When studying myths and legends in KS2, consider introducing pupils to The Odyssey. It’s an exciting rollercoaster of a story that every primary school child should have the opportunity to hear.
This download contains a plan for teaching The Odyssey (of approximately three weeks duration) with explanatory notes.
Follow Odysseus as he makes his long and dangerous journey home from the Trojan War. Join him as he encounters sorceresses, battles monsters and defies the very gods!
Writing outcomes
- Detailed character study of Odysseus
- Extended first-person narrative based on The Odyssey
Myths and legends KS2 learning objectives
- Develop positive attitudes to reading and understanding of what they read
- Increase their familiarity with a wide range of key texts, including myths and legends
- Identify recurring themes and elements in different stories
- Draw inferences such as inferring characters’ feelings, thoughts and motives from their actions
- Predict what might happen from details stated and implied in the text
- Recall and summarise main ideas from different parts of the text
- Discuss texts similar to the one they are planning to write in order to understand and learn from their structure, grammar and vocabulary
- Discuss and record ideas for composition
- Compose and rehearse sentences orally (including dialogue), progressively building a varied and rich vocabulary and increasing range of sentence structures
- Shape ideas into paragraphs
- Create setting, characters and plot in narrative texts
- Assess the effectiveness of their own and others’ writing and suggest improvements
- Propose changes to grammar and vocabulary to improve consistency
- Proof-read for spelling and punctuation errors
James Clements is an independent English adviser.
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Myths and legends KS2 – The Odyssey three-week plan
