background on Art Form

Storytelling is the art of using words, gestures, facial expression, and body language to bring a story to life in the listener’s imagination. From the beginning of time, storytelling has been the way cultures have preserved and celebrated their memories, passed on their values and belief systems, entertained, instructed and reported. Today, storytelling is recognized as one of the most effective brain-compatible teaching strategies, accessible for children with diverse abilities and disabilities, and applicable to all “ways of knowing.” Storytelling continues to invite us all to “Enter the Theater of the Mind-the Imagination!”

Pre/Post Activities

Prepare (Pre- or pre-performance)

Teachers, please read this to your students:

In our assembly today, we’re going to participate in a storytelling performance by Sherry Norfolk. PARTICIPATE means that you’ll be part of the program – as good listeners, using your imagination to “see” the characters, setting, and action. Sometimes, you may be invited to use your brains, voice and hands to help bring a story to life. Sherry says that storytelling is the most fun when the storyteller and the listeners work together to create the story – so let’s make this a fun experience for everyone!

Warm Up Questions to set the stage for engaging students:

• What is a folktale?
• What kinds of information do you think we kind learn about Japan, Mexico, etc., by listening to a folktale from that country?
• What folktales do you know? Where are they from? What can you learn from them?
• Example: Let’s talk about a folktale that we all know, such as “The Three Billy Goats Gruff.” Where is it from? (Norway) What kinds of animals do you think they have in Norway? (goats!) What does the land look like – flat, mountainous, swampy, etc.? How do parents want their children to solve problems?
• Listen for the message in the story: what do you think the original tellers of this story want their children to learn? Does everybody hear the same message? Why or why not?

Reflect (Post- or post-performance)

Quick Writes: take 5 minutes to write about the story that was most memorable to you. What made it memorable?

Connections: choose one story you heard today and discuss with a partner how it relates to your own experiences, how it relates to something you have read or watched on TV or the movies, and how it relates to the school, community or the world, and how does it relate to what you already know about the country it came from?

What’s New? Tell a partner about any new information you learned about Japan, Mexico, etc? How did you learn that in the story?

Additional Activities

How and Why
What animal are you going to talk about?
What will you explain about it?
How does the animal look in the beginning of the story?
How does the animal feel about the way it looks? Why?
What happens to change the way it looks? (Think about why it gets changed, who might do it, and how it gets done)
How does the animal feel at the end of the story? Why?

Vocabulary

Rim – Edge or border
Pacific Rim -- Countries that lie on the shores of the Pacific Ocean.
Continent -- One of the seven great land masses of the world.
Oceana -- Collective name for the islands of the South Seas.
Volcano – geological landform usually generated by the eruption through a vent in a planet's surface of magma, molten rock welling up from the planet's interior

Resources for Teachers & Students
Websites

www.volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/kids/kids.html
Excellent resource for info, legends and even a virtual volcano field trip!
www.kms.bham.wednet.edu/lobby.htm
Pacific Rim Museum of Culture website provides windows into other cultures. Although designed for middle schoolers, this site has something for all ages.

Books

Brenner, Anita. The Boy Who Could Do Anything and other Mexican Folk Tales. Linnet Books, 1992.
Edmonds, I.G. Ooka the Wide: Tales of Old Japan. Linnet Books, 1994.
Ingpen, Robert. Folktales and Fables of Asia and Australia. Chelsea House, 1994.
Martin, Eva. Tales of the Far North. Dial. 1984. (French and English Canadian Fairytales)
Webber, Desiree, et al. Travel the Globe: Multicultural Story Times. Libraries Unlimited,1998.