Lesson Plans

Young Tribal’s is a cultural arts-based program for students grades K-3. This program has a variety of components that offer culturally rich teachings. The lesson plans and learning activities are adapted to meet grade-appropriate academic and arts standards.

At this grade level, children are naturally curious learners. They are usually eager to try new things and willing to create freely. Content integration is a natural way for young children to acquire meaning from the world. The creative arts can be a vehicle for understanding major concepts across content areas such as patterns, models, and processes. Collectively, areas of this program can reinforce and help  student’s learn math skills such as counting and grouping, emerging literacy skills such as sound/symbol correspondence, language arts, geography, and cultural studies.

* See below for individual lesson plans.

Cultural Arts 

IIlbelow

Every culture possesses its own creative arts language, which reflects its own traditions, concerns, and activities. To fully understand cultural history, we need to explore the nature of a cultural system and the role that its creative arts play in them.                                          Example’s of this would be:

Among the Mandinka of Gambia and Senegal there is a specialized type of professional musician known as a Jali. TheJjali  is both the historian and the official singer of praises for the tribe. Mandinka society is based upon a rigid class system and class is determined by lineage. A person who has the right family background enjoys considerable social status and may choose among a variety of professional jobs. However, someone from a working-class family is required to take a job as an artisan, a carpenter, or a metalworker.

Because family background is important s determining people’s lives, family history is entrusted to the jail, who specializes in historical knowledge. His job as historian and singer of praises is of paramount importance. When hired to perform he can invoke the noble ancestry of a patron, thereby enhancing that person standing in society. The jail is also called upon concerning questions of inheritance, because he alone is familiar with the intricacies of genealogy.

This brief description allows a deeper appreciation of Mandinka music and its culture. Information of this nature lends to the development of a performance piece based on cultural studies, geography, as well as music and storytelling.

The legendary Aborigine story of the Rainbow Serpent lends to the creation of exciting artwork for students. the making of the cultures most widely known musical instrument the digeridoo, and storytelling of the culture.

The native American Story of the Drum suggests the drum carries the heartbeat of the earth. It speaks of the four wise directions and the totem animals that govern each direction. . This story offers the potential teaching for social studies, American history, music, dance, cultural arts and crafts, and geography.