Unit Overview

Heroes: The Quest Narrative is developed around 'Module 8' in English Mosaic 3 (ed. O'Donnell. Melbourne: Macmillan Education Australia 2004).

In Heroes: The Quest Narrative, students learn about the moral and psychological meanings in quest narratives, for example, transcendence or overcoming, and the journey as growth and spiritual; awakening. They work in groups to discuss, compare and evaluate quests. They also explore selected quest narratives in depth, think about popular heroes and quests narratives in film and literature, and compare quest legends with quests of real life heroes in sport, politics and war.

While students work from the activities in English Mosaic 3, it is expected that teachers will supplement these activities with related materials that will further enhance and challenge student learning.

The Heroes:The Quest Narrative provides opportunities for students to demonstrate their achievement against the standards in Level 6 English, and also against the standards in Level 6 Interpersonal development, Personal learning, The Arts, History, Communication, Design, creativity and technology, Information and communications technology, Thinking. The unit specifically aims to:

• allow students to work at their own level and pace;
• focus on self-directed learning with teacher acting as facilitator;
• allow for scope of individual interest;
• cater for multiple intelligences, encouraging students to utilise preferred learning style(s);
• incorporate the critical thinking skills of Bloom's / Anderson's taxonomy;
• extend gifted students through tasks of varying levels of complexity;
  engage students in independent and collaborative tasks, involving forward planning, decision-making and negotiation;
• challenge students to engage in both independent and collaborative wider reading and research;
• engage students in reading, viewing, discussion and writing for a purpose;
• involve active group discussion and problem solving;
• enable students to draw on a variety of multimedia resources;
• engender creativity and originality in terms of inquiry, research, synthesis, analysis, evaluation, presentation, self-evaluation.

Learning Focus:
The work undertaken throughout Module 8 is designed to provide students with opportunities in the following areas:

The quest narrative
'The quest narrative' builds on students' wide experience of quest narratives and guides them through analysis and understanding of the genre in relation to its moral and psychological meanings (for example, transcendence or overcoming, the journey as growth and spiritual awakening). Although much of the reading is scaffolded or guided to maintain focus, students work in groups where they discuss, compare and evaluate quests.

Students explore selected quest narratives in depth and use their knowledge to reflect on the many popular quest narratives they encounter in film and literature. They compare quest legends with the quests of 'real life' heroes in sport, politics and war.

What makes it a quest?
In this section, students consider and identify elements of the quest story. Students are asked not only what it is that we respond to as a quest, but what it is that makes the quest compelling and interesting to us all. This section centres the study with the students by encouraging them to define and describe elements of the quest narrative in their own terms.

Quests in early literature-where it all began
In this section, the focus turns towards reading and responding to summarised versions of 'classical' quest narratives. Students are encouraged to read these texts against the descriptions of quests that they developed in section 1 and consider whether their earlier descriptions need review. In conclusion, the section returns the focus to the students' world by asking them to relate elements of the quest to aspects of contemporary life, for example, sporting achievement.

Exploring Quests
In this section, students select contemporary quest fiction titles and use 'reading circles' to share and discuss these stories. They extend their reading or interpretations cooperatively through reviews, dramatisation and persona. Again, students are encouraged to relate the fiction works to 'real life' in order to help them make connections between fiction and life.

Assessment:

Students exploration of Heroes: The Quest Narrative will culminate in the creation of their own quest narratives. The unit challenges students not only to define the hero, but to find out about many of the heroic men and women of the century. After careful deliberation, students will create an original hero on a quest. They will present his or her heroic quest as a collection of written and visual work in the form of a scrapbook that tells the hero's story.

The unit has a strong emphasis on independent research and writing with a focus on the relationship between purpose and audience and form. Students use planning, researching and thinking strategies. They learn about internet research techniques, and use of software design programmes such as Inspiration, Photoshop, Publisher and Dreamweaver.

Students are to cover each of following styles of writing for their scrapbook: Personal, Imaginative, Persuasive, Opinionative, and Informative. They will communicate their hero's story in each of the following forms of writing: newspaper and/or magazine articles (opinion, letters to the editor, editorial, reports, feature); diary entries; journal entries; letters (consider an exchange of letters between two or more people, presenting different perspectives); poems and/or songs; interviews; narratives.

The collection of written and visual work is to be compiled into a scrapbook that anyone reading it will be able to follow the hero's life story and his/her quest.

Students will use a publishing program such as Publisher, In-Design, PageMaker or Quark to produce his scrapbook and complement and enhance their narratives with visuals using Photoshop. Clip art and other photographic elements for page borders, backgrounds are to be used when designing the appropriate page for each written piece.

Students will present their scrapbook to an audience. They will create a single webpage that introduces their hero; convert their scrapbook into a PDF file and hyperlink it to their webpage.

At the end of the task, students will compose a self-evaluation, reflecting on this assignment, evaluating both the process and their products.

Assessment of standards

1. Personal learning

• time management
• completion of all parts of process
• extent and quality of research

2. Writing process

• purpose, audience and form
• craft and shape of writing
• language, structure and mechanics

3. ICT

• use of software programs
• webpage design
• PDF attachment

4. Scrapbook

• creation of a realistic and original hero
• quality of layout and visuals
• covers all styles and forms of writing