Materials

• Teacher-selected folktales

Instructional Activities

1. Review concepts from previous sessions.
   
   
2. Discuss how traditions are passed from one generation to the next. Have students share some of their family traditions with the class.
   
   
3. Activity
   • Divide the class into three or four groups.
   • Choose one person from each group to read a teacher-selected folktale, preferably one that is unfamiliar to the student. Have the student read the folktale at home prior to this lesson and practice retelling it to family members or a friend.
   • After reading the folktale, have the readers retell the story to one person in his group. (The other members of his group should not be in hearing distance.)
   • That member would in turn retell the same story to another student in his group. (This student should not have access to the written story.)
   • This process would continue until the story goes through all the students in each group.
   • The last person in each group will then retell the story to the whole class.
   • Read the actual folktale aloud to the class.
   
   
4. Discuss how the retelling of a story can change when passed down through generations. This is how storytelling and history were passed down through generations in Mali, because they did not have a written language for many years.
   
   
5. Tell students that eventually a library was built at a university in Timbuktu. Even then, the large library was filled with Greek and Roman books. The city of Timbuktu later became an important center of learning.
   
   
6. Have students add two fact sheets to their Mali fact booklet.                        
   • Page 6: Oral Tradition
   • Page 7: Architecture