Throughout history people have told and written stories about their heroes. A tall tale is a special kind of hero story because the heroes of tall tales are “larger than life.” They are bigger and stronger than real people, even when the tall tale is based on a real person. Tall tale heroes solve problems in funny ways that are hard to believe. Tall tales are a way people can express their culture through literature.

Explore several famous tall tale heroes with your students with this SmartBoard Notebook file. Learn about Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill. Learn about the heroes of legends like Casey Jones and briefly discuss Greek and Roman myths.

As a final activity, have your students write their own tall tale.

This SmartBoard Notebook file originally contained two Discovery Streaming Education video files:

• Page 3: Rabbit Ears Children’s Literature Collection: Paul Bunyan (Since the video is 30 minutes, the Ninja only used segments of this video)
• Page 7: The segment entitled Peco Bill: Super Cowboy from the video The Art of Storytelling: Tall Tales

Technical Information: This file was created in Smart Notebook 9.7.46. Notebook versions older than 9.5 may not be able to open this file correctly. To prevent download issues, I have zip compressed the file. To view the file on Windows, right click on the compressed file and choose “Extract All…” Double click the resulting file to view.
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