How are journeys shared? Stories have traveled through time, oral tradition, books, and art. The stories that reach us create a relationship with our ancestors, to civilizations that are long gone, and to heroes that still inspire us today. These stories contain lessons, offering new perspectives and wisdom. By reading, listening, and watching, you will gain insights into the world—past and present, conscious and unconscious.
Why are we here?
In this Unit, Creations, we will explore stories from a variety of cultures that try to provide answers to the questions: Why does the world exist? How did it come into being? Why are we here? We’ll extend our investigation to imagine the possibilities of new, mythical worlds that we ourselves create and share with others through story. Here are the Unit sub-guiding questions you will pursue:
- I: How do stories explain our creation?
- E: How do you set the setting?
- A: How will we use our imaginations to understand our place?
How do we learn?
In this unit you will read and study fables. Throughout time, humans have used fables – seemingly simple children’s stories featuring animal characters – to teach important and often complex life lessons. By studying these lessons, we will learn what values have been deemed crucial enough to instill within the youngest members of different cultures and continue to pass down over time. We will explore Aesop’s fables and the Panchatantra. These sources will teach us about the characteristics of fables, personification, symbolism, and character.
As we read and explore, we will apply our knowledge of fables to create our own anthropomorphic stories, teaching a lesson or rule from our school’s Code of Conduct.
Here are the Unit sub-guiding questions you will pursue:
- I: How do stories teach us lessons?
- E: How do you develop a character?
- A: How can we use stories to teach one another?
How do we change?
In this unit you will dive into the world of heroes. Heroes are of all times and many people found relief, inspiration and hope in their stories. Many fictional and non-fictional heroes can be captured in Joseph Campbell’s theory of the Monomyth and the hero’s journey. You will investigate this theory and will compare it with stories both real and imagined. You will use this comparison in your own reflection of what a hero really is and see if you can identify heroes in our everyday life. We’ll finalize this Unit by writing an analysis and a reflection of heroes that we select. We’ll record our findings and what they mean to us in an audio format. Our combined projects will live in a Gallery of Heroes that will be stored in an online installation. Here are the unit sub guiding questions you will pursue:
- What’s the hero’s journey?
- Which heroes surround us in our daily lives?
- What does the hero’s journey mean to us?
- ISS: .25
- English: .5