Timeframe: Estimated at three (30-minute) sessions, 90 minutes total.

Overview of Activity

In the previous lessons, students have explored many types of Nebraska folklife traditions, including music, dance, beliefs, crafts, traditional foods, and cultural celebrations. This concluding lesson gives students the opportunity to reflect on and express the value of traditions in their own daily lives and in the lives of other Nebraskans.

Objectives of the Activity

Students will:

  1. Describe a celebration or ceremony from one of their own folk groups (or another Nebraska folk group) and identify which of six purposes for folk traditions their celebration or ceremony fulfills.

  2. Identify their own seasonal celebrations and recurring yearly traditions using a "seasonal round" worksheet.

  3. Create a visual artwork, performance, or original writing based on a Nebraska folk tradition, and share it with the class.

Planning and Preparation

Review the materials and resources for this activity, and review "Background Information for Teachers," below.

Background Information for Teachers

Needs for Which People Create Folk Traditions

In general, people create folk traditions as a way to share and preserve knowledge and experiences. As explained earlier, those traditions that serve important human purposes or fill important needs remain alive, although they might change slowly over time to accommodate changing needs. Here are six of the main purposes for folk traditions.

  1. Commemorating Life Transitions - The following are major life transitions commonly marked by rituals, ceremonies, and celebrations in all cultures, although cultures differ in the amount of importance they assign to each transition.

    • Birth

    • Coming of age/adulthood

    • Marriage

    • Becoming a parent

    • Retirement from work

    • Becoming a grandparent and/or an elder

    • Death

  2. Recognizing Recurring Life Events

    • Birthdays

    • Graduations

    • Wedding anniversaries

    • Induction into Organizations - Armed services, unions, lodges, sororities, fraternities, religious organizations, sports teams, scout groups, summer camps, honorary societies, youth groups, clubs, and lodges.

  3. Affirming Identity and Community - This is the main purpose of many types of folklife traditions, whether they are very old customs or newer ones, such as wearing red on Nebraska football Saturdays. The following are some ways in which folk traditions do this:

    • Cultural traditions give people "roots" - This means having a sense of place and a feeling of belonging in that place. One Nebraska cultural tradition that is very connected to place is cowboy poetry. It is primarily a tradition of the Great Plains, Southwest, and Rocky Mountain regions of the U.S, areas that have the best conditions for raising cattle. Most Nebraskans have close ties to agriculture, whether we ourselves live on farms or ranches or not. Agriculture and its related industries, such as food processing, continue to dominate our state's economy. Also, the majority of Nebraskans have parents, grandparents, or other relatives who are (or were) farmers or ranchers. Other community traditions closely related to agriculture are seasonal festivals such as cherry blossom days, cornhusking contests and harvest celebrations. In addition to agriculture, Nebraskans have many other things in common just because of where we live in the country. For example, Nebraska has always been a major transportation corridor and is now also a communications center because of it's location in the center of the U.S.

    • Cultural traditions strengthen identity - They do this by promoting family togetherness, facilitating communication between generations, and creating a "sense of community" between neighbors and community members. Traditions that honor ancestors or community heroes and heroines also strengthen community ties. Such traditions help individuals feel a part of the group.

    • Cultural traditions can provide comfort and feelings of safety in far off places or in troubled times - A good example of this effect is the increased importance of holiday celebrations to persons who are far from home, regardless of whether that condition is temporary or permanent. When people leave their homelands behind, they tend to hold onto familiar cultural traditions as a way to feel at home. They do this even though, at the same time, they are also developing ties to the new place. People who study immigration have discovered that cultural symbols tend to take on more importance to immigrant groups than to those who stay at home. Immigrants might preserve forms of celebration and other reminders of the home country (like traditional foods, folk music, and regional dances) long after those forms have almost disappeared in their original homeland. Those stationed overseas in the military, and people working in another country also get a special joy from participating in familiar traditional celebrations. The following are two Nebraska-related examples of this cultural phenomenon:

      • Nebraska's Czech polka bands still play many Czech waltzes and polkas that were popular when this immigrant group came to Nebraska in the 1800s. It is very hard to find such music in the modern-day Czech Republic, even though it originated there.

      • When in Russia, Nebraska's Germans from Russia kept their culture distinct and separate from that of the Russian settlements all around them to avoid losing their German identity. They built their own villages; maintained their own language, religion, and customs; and chose marriage partners almost exclusively from their own ethnic group. During their early years in the U.S., they also settled in their own communities and neighborhoods. They have thus been successful in keeping a substantial number of their cultural traditions alive over the nearly three centuries since they left their German homelands. Those traditions include lengthy and elaborate wedding celebrations, distinctive music, a large number of traditional foods, and a host of traditions accompanying the Christmas holidays.

  4. Teaching Younger Members of the Culture - This is a primary use of cultural traditions.

    • Cultural traditions help pass on important values from one generation to the next - Proverbs, sayings, and traditional stories often emphasize admirable actions or characters who are admirable because they are brave, honest, or hardworking. The well-known traditional story of the tortoise that beats the rabbit in a footrace from Aesop's Fables is an example of a cultural tradition that teaches values. The tortoise wins because he keeps working slowly and steadily toward his goal. On the other hand, the rabbit shows off his speed but loses the race because he is inconsistent.

    • Cultural traditions transfer esthetic ideals between generations - Esthetic ideals are a set of unwritten rules about what is beautiful or pleasing. Such rules are present in all cultures. However, they vary widely between cultures. These differences can appear in the traditional color combinations and patterns cultural groups use in needlework, for example, and in the musical scales they favor for playing and singing their traditional music. These are just two of many possible examples.

  5. Controlling or Understanding the Unknown - Many classic types of folk traditions fit into this category. Among them are:

    • Signs and Portents - Such as "If your ears burn, it's a sign someone is talking about you"

    • Lucky gestures or objects - Crossing one's fingers for luck; carrying a lucky coin

    • Weatherlore - Traditional knowledge and sayings about the weather

    • Rainmaking

    • Traditional stories

    • Dowsing - Water witching

    • Incantations - Magic words or spells

    • Myths

    • Traditional healing methods

    • Urban legends

    • Traditional agricultural methods

  6. Entertaining and Socializing - These activities add fun, variety, and interest to our lives.

    • Traditional foods - foodways

    • Traditional games - hide-and-seek, croquet, stickball, hopscotch

    • Traditional humor - jokes, riddles, rhymes, tall tales

    • Traditional performances - dance, drama, music

Body of Instruction

Step 1 - Why are cultural and family traditions important today? Begin by discussing some examples of various cultural ceremonies or celebrations with the class. These can be traditions from your own experience or traditions studied in previous lessons. Use images and other resources from this curriculum or from other sources you have used in class. Ask for volunteers to describe a ceremony or celebration they have seen or participated in with one of their own folk groups. Write the six purposes for folk traditions (outlined in "Helpful Information for Teachers" for this lesson) on the blackboard or a flip chart. Ask students to place the folklife examples they are describing under one or more of the six purposes.

Step 2 - Pass out copies of the Seasonal Round Worksheet and direct students to fill them in with traditional events or celebrations important in their lives that tend to recur each year. Good examples are the beginning and end of the school year, traditions associated with family vacations, important holidays, hunting or fishing seasons, summer camp traditions, gardening traditions, sports tournaments, or attendance at sports or cultural events that have become traditional for the students and their families or friends. As time permits, encourage students to discuss their seasonal rounds and to talk about those events and times that are most meaningful for them as the seasons change. Ask the class which of the six purposes these types of events fulfill.

Step 3 and Closure - For the concluding project, direct students to locate a newspaper or magazine article on a Nebraska folk tradition. Each student should then design a short performance, write a short essay or other original writing, or create a drawing, collage, or other artwork about the tradition they chose. Their concluding projects should address why the traditions are important to the people in the article. Students should express their own views about what importance their chosen traditions might have to the rest of our society. Students will interpret the article and their expression for the rest of the class, who will discuss some of the things they have learned about the role of the traditions they have studied.

Summary and Closure

In this part of the lesson, students had the opportunity to reflect on the folk and traditional arts they have studied in this curriculum unit, to think about why celebrations and traditions are important to people and to study the uses of traditions in our lives. Students identified important holidays, rituals and celebrations in their own lives by using a "seasonal round" worksheet and also looked at examples of traditions from other groups. As a concluding project, they identified a Nebraska folk tradition and interpreted it to the class using their own creative ideas.

Assessment Suggestions

Using a generic rubric or other common assessment tool for assessing the students' learning from this part of the lesson, indicate the answers to the following questions:

To what extent were students able to:

  1. Describe a celebration or ceremony from one of the students' own folk groups (or another Nebraska folk group), and identify which of six purposes for folk traditions the celebration or ceremony fulfills?

  2. Identify their own seasonal celebrations and recurring yearly traditions using a "seasonal round" worksheet?

  3. Create a visual artwork, performance, or original writing based on a Nebraska folk tradition and share it with the class?

Correlated Nebraska Educational Standards

Reading/Writing

  • (8.1.2) By the end of the eighth grade, students will identify, locate, and use multiple resources to access information on an assigned or self-selected topic.

  • (8.2.2) By the end of the eighth grade, students will write compositions with focus, related ideas, and supporting details.

  • (8.2.5) By the end of the eighth grade, students will demonstrate the ability to use self-generated questions, note taking, summarizing and outlining while learning.

  • (8.3.1) By the end of the eighth grade, students will participate in group discussions by asking questions and contributing information and ideas.

Social Studies/History

  • (8.4.2) By the end of eighth grade, students will demonstrate skills for historical analysis.

  • (8.4.6) By the end of eighth grade, students will improve their skills in historical research and geographic analysis.

Visual and Performing Arts

  • (12.1.1) Essential Learnings 1. Students recognize the connections between the arts and their own lives and environments.

  • (12.2.1) Essential Learnings 2. Students recognize the value of the arts in their own learning and creative processes.

  • (12.3.1) Essential Learnings 3. Students understand the roles of the arts and of artists in the past, present and future.

  • (12.4.1) Essential Learnings 4. Students exhibit a variety of creative skills in their own artistic expressions and in response to others.

  • (12.5.1) Essential Learnings 5. Students develop criteria to evaluate their own and others' creative expressions.

  • (12.6.1) Essential Learnings 6. Students understand connections between the arts and other fields of study.

  • (12.7.1) Essential Learnings 7. Students recognize diverse perspectives in the creation, performance, interpretation, and evaluation of the arts.

  • (12.8.1) Essential Learnings 8. Students use the visual and performing arts to solve problems.