Myths: Part 2

Narrative Pantomime

“To bring these characters to life I am going to narrate a story about their day, you will quietly move about the room acting out your creature’s day in a pantomime. Can anyone tell me what pantomime is? I want you to make sure that you are really thinking about what your character would do and using your body to show that to us. We also need to make sure that we are staying in our own space and being respectful of all the creature around us. Can I have all my creatures go to a place in the room where they are not touching anyone else and find a position where they can be sleeping. I will know we are ready to start when I see all the creatures in this room sleeping.”

"The creatures of Mythworld were all silently sleeping when the sun started to rise, they started to blink their eyes and stretched out knowing the sun was there to wake them up. The sleepy creatures woke up and stretched getting ready to start their day, they were walking towards their breakfast when they stopped to sniff the air noticing a funny smell- oh well they thought and continued moving towards their breakfast. They plopped themselves down and begin to eat. Munching on their favorite creature foods. When they were finished the took the trash from their meal and threw It out the window. After breakfast the creatures got ready for their power practice, since all mythological creatures know it’s important to practice their powers daily, they got themselves ready and began practicing their powers they looked around the practice yard and saw there were dragons breathing fire, pegasus’s flying and Phoenixs turning themselves into ashes. By now it was noon, it was hot with the sun high in the sky and the creatures stopped and sniffed noting that the funny smell from earlier was getting worse they headed inside to get some lunch. They sat to eat and chomped away, again throwing their trash out the window when they were done. That afternoon the creatures went to go to the Mythworld lake, some were swimming and some just played in the field by the lake, all the while noticing that the funny smell from breakfast could be smelled at the lake as well. The creatures headed to go get dinner and found a note where they lived. They looked hard at the note and saw it was announcing a town meeting for that evening. The creatures quickly ate their creature dinner, promptly threw the garbage out the window and moved to the carpet to sit and get ready for their meeting.”

Reflection: "You did an excellent job moving and acting as your creatures. I hope you were thinking about what your creature might do." 

• What were your favorite creature foods?
• What powers did you use in our story?
• What did the creatures receive a note about?

Transition: "The last thing in our story was the creatures sitting down to prepare for their meeting. In just a minute we are going to act out that meeting. In our townhall meeting we will be pretending we are our creatures, we should think about what powers they have and how they live together in Mythworld and try to remember all the things from our story earlier. We’re allowed to talk in our meeting but need to make sure we speak as our characters and we raise our hands first. Thumbs up if you understand. GREAT-Now I’ll invite you all to step into role…”

Mythworld Town Hall Meeting

As Herona the Mythworld representative: “Hi as most of you know I’m Herona Mythworld’s representative who works with Zeus up on Mount Olympia. I’m so glad that you could all come to our Mythworld town hall meeting. Anyway I called this meeting to address a real issue we are facing here in Mythworld-I’m sure some of you noticed it earlier. The smell-it’s well smelly. I wanted to know do any of you have any ideas what the smell might be? Did the smell get worse at all? One thing I’ve noticed can sometimes smell is trash. What have you creatures been doing with your trash after you eat?" Establish the problem is that the trash is piling up outside and starting to smell.

"Why might we need to get rid of the smell and the trash piles? And creatures-Who do we need to tell about this problem to try to get it solved?" (If no one comes up with an idea that works you can get tell them Zeus needs to know and that you can tell him… but you think he would be more likely to find a way to fix it if everyone would write something to tell Zeus what the problem was.) “This is great-I need all the creatures to go back to their desks and write down what the problem is on a piece of paper then sign their creature name so I can take them to Zeus and let them know."

Give students several minutes to write. Collect letters for Zeus and then Herona can leave to take them to Zeus.

Transition: “We created some fascinating creatures and they had an exciting day today. Tomorrow we'll see if Zeus has any response to these letters.”

Day 2 Recalling our characters

“Yesterday we did wonderful work on creating our own mythological creatures. Can anyone tell me what happened at our meeting yesterday? Who can tell me what their creature’s power is? Now I want you to close your eyes and think about the mythological creature you created, make sure you can see it clearly and think about how it might move. When I begin my countdown from 5, I’d like you to open your eyes and transform your body into a statuei of your mythological creature. You should be frozen by the time I get to 1. Ready? 5-4-3-2-1.”

Transition: Herona enters as students are frozen as creatures and announces they will be having another meeting and asks everyone to take their seats.

Town Hall

“As you know I took your writings about the smell problem to Zeus. He said that he feels that getting rid of the smell is a wonderful opportunity for all the mythological creatures of Mythworld to use their powers and find a solution. So we’re going to need to write up the stories of how our creatures solved the smell problem. Our own creature’s myth.” You can introduce steps if you want or just use step 3: 1. Introduce your creature 2. Tell what the problem is 3. How will your creature use their power to solve the problem? -How will they keep it from happening again? -What might happen after they solve the problem? Then send the students back to their tables to write.