Fantasy is my favourite genre with one of my favourite authors being Christopher Paolini, author of Eragon. However, teaching the genre can be rather challenging. There are so many elements which bind together to create a fantasy realm. It pushes teachers and students beyond the traditional narrative themes. Watch this:

As with any genre, I begin with students deconstructing texts. I like to use student’s work samples so that students have something to aspire to, a text written by someone their age, making it achievable for them too. Below are two texts written by two of my Year 5 students.
It was a dark night By Alisha-xzsrgr
The Giant By Johanna-1yyiqjx

I also give students exerts from printed texts such as the ones below:
Moon Wolf Introduction by Joni Latham-1g2nzs6
Writing_an_intro_Excerpt from Rowan of Zebak-28mceot

We then look at the seven basic motifs in fantasy; special character types, magic, other world’s, universal themes, heroism,  talking animals, and fantastic objects. ​Following this, we explore literary devices such as similes, metaphors, onomatopoeia, alliteration and my favourite, personification.

I have created my own scaffold to support students when writing fantasy texts and I have had much success with the scaffold so I thought I’d share it.

Fantasy text scaffold JVillis-2moql26