Writing Assignment: “The Folklore of Childhood.”
https://www.wmich.edu/dialogues/texts/darkchild.html
Elizabeth Radin Simons devised a writing unit based on “The Folklore of Childhood,” a fitting companion writing assignment for The Dark Child and many other colonial narratives or autobiographies (Edgar & Padgett, 149). She breaks the assignment into process days, after providing students with a sense of what
folklore is and looks like:
Day One: Begin with nostalgia. Ask the students to brainstorm after asking them to, “Tell [you] me about some of the games you played as a child, ones you learned from other children.” Develop a list of the games and record on a board or overhead sheet. This is like an oral prewriting exercise, and answers like “Jacks? I used to play jacks.” can be followed up with a request for more detail for future writing such as “what do you remember about playing jacks specifically?”, “why do you think you remember this game?”
She reports these sessions as being a blast, because many young adults are still “nostalgic about childhood” (150). The folklore study moves from nostalgia to an understanding “that their early play was more than entertainment” (150). She explains that, “In their play they were getting an education, learning the values, attitudes, beliefs, and behavior that would continue into their adult lives” (150). Following the brainstorm, she breaks students into small groups to develop collaborative lists of games played, listing as many details as they can remember about each. Someone acts as a scribe, writing down the details, and save
their results for the following class period.
Day Two: Creating the Master Game List Students share their group lists out loud, and the class develops a master list of games on the board. They may list upwards of 100 different items, which “surprises students- they have remembered a lot of folklore from their childhoods” (150). The class speculates as to which of these games their parents and grandparents may have played, what age they played these games at, and which are gender-specific (150). Spend time speculating why children play these games and discuss issues surrounding them, to be discussed more in depth at a later time (151).
Day Three: Choosing a topic & Writing the First Draft Simons instructs her students to work from the master list and “choose a game you liked to play when you were young” (151). Students work in small groups or with partners to do additional brainstorming/prewriting about their selected topics, and then begin writing down everything they remember for their first drafts (151).
Day Four: Responding and revising in collaborative groups. A first revision of the draft takes place, before moving on to the next day’s assignment. Day Five: Starting the Research- Interviewing: Students now work on obtaining interviews from three people: an older person who remembers playing their game as a child; a peer who also remembers the game; and a child who is currently playing the game. Devise the interview questionnaire in class, and have students practice asking these questions to one another.
Day Six: Scholarly Analysis of Children’s Folklore: Examining the writing of published folklorists, and literary criticism on them. One suggested text by Simons is: “The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren” by Iona and Peter Opie.
Day Seven: Student Analysis of Children’s Folklore. After writing memories of their own folklore topic, conducting several interviews, and examined work by professional folklorists,they are prepared to construct their own analyses. Simons suggests students using their own papers for starting texts as a prewriting activity. After exchanging their papers with another student, the reader writes down their impression of the function of folklore. Following this in-class analysis, students draft their own ideas on why the folklore they study has remained alive in oral or written tradition.
Day Eight: Writing the Final Draft. Some students turn in three drafts, and more advanced writers may turn in one incorporating their memory, description of folklore, and an analysis of it. She also publishes the final product in a class anthology at the end of the unit where students can showcase their best pieces and take home a personalized folklore collection.