Darkmouth Learning Resources

Fun, creative activities inspired by Darkmouth, Shane Hegarty’s award-winning debut novel.

CFE Level 2 (Ages 8-11)

About these resources

These resources are full of cross-curricular activity suggestions to help you explore Darkmouth with your students. Adapt and use as you see fit!

Introducing Darkmouth

Darkmouth is the first book in Shane Hegarty’s hugely popular Legends series. The town of Darkmouth has been invaded by terrifying monsters known as Legends and it is up to Finn to protect it. The last in a long line of Legend hunters, Finn has a lot to live up to. Especially since his father and trainer is also one of the greatest Legend Hunters that ever lived.

Brimming with fun illustrations by James de la Rue, Darkmouth is a gripping adventure jam-packed with laughs, monsters and a quirky cast of hilarious characters.

Activities

Make a Stop-Motion Animation Eng 2-31a, Exa 2-02a, Tch 2-04a

Legends are terrifying monsters who come in all different shapes and sizes. In this task your pupils will create their own Legend and then animate it using simple stop-motion techniques.

Darkmouth is full of brilliant descriptions of the Legends, which are often made up of a mixture of body parts from lots of different animals. From Manticores, with the body of a lion, the wings of a dragon and a scorpion tail, to Wolpertingers, a mixture of rabbit, reindeer and a sprinkling of vampire.

To begin with ask your pupils to create their own Legend, made up of a strange a mix of different animals. Encourage your pupils to think up the most grotesque features they can to make their Legend extra scary. They could draw their Legend first and then make a model out of plasticine, clay or recycled materials.

Shane Hegarty uses lots of brilliant vocabulary to describe how the Legends move and sound as well as how they look. Each pupil could write a fact file for their new Legend to describe it and alert Finn to its dangers.

To help your pupils get started with describing how their Legend moves and sounds and to explain its terrifying features you could first come up with ideas all together as a class. Ask pupils to think of all of the different words they could use to describe how a creature moves and sounds, and to look at Darkmouth for ideas. In the book you can find words like thudded, slithered, roared, thundered and creaked and hopefully this will inspire your pupils to come up with many more!

Legend Fact File

Height:

Weight:

Terrifying features:

How it moves:

How it sounds: Now that your pupils have created their Legend and thought about how it moves and sounds it is time to turn their characters into an animation.

There are lots of videos on YouTube which you can show pupils to introduce them to stop motion animation.

This resource from iPad Art Room has a really useful explanation of how to create simple animations using iMotion. There are lots of different apps available to create stop-motion animations or you can just use a phone video recorder or digital camera to capture still frames. www.ipadartroom.com/clay-mation/

Wikihow has a simple step-by-step guide to creating clay animations:

www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Simple-Claymation-With-a-Webcam-and-Windows-Movie- Maker

Once you have introduced your pupils to the idea of stop-motion animation and had a go at creating some simple clips, split pupils into small groups and explain that each group is going to create a short 30 second scene where their Legends meet and interact. Pupils can write a short script or storyboard, make scenery and even add sound clips to bring their animations to life.

Adapt a Scene from Darkmouth Into a Comic Lit 2-16a, Eng 2-31a, Eng 2-19a, Exa 2- 02a, Exa 2-03a

Adapting a scene from a book into a comic is a great way to get pupils thinking about the writer’s craft and to explore key themes and ideas from the story.

The format of comics will probably already be familiar to your pupils and some of them might already be comic book fans. Start off by bringing different comic strips into class and giving pupils time to read them. Invite pupils to bring in their own comics from home too. A brilliant resource for funny and accessible child-friendly comics is the Phoenix, a weekly comic for 6 – 12 year olds: www.thephoenixcomic.co.uk/schools/

Talk to your pupils about the similarities and differences between different comics and artist’s styles. Some ideas to discuss:

 Is there dialogue? How is it presented? Are there speech bubbles or captions?  What are the characters doing? How is that shown?  What is the shape of the comic frames? Do they look like a box? Are the corners rounded? Why do you think the illustrator made that choice?  How is action, like movement, shown?  What happens from one frame to the next?

These brilliant resources from graphic novel artists Metaphrog describe how to adapt a scene from a novel into a comic: www.scottishbooktrust.com/learning/learning- resources/resource/how-to-write-a-comic-book-scene

And take a look at this blog from comic artist Adam Murphy with top tips for your pupils on how to draw comics: www.scottishbooktrust.com/blog/teachers- librarians/2016/08/comics-and-literacy-part-4-how-to-draw-a-comic

Pupils can choose a scene from Darkmouth and then follow the activities in these resources to create their own comic strip.

If your pupils are less confident you can provide them with a simple layout sheet for their comic to help them get started. You can find lots of different printable layouts here: /www.printablepaper.net/category/comics Persuasive Writing Task: The Darkmouth Tourist Board Eng 2-27a, Exa 2-03a

Darkmouth doesn’t get very many visitors and when it does they tend to leave again very quickly. In this task your pupils will create a tourism campaign for Darkmouth, encouraging people to come for a holiday.

Split your pupils into groups and tell them that the Darkmouth tourist board has decided to start running Legend safaris to encourage more people to visit the area and that they are in charge of creating a poster and advertising to advertise the safari.

First ask your pupils to research online how different tourist boards advertise their city or country. Ask them to think about what kind of language advertisements use and to write down a list of the persuasive words they come across in their research.

Now it is time for your pupils to create a poster. This should include:

 Eye-catching images and illustrations

 Writing which describes the safari and encourages people to book a trip.

 Booking information – contact telephone number, company name etc

Some things for your pupils to think about while they are making their poster:

 Who is the poster aimed at? For example, is it families, adventurers, honeymoon couples or school trips?

 What persuasive words can they use to encourage people to take part?

 Can they offer a special discount or deal to get people to book?

 What are the unique features of this safari which might entice people to book? Once your pupils have created their posters they can present their ideas to the rest of the class. You could also invite another teacher to be a representative from the Darkmouth Toursim board and pick a winning advertising campaign.

Reading Recommendations Lit 2-11a

If you and your class loved Darkmouth, you might like to take a look at these book lists for some ideas for further reading:

 10 Great Adventures: www.scottishbooktrust.com/reading/book-lists/10-great- adventures-8-11

 8 Hilarious Reads (8 – 11) www.scottishbooktrust.com/reading/book-lists/8-hilarious-reads-8-11