The Tale of Sun and Moon

Adlaw, god of the sun; by James Claridades

We are privileged to have many Filipino children in our team and we will celebrate their culture through our art/drama/literacy unit.


We will be learning the Visayan myth of Sun and Moon from the Phillippines and using this as motivation for our sharpie and felts drawing of the sun and moon (for our calendar art fundraiser - I like to 'kill two birds with one stone'). This will be a good opportunity to talk about warm/cool colours too.


I found this cool animation of the story:


The inspiration for our artwork to kick it all off came from this awesome idea from The Lost Sock blog:

Next we will be constructing puppets to help us with some process drama as we tell the story in our own ways - this will of course involve reading, writing, drama and art all in one bundle!

We will read some other Filipino folk tales and break into groups to create our own drama versions, making puppets to help tell those stories.

 Creation Myth            Ancient Visayan Deities in Philippine Mythology

Visayan Folk Tales        Tagalog Folk Tales           

Myths and Legends...a reading/writing focus

For two weeks we are having a myths and legends literacy focus, as a flow-on from our inquiry about space, during which my release teacher worked with the children on activities based on a variety of space-related myths eg why the moon is in the sky and how we have the night and day etc.

My intention is that the pupils will read some other Maori myths, with the focus on comparing the elements of the myths, before then writing their own myths to explain a physical phenomenon that is space related eg why there are stars in the sky or why the moon is white etc.


Here is the cover sheet that all pupils will have in their books for reference and tracking (Google docs) and here is the comparison chart that they are to fill in as they read (and will refer to in the second week as they write their own myth or

Pupils will have compulsory set tasks that involve close reading, sequencing, word studies and comprehension tasks for each myth (from the resource 'School Journal Theme Units, Yr 4-8, Myths and Legends' by Meryl Hughson, published by Curriculum Concepts, 2000).  It uses some school journal stories from 1981 - 1995.

I have made up a list of free-choice response activities that I have generalised so they can be applied to any of the stories that the children read. There are rules as to which activities pupils can choose and how long they can spend on the tasks during class-time (as we know, with children an expectation has to be set and they have to be accountable to it or nothing will be achieved!)

This resource by Raymond Huber has a great definition of myths and tree diagrams to help pupils clarify the differences between myths, folk tales, fairy tales and legends, as well as activities for teaching children about the different elements of myths such as heroes and magical creatures. If I was spending a lot longer on the theme then these would be activities that I would use!

Tellagami app and Aurasma app

Tellagami - my class are getting to know this app.  At the moment we are creating Gami vids to use with Aurasma (like a QR code) to help new pupils or visitors to our school know about different classrooms and areas of the school.

How to create a gami avatar and create your own video (thanks to 5 Minute Tech, You Tube)



Aurasma - is an augmented reality app similar to a QR code but uses an image as the trigger for the overlay to play. My class are just deciding on what symbol to use to attach to items so people will know they can use the Aurasma.
Here is a You Tube video of how UK primary school Shaw Wood makes use of the app...