MYTHS & LEGENDS – THE E2BN LITERACY TOOLS
NATIONAL CURRICULUM LINKAGES – ENGLISH KS3
The Myths and Legends site is proving very effective at inspiring young people to write. It provides the stimuli, tools and a huge range of ICT opportunities that enable students to get started with their own creations.
Apart from the appeal of the stories themselves, a major stimulus is the knowledge that their own story or work will be published on the website and seen by people, not only from their school or their area, but from the whole world! And people will know they are the authors. What an audience – and an incentive to produce good, well edited work!
On the site, students and teachers can find a variety of tools and suggestions to help create attractive and interesting stories.
To aid in the planning of a story, there is a Storyboard template that can be used for preparing animations, making movies or analyzing stories.
Planning and drafting 2a.
The Story Creator is a wonderful starting tool, especially for pupils who may feel diffident about their abilities: it enables students to take their story board and easily turn it into an illustrated tale, which can be viewed online worldwide. It contains backgrounds scenes, characters and ‘props’ which the students can place, size, flip etc; they can then use the space below each picture created, to write their text to go with each scene. They move onto the next scene, redrafting as necessary, until their story is complete and they save it for the world to view.
Composition 1b,c,f,g,h Planning and drafting 2a,b Punctuation 3 Spelling 4d Handwriting and Presentation 5c Standard English 6 Breadth of study 9a, 11
Researching and publishing a real myth or legend from their own area, is an extremely interesting and rewarding exercise for students.
A lesson plan: My local myth or legend is based on pupils doing just that. Moreover, this is easily adapted to include students of any ethnic background researching stories from their own cultures. The students should be encouraged to research and write about the origins of their story, as well as creating a story itself that people will enjoy reading; they may upload both, via the easy-to-use upload area, to be displayed with all the other Myths and Legends. They are able to illustrate their story with their own picture or photograph or chooses one from the Image Gallery.
Similarly, students can publish a Myth or Legend they have invented – in story or poetic form. Perhaps it could give an explanation of how something came to be, as in The Devil's Favourite Game or The Legend of Devil's Dyke or it may ‘explain’ a natural phenomenon; or maybe they will be inspired by a tale like The Giant Jack O'Legs to create a notorious person or hero – ballad form especially useful here! Composition 1a,b,c,d,g,h Planning and drafting 2a,b,c Punctuation 3 Spelling 4d,e Handwriting and Presentation 5c Standard English 6 Breadth of study 9a, 11
There is such a variety of responses that students can make to the stories they read, and the Myths and Legends site welcomes work of all kinds and has the facility to display whatever it might be eg a picture, video or animation. If this kind of work is new to students and teachers, a lot of helpful resources are available on the site to get you started and guide you on the way:
In the Teachers’ Resources area there are 3 lesson plans for creating an animation, which go into considerable detail and are very easy to use.
Animating a myth part 1 - the storyboard , part 2 - creating characters & settings , part 3 - creating the animation
In addition, in the How To area, students and teachers can find helpful documents including:
A guide on how to prepare your story for animating.
A guide showing how to create and animate clay figures
Reading and following these guides are, of course, useful exercises in their own right!
How to use Movie Maker 2 is a guide to assist teachers and students wishing to create their own movies and perhaps use images, sounds and video clips from the E2BN Myths and Legends site and other archives, to develop their own stories.
The E2BN Sound Gallery provides an exciting range of illustrative sounds and in the How To area there are tips for Choosing and using sound effects and also on
How to find or create music for your animation.
Once the response to the story has been produced, there is a very easy upload area in Create your own , enabling pupils to display their work to the world.
Composition 1a,b,c,d,g,h Planning and drafting 2a,b,c Handwriting and Presentation 5c Breadth of study 9a, 11 Printed & ICT based information texts 4c
Speaking and Listening are also positively encouraged by and within the E2BN website. To begin with, students can listen to a variety of narrators of the stories, then discuss and analyse what makes them effective (or not) in holding the listener’s attention.
They can have a go at reading the texts, or their own stories, to each other; in the How To area, How to read aloud gives some useful tips for young people preparing to read aloud. And then, when ready, they can go to Create your own and make a video of themselves reading their story! All they need is a webcam and a microphone attached to the computer and the site takes them, step by step, through the process of recording themselves, and uploading the results for others to enjoy.
Speaking 1c,d,f,g 8a,c Listening 2f Language variation 6a,e
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