Traditional Tales with a Digital Twist

1. Learning @ School 2009
Traditional tales with a digital twist
Motivating students and improving literacy using
traditional tales, thinking tools,
digital mechanisms
and online resources

2. Why traditional tales?
The storytellers’ magic…
Folklore to folk literature
Tales passed down
orally; publication
in written form by
retellers completes
metamorphosis to
folk literature
It includes: tales,
fables, legends,
nursery rhymes,
myths…

3. Traditional tales: the storytellers’ magic
Teachers, librarians, and children…
all delight in the many types [of tales]
available. This genre provides engaging
reading experiences for students
because they enjoy the wit, humour,
clever word choice, and the fact that the
characters are rewarded and misfortune
falls upon the bad.
Young et al., 2004

4. Culture and values
Traditional literature introduces
students to many cultures and
values. They see that honesty,
hard work, mercy and forgiveness,
gratitude, kindness and learning
are honoured across cultures.
Also provide students with a frame
of reference to bring to the
cultures they will later encounter –
a ‘landscape of allusion’ (Jane
Yolen, 1981)
Young et al., 2004

5. The reading-writing connection
• “Students develop literary
insights and re-experience
fascination of traditional
stories, while enjoying the
humour/creativity in the
transformation of stories
• Extend enjoyment of modern
stories based on the old
models
• Constructing new stories
modelled on older ones”
Lawrence R Sipe, 1993

6. Types of transformations
of traditional tales
“Parallel e.g. The Principal’s New Clothes, Calmenson,
1989 parallel to: The Emperor’s New Clothes H C
Andersen
Deconstructed eg Sleeping Ugly, Jane Yolen, 1981,
Sleeping Beauty or Little Red Running Shorts in The
Stinky Cheese Man, Jon Scieszka,1992
Extended versions of the original tale eg Chicken Little,
Stephen Kellogg, 1988
Illustrations may change the meaning eg Hansel and
Gretel, Anthony Browne, 1990”
Lawrence R Sipe, 1993

7. Developing multi-literate students
• Flexible and able to deal with change
• Has a repertoire of literate knowledge and practices
• Understands how social and cultural diversity affects
literate practice
• Understands, and is able to use, traditional and new
communication technologies, and
• Is critically literate
Michele Anstey, NZRA Conference, 2008
From: Teaching and Learning Multiliteracies by Michele Anstey and Geoff Bull, 2006
www.ansteybull.com.au

8. Understandings about texts delivered
via traditional and new technologies
Require selection of appropriate technology
• purpose, audience, context
Are rarely used in isolation
• social practices with texts
Delivery technology influences literate
practices
• eg digital or electronic
Metacognitive behaviour required
www.ansteybull.com.au

9. Understanding texts
“ Require the knowledge and use
of the codes and conventions of
five grammars:
• Linguistic: Oral language and
written language eg using
vocabulary, generic structure,
punctuation
• Visual: Still and moving images
eg colour, vectors and viewpoint
www.ansteybull.com.au

10. Understanding texts
• Audio: Music, sound effect and
silence eg volume, pitch, rhythm
• Gestural: Facial expression and
body language eg movement, speed,
stillness
• Spatial: Layout and organisation of
objects in space eg proximity,
direction and position”
www.ansteybull.com.au

11. It’s all good, in the
‘hood…
http://cheryl304.blogspot.com/2008/11/little-red-riding-hood.html