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The Moth - personal storytelling

The Moth is a US-based organisation that publishes live performances of stories online, via website, podcast, and YouTube. The Moth's creators believe that 'one of the best ways to take care of one another is by listening to and sharing true, personal stories.’

 

 

Structure and features

The Moth has:

  • access to education resources about how to help students produce a Moth story
  • books of Moth stories to buy (or borrow from a library)
  • links to Moth podcasts and videos, including one episode recorded with Australian storytellers in Sydney.

For students and families

Students

  • Follow the teacher’s instructions for this resource – including different ways of telling and sharing your story (video, audio, print, photos or a combination of these).
  • Use photos and favourite family stories as the basis of or prompt for your story.
  • See the education section for resources and 20 student stories on video.

Parents and caregivers

  • Support and encourage students with sharing stories and insights from their lives.
  • Watch some student stories together; discuss the strengths of each and how your child might be able to enrich their own story and improve delivery.

For teachers

You can:

  • sign up for more educational resources
  • integrate stories into assessment plans, as test analysis, as interactive, online, multimodal or speaking tasks, transformational tasks and text production tasks
  • model student stories by creating and sharing your own story through video, audio or writing
  • set word and time limits to make the task manageable and improve the quality of student submissions
  • engage with students and parents; if families have time, perhaps they can host an on online interactive Moth event, where family and friends share a story 
  • integrate with literary text responses, for example, have students tell a story from a range of characters' points of view
  • launch a cross-class competition as the real Moth does; classes or teachers choose the best stories to go into heats with invited judges. Establish clear criteria for all.

 

 

Teacher notes

Focus areas

  • Storytelling
  • Fluency, oral and physical communication skills
  • Written, oral and video text creation
  • Recount, narrative and reflective text creation
  • Student drafting, editing and proofreading in print and oral language
  • Authentic audience.

Curriculum links

  • Australian Curriculum year 7 to 10 English
  • Language, Literacy and Literature strands
  • SACE English.

Assessment

No assessment lessons or plans are not provided by the site. Teachers should integrate the materials into their current assessment plans.