Connie Graves photo courtesy of the Oregon Historical Society
Overview
Lesson 1: Introduction to the Grand Ronde Nations Traditional Burden Basket
Lesson 2: Design and Create a Burden Basket with a Strap
Lesson 3: Research and Make a Poster of the Three Types of Basket Materials
Lesson 4: Make a Set of Plant Identification Playing Cards
Lesson 5: Explore Key Questions
Extending the lesson/Referencess
Standards
THE ARTS
AR.08.CP.01—Select and combine essential elements and organizational principles to achieve a desired effect when creating, presenting, and/or performing works of art for a variety of purposes.
AR.08.CP.03—Create, present, and/or perform a work of art by controlling essential elements and organizational principles and describe how well the work expresses an intended idea, mood, or feeling.
ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS
EL.08.RE.04—Demonstrate listening comprehension of more complex text through class and/or small group interpretive discussions across the subject areas.
CD Segments to Play
Background
Suggested Strategies
Bring in samples of playing cards. The U.S. Games Systems, Inc. at HYPERLINK “http://www.usgamesinc.com” http://www.usgamesinc.com printed “The Lewis and Clark Exploration Card Game” for The History Channel. The 56-card deck has 13 categories that include indigenous plants, Native tribes and handiwork. This would be a nice addition to the student research library.
Younger students need direct step-by-step instruction on how to research the three types of basket materials. Please modify the following instructions for your students.
Older students can either work independently or in teams. Students will need to access the teacher-created resource library/ audio center to the Connie Graves segment and/or Elaine LaBonte’s segment. The teacher could assign each group with one of the three basket materials to research.
Homework assignment: Write a set of instructions of a card game that you could play with a friend. Another option is to create and write your own card game. Younger students could play “memory” with a friend using their two decks (both students turn their deck of cards over and try to match pairs of cards).
Extension for older students: Research the history of Native playing cards. An example would be cards of the Apache Tribe. Both Apache men and women enjoyed using cards cut from rawhide and painted with designs and symbols. The student could then create, design and make a personalized deck of playing cards out of something other than paper.
If time permits, have students bring their written card games into the classroom for a free time of card playing. This should be a time of fun and sharing new ideas and games, not about winning and losing.
Activities
1. Discuss
Review the words Inspiration, Knowledge, and Materials.
What is an Artist, Illustrator, and Designer?
2. Draw
Review the criteria of lesson 3 by writing and drawing a sample of a basket fiber playing card on the board using the following format:
Scientific Name of Plant
Common Name of Plant
Native Name of Plant
Illustration of Plant
Artist/Designer’s Name
3. Art project
The student will design four playing cards on a piece of drawing paper that has been folded into four equal parts. Three cards will have the above information and drawings of juncus, cedar, and willow. The fourth card will be a drawing of a burden basket with a written description. Teacher note: the fourth card is a great assessment tool of the student’s knowledge of burden baskets.
Pass out a sheet of drawing paper that has been folded into 4 equal parts, pencils, and erasers.
Older students can use pen and ink to outline over their original four cards before going to the printer.
After the students have all four original playing cards completed, the teacher will copy them four times on card stock and/or colored paper. The teacher can either cut them apart on the paper cutter or have students use scissors.
Students can go back over their playing cards with colored pencils and ink.
Note: Most playing cards are approximately 2 ¼” by 3 ½”. The teacher, if time permits, could reduce the size of the original student cards before duplicating them into a set of cards.
