Was he or wasn’t he? We may never know for sure about the origins of King Arthur. But a video that leads middle school and high school viewers through the facts and fictions that have kept King Arthur alive in peoples’ imaginations for nearly a thousand years provides understanding about the complexity of the issue. It also includes historical detail on how the embellishment of history happened.

Concepts

british literature, french literature, historical fiction, british history, knights, king arthur

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Additional Tags

social studies

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Instructional Ideas

• Invite the class to brainstorm fictions that are based in fact and encourage them to think about how such stories might come about
• Host a scavenger hunt for pupils to find as many versions as they can of King Arthur stories and then discuss how the different versions relate to each other

Classroom Considerations

• Use closed captioning if the narrator’s pronunciation of English is interfering with understanding
• Prepare students by discussing the Saxon invasion and medieval authors who wrote of King Arthur

Pros

• Opportunity for cross-curricular connections with English and French literature
• Provides valuable cultural context for reading stories of Arthur

Cons