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REFORT RESUMES ED 013 811 24 TE 000 053 A CURRICULUM FOR ENGLISH, GRADE 6, UNITS 58-70. NEBRASKA UNIV., LINCOLN, CURRICULUM DEV. CTR. PUB DATE 66 CONTRACT OEC-210-119 EDRS TRICE .MF-$1.00HC NOT AVAILABLE FROM ERRS. 244P. DESCRIPTORS- *CURRICULUM GUIDES, .ENGLISH CURRICULUM, *ENGLISH INSTRUCTION, *GRADE 6, *LITERATURE, BIOGRAPHIES, CHILDRENS BOOKS, COMPOSITION SKILLS (LITERARY), FABLES, FOLKLORE BOOKS, INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS, LANGUAGE, LITERARY ANALYSIS, MYTHOLOGY, NOVELS, POETRY, SYMBOLS (LITERARY) , NEBRASKA CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT CENTER GRADE-SIX UNITS OF THE NEBRASKA ENGLISH CURRICULUM CULMINATE THE ELEMENTS CC ALL PREVIOUS UNITS AND POINT TOW= A MORE ANALYTICAL STUDY Cf UTERATURE. "THE SEVEN VOYAGES OF SINBAD" IS USED TO REVIEW THE FOLK-TALE "PSEUDO-GENRE." LEWIS CARROLL'S 'ALICE" STORIES AND "A WRINKLE IN TIME" ILLUSTRATE THE FANCIFUL TALE AT ITS BEST. "BIG RED" COMPLETES THE UNITS ON ANIMAL STORIES, AND "THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER" INTRODUCES THE BASIC NOVEL FORM. A STUDY OF NORSE MYTHS REITERATES DEVICES USED IN MYTHS AND PRESENTS THE FIRST SERIOUS STUDY OF MYTHOLOGY AS LITERATURE. "THE HOBBIT," WITH TOLKIEN'S USE CC MYTHIC CHARACTERS AND CONCEPTIONS, ILLUSTRATES MANY LEVELS OF SYMBOLIC MEANING. "THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS," AN EPIC FABLE, INTRODUCES A SATIRIC, HUWIROUS, AND ALLEGORICAL REPRESENTATION CF SOCIETY. THE STORIES OF KING ARTHUR AND ULYSSES, BUILT AROUND A SINGLE PURO, POINT TO THE PLACE CC THE HERO IN THE EPIC FORM. CULTURES OUTSIDE THE CHILDREN'S EXPERIENCE ARE SEEN IN "THE SECRET OF THE ANDES" AND "HANS BRINKER." A BIOGRAPHY, "CARTIER SAILS THE ST. LAWRENCE," ENHANCES BOTH LITERATURE AND HISTORY THROUGH ITS INCLUSION Cf EXCERPTS FROM LOGBOOKS. THE FINAL UNIT, ON THE POEMS CF ROBERT FROST, DEMONSTRATES SOME OF THE BASIC TOOLS NECESSARY FOR THE READING AND UNDERSTANDING OF POETRY. THIS MANUAL IS AVAILABLE FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS, 215 NEBRASKA HALL, LINCOLN, NEBRASKA 68508. (SEE ALSO TE 000 048, TE 000 0541 AND TE 000 055.)(JO) A CURRICULUM FOR ENGLISH Grade 6 Units 58-70 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION & WELFARE OFFICE OF EDUCATION THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REPRODUCED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FROM THE PERSON OR ORGANIZATION ORIGINATING IT.POINTS OF VIEW OR OPINIONS STATED DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT OFFICIAL OFFICE OF EDUCATION POSITION V! POLICY. A CURRICULUM FOR ENGLISH Grade 6 Units 58-70 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS LINCOLN 1 is000a3 3 "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED B Y tSt .=- TO ERIC AND ORGANIZATIONS OPERATING UNDER AGREEMENTS WITH THE U.S. OFFICEOF EDUCATION. FURTHER REPRODUCTION OUTSID1 THE ERIC SYSTEM REQUIRES PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT OWNER." Copyright (e) 1966 by the University ofNebraska Press All Rights Reserved The materials in this curriculumwere created by funds supplied by The University of Nebraska The Woods Charitable Fuld The Hill Family Foundation The United States Office of Education (Contract No. 0E-2-10-119) Manufactured in the United States of America PREFACE The version of A Curriculum for English published here is an extension of the suggestions made in the Woods Curriculum Workshop of 1961; it is the result of a peculi- aly close collaboration between Nebraska classroom teachers and scholars from Nebraska and the country at large--a collaboration particularly intense between 1961 and 1964.The curriculum covers the years of kindergar- ten through high school in detail and makes suggestions for the first year of college.It is not a panacea for present problems it the teaching of English; it is more like a half formed slave struggling to free itself from the stone.In some cases, the materials represent the state of the art in 1961; in some cases, that of 1967; many of the materials are as incomplete, as imperfect or simplistic as the group which created the They are offered to remind their audience that scholars can concern themselves with schools and that teachers can fulfill the demands of scholarship; they are also offered for whatever use they may have in the classroom.Since hundreds of people collaborated in the creation of these materials, no names are attached to them. They should remain anonymous and peregrine. The Nebraska Curriculum Development Center CONTENTS Introduction vii Unit 58: Folk Tale. a . 1 The Seven Voyages ofSinbad Unit 59: Fanciful Tale. 15 Alice's Adventuresin Wonderland Through the LookingGlass Unit 60:Fanciful Tele . 37 A Wrinkle in Time Unit 61: Animal Story. 59 Big Red Unit 62: Adventure Story . 75 The Adventuresof Torn Sawyer Unit 63: Myth. 91 The Children of Odin Unit 64: Myth . 107 The Hobbit Unit 65: Satiric Fable . 129 The Wind in theWillows Unit 66: Other Lands and People . 149 Hans Brinker Unit 67: Other Lands and People . 165 Secret of the Andes Unit 68: Historical Fiction. 183 The Bcok of KingArthur and His NobleKnights Unit 69: Biography 199 Cartier Sails the St.Lawrence Unit 70: The Poetry of Robert Frost 211 vi INTRODUCTION TO THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PROGRAM The Nebraska elementary program is divided into units; the units center in the study of literature, often literature read aloud, and include work in language and composition integral to such study.It may be in o:-der to describe the premiseof the program. I. Premises of the Program For at least twenty ceaturies, the best literature produced in the western world was presented orally to audiences of many ages and social levels. And if it is true that great audiences produce great artists, then the audiences of such literature must have penetrated its meaning and been sensitive to its literary merit; there must have been some route of interchange of inspirationcontinually open between writers and audiences. From this it does not follow that children who as yet do not read should beinsensible to the attractions of fine litera- ture when it is appropriate to their level of intellect, imaginationand rhythmic sense. Before a child is able to read, before he is able to cope with the only partially systematicEnglish graphemic system, he has the need to come in contact with literature:if he cannot read, he can surely be read to--and this is abasic notion of the early units in this curriculum. We should surprise few teachers in saying that children can tell stories, oral tales, cycles of tales; they can create their own literary culture so to speak, and they perhaps can do this best at the prompting and inspiration of excellent literary works.Storytelling, modeled and unrnodelad, is thus a foundation activity suggested in this curriculum. The child's basically oral approach to literature will change as he masters reading skills, but he must know and feel that these reading skills are worth learning. The elementary school program for language, literature and composition should not be confused with a reading program.It is neither such a program nor a substitute for such a program. The development of methods for the teaching of reading is the proper con- cern of the reading expert and notof this study.Further linguistic research may lead to improvements in methods for the teachingof reading; and, when sufficient research data indicates that these improvements have been made, they should be synthesized in this curriculum. Our concern is with showing such literature aswill make reading worth the effort, composition an exercise in theimitation of excellence, and language study more than a bore. vii The language, literatureand compositionprogram for the elementary school isdesigned to teach students (1)to comprehend the more frequent oral and written conventionsof literature composedfor young children--formalor generic conventionsor simple rhetorical conventions; (2) to controlthese linguistic and literaryconventions in their own writing; and (3)to comprehend consciously themore frequent grammatical conventionswhich they can handle intheir speaking and writing. One who plansan elementary curriculum must firstidentify the basic generalizations ofthe discipline, second,represent thesegen- eralizations so that theycan be taught to children, and third,build a spiral curriculum whichcovers those basic concepts inever greater depth, thus developinga progressively more sophisticatedunderstand- Lag of them, Once introducedin a relatively simplefashion, a concept will be tzeated somewhatmore intensively each time itappears. All in all, the units of thecurriculum intend toexpose the student repeat- edly to facts and ideas thathe may use in order toproceed inductively to general conclusions about theconventions of good literature. The child'ssense of logic develops froman intuitive, anthropo- morphic apprehension to themore analytical apprehension of the junior high school student.The curriculum'ssequence of literary works and of suggested analogouscompositions endeavorsto display the same progress from the "mythic" and anthropomorphicto the realistic and the analytic, ethough this doesnot imply that theprogram at its uppet levels ignores "fabulous"literature and comparablecompositional forms.(The basic attitudes towardthe psychology of children's literature, its relation tocognition, and the place ofits emergence in psychology upon which thiscurriculum is basedare set forth in the following books: Philippe Aries,L'Enfant et la vie familialesous l'ancien regime; Jan VanDen Berg, "Adults and Children," in The Changing Nature of Man:Northrup Frye, Design forLearning[ a modification of the generictheory used in this program] .) II. The Units The materials for thecurriculum program in theelementary school consist of seventyspecific units for the variousgrade levels