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Today’s folktale comes from Vietnam in Southeast Asia where tigers once roamed the jungles in great numbers. Sadly, tigers are more rare in Vietnam today due to many changes in the past century. This folktale is evidence of a time when children learned important lessons through stories passed from generation to generation that explained the world around them. In this issue, the hardworking water buffalo explains to a stripe-less tiger that the water buffalo works for a human because the human has “wisdom.” The tale unfolds as proud and vain tiger pursues his quest for wisdom. What happens when tiger lets pride overcome common sense? How do those stripes come to be, and how does tiger feel about them once he has them covering his lush golden fur? Most importantly, what is the lesson learned from tiger’s behavior?
In this issue students will:
- read a folktale about the origin of the tiger’s stripes
- create a book by matching story to illustrations
- sequence events from beginning to end
- follow visual clues to draw a tiger’s face
- understand the origin and unique features of folktales
- discuss the moral of the story
- identify favorite famous folktales
- write a creative “good news” headline
- search the newspaper to create your own “words of wisdom”
- write descriptively about your favorite animal
7 page PDF
