The Legends Unit was the first unit I tackled in my placement. The picture comes from the last lesson I did on it, though not the last lesson of the unit. The unit is on a hiatus now while I try and work out the last, complicated part, and while we as a class try to catch up on all that we've missed with all the snow days.
The legends unit was a new unit for the class I am in, one of the many new curriculums that the head teacher is expected to teach. It derives itself from one of the Massachusetts Curriculum Standards: Reading Standard for Literature Grade 6 MA 8 - "Identify the conventions of legends and epics (e.g., the hero, quest, journey, seemingly impossible tasks) in historical and modern literary works."
Like much of what the teacher has been given this year this unit came with essentially nothing. The district lent her a single lesson on Cinderella that another 6th grade teacher in the district had done. But of course, Cinderella isn't really a legend, and a single lesson was not going to teach the students about what a legend means. So I volunteered to work on the unit.
The first thing I did was go home and think about what the conventions the students should learn about. The frameworks suggest a hero, a quest/journey, and an impossible task. The Internet added that legends typically have something supernatural or magical to them, and have a happy ending. The idea of a legend having five possible conventions or elements appealed to me much more than the idea of having three specific conventions. Part of the reason why it appealed more was because I thought that what the kids should take away from the Legends unit isn't just the conventions, but also the ability to decide for themselves if something is a legend.
Essentially, to borrow from the "Understanding By Design" book, the goal of this unit would be for students to understand that the definition of "legend" is flexible so as to encompass a wide variety of stories around the world and across time. The knowledge they would collect along the way would be the conventions of legends, names of popular legends, and some of the skills needed to write an argumentative essay.
With this in mind I created 8 lessons to start, with another 3 or 4 lessons tentatively planned, based on how quickly the students progressed. The first three lessons followed a similar pattern, and where meant to get students use to the unit and starting to think about what makes something a legend. Essentially the class read a legend, filled out a worksheet that listed the 5 conventions and asked for evidence of them from the story, then discussed why it may or may not be a legend.
I chose to try and tap into our geography unit as well and started the unit off with legends from Asia: a story called Little-One-Inch (Issun-boshi) from Japan to introduce the unit, and the story and translation of the poem Mulan for the second lesson. I thought that starting off with stories that in fact fit the conventions of legends, but may not always be thought of as legends, would help the students grasp the concept of the definition being flexible, as well as give them something to connect the country names they had been learning to.
The third legend we worked on was The Odyssey. The idea of this legend was to talk about how it is called the "original legend" and is where many of the "conventions" come from. But of course, the chances of people in Ancient China or Japan knowing the story of the Odyssey is pretty slim, yet their stories also fit this convention. Again, working into the theme of the definition being flexible to fit stories around the world.
The fourth lesson was both a formative assessment as well as an example of paying attention to differentiated learning. I had three stories of varying difficulty (on level, above level, and below level) and gave students stories based on their comprehension ability. It's important to note that I based the groupings on comprehension and not reading skill in general, because I have students who read incredibly quickly and fluently, but don't comprehend half of what is happening. Likewise, I have students who struggle with reading, but have incredible comprehension skills. As the task of picking out details in the story to support the five conventions is really a comprehension skill I wanted to give students stories that they could, theoretically, succeed with, and not be bogged down by reading issues they may have. In case you were wondering, the three stories were; The Sword in the Stone and King Arthur (advanced), The Story of Heracles (at level), and the Zuni tale of Ahaiyuta and the Cloud Eater (below level).
The FA marked the halfway point in the Legends unit, which in turn meant shifting from traditional legends to what I had most been looking forward to...Modern Legends.
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Source:
Wiggins, Grant and McTighe, Jay (2005) Understanding By Design. Virginia: ASCD