Dreaming of the Dreamtime

The Dreaming is an important part of the Australian indigenous people's spiritual identity. The stories from this time talk about the creation of the land that we live in. Many of the stories also teach about how to be better people and the ways that are appropriate to live. The stories help to bind the people together, because they brought the community together and taught the little ones the ways of their people. They were told through dance, music and as they sat around the campfire.

Among the Aboriginal people there was often one person who was the storyteller. Their job was to remember and tell the stories of the whole tribe. The stories did not belong to one person. It was the communities memories and beliefs that were passed down.

As part of English this week, we have been focusing on these Dreamtime stories. The students were given a book to read and to discuss in pairs. They had to answer the following questions after they had read the book:

• What was the story about? Who were the main characters and what did they do?
• How do you think this story was passed down to others? 
• What was the purpose of the story? What does it teach us? 

The students then created a triorama of their story to show others what the story was about. The purpose for creating drawings in this way, gave the students an opportunity to show what they knew aside from their writing. They could explore the ways that the images were drawn, experiencing some of the ways of communicating without always using words. 

The Hero's Journey

What makes a hero?

A hero could be defined as someone who overcomes great trial and tribulation in order to achieve his destiny. He is courageous and is the epitome of all that is good... 

In English this week, we have exploring what makes a hero. We have been creating our own superhero's and then considered some of the reasons why they are used in stories. Superhero's help us to see some of the best qualities that exist in people and to help teach us that we can be better people.

An author named James Campbell has written a book called "The hero with a Thousand Faces". He analysed many different stories about heroes including superheroes, and found that there were similarities in the stories. The following video shows the outline of what has been called the "The Hero's Journey".

It explains that the Journey has twelve parts as shown by this diagram:

To help understand how this journey is represented in a story, we watched the movie "Big Hero Six". This is a story about a young boy who becomes the hero of the story. This comes about as a result of his brother's death. His brother was creating a robot, Baymax that would help people. The outcome is that Baymax helps Hero to not only learn to forgive but to realise his destiny.

It was encouraging to see Years 5 and 6 students start to apply the stages of the story to the Hero's Journey model. As we discussed the story, we also discovered that their was a back story of the villain or the antagonist. The students were able to give other examples of how in the hero's story that there is another story being told too. 

At the end of the discussion, one student's comment was "that it was all really interesting!" 

The next part of this will be to have the students map the story on a story map and then discuss what they felt the different phases of the story were. 

Who is your favourite hero? What was his or her journey?