Myths and Legends Animating a Myth Part 1 the Storyboard s1

MYTHS & LEGENDS – THE STORIES

NATIONAL CURRICULUM LINKAGES – ENGLISH KS2

The website aims to encourage children to read and enjoy their reading. It provides stories that are stimulating to see, read and hear and are able to be responded to in a variety of ways.

The whole site fulfils ‘texts drawn from a variety of cultures and traditions’ and ‘myths, legends and traditional stories’ in the Literature range.

8e,f

By their nature, Myths and Legends have meaning beyond the literal. Sometime this is obvious and sometimes more concealed. Certainly, as a start, children can be asked to think about the ‘moral’ (usually what sort of behaviour results in bad or good ends) in nearly any story – particularly obvious ones to help the children to start think about this can be A Ride with the Devil and, as a contrast, Tom Hickathrift and the Ogre of the Smeeth. As the children listen to and read the stories, they are able to see the changes in the fortunes of the characters from the beginning to the end, and link it with other stories they know which have ‘morals’ or ‘lessons’ people should learn. Understanding texts 2b,c,d

A fascinating extension to their study of the stories, helping children to understand and enjoy how stories are built up, can be found on the Myths and Legends site in:

Animating a myth part 1 - the storyboard
Lesson plan for using animation in the classroom - in 'animating a myth part 1', pupils choose an existing myth on the myths and legends website, analyse the story and then prepare it as a storyboard.

Animating a myth part 2 - creating characters & settings
Lesson plan for using animation in the classroom - in 'animating a myth part 2', pupils use the storyboard which they created in 'animating a myth part 1' and construct the characters and settings.

Animating a myth part 3 - creating the animation
Lesson plan for using animation in the classroom - in 'animating a myth part 3', pupils use the storyboard which they created in 'animating a myth part 1' and the characters and settings produced in 'animating a myth part 2' and turn them into a short animation using computer software.

Understanding texts 2c, Literature 4c,d,e,h

All of the stories use a variety of features, text, sound and image to help the children in their understanding.

The Lantern Man and the Wherryman gives a good lead into discussion of the ‘Lantern Men’ and marsh lights – the connections between the myths, legends and nature – the attempts at explanation for strange happenings. There are very helpful and interesting notes in the Origins section attached to the stories, which enable the children to discover a variety of explanations attached to various aspects of the myths and legends. It is interesting to move from one of these older myths as above or The Black Dogs of Bungay to look at a couple of relatively modern ‘mysterious’ happenings and compare and contrast our explanations with those of our predecessors, for example Rendlesham Forest and the Alien Craft and The Little Blue Man. Some interesting comparisons can be made! Don’t forget that words and terms that are new or unfamiliar can be found in the Glossary

Reading for information 3a,c,d,e,f Reading strategies 1d Morphology 4i

Have the children got their own stories of mysterious happenings to tell?

What explanations might there be?

Speaking 1b,c,d Listening 2a,b,e 9a,c Group discussion and interaction 3a,c,d 10c

As well as offering a variety of opportunities for discussion and opinion, the site opens up great possibilities for Drama.

For example, many of the stories have very little direct dialogue and certainly offer opportunities for role play, hot seating and improvising drama scripts or creating puppet plays.

In A Mummy's Tale , how did the vicar persuade the unwilling townspeople to volunteer to dig the grave, open the mummy and tip the contents in after dark? And the graveyard scene itself, lending quite a lot of opportunities for comedy and a variety of characters – maybe using mime or taking ideas from Bottom and his crew in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The children can be asked to role play those children in The Little Blue Man excitedly telling their teacher and friends all that they had seen: how will the teacher and the friends react? Will they believe the children straight away? How might their doubting affect the children?

Testing the Witch-finder General opens the way for research into witch hunts in general and trying out a ‘witches court’. Are they going to put one of the accused witches on trial or the Witch-finder general himself? How are you going to organise the court? Who will be witnesses for and against the accused, the judge, the jury, the accused’s family? This could be the beginning for a whole drama script being created based on witch hunts and trials.

Drama 4a,b,c,d 11a,b,c