We are just finishing up our social studies unit on ancient Greece. One of the best parts about this unit was the 7 days we spent studying ancient Greek mythology. My students ate this project up because they got a chance to use the school's Ipads for research. Any time I can grab the Ipad cart it will be on my agenda in the future. I was amazed at the collaborative learning that went on with this! Each student in my class chose a Greek god, goddess or creature related to mythology. They had to read a myth about the person, find out how he/she became a mythological creature, and learn about the symbol relating to the god. I was amazed by how much they helped each other! As we were working I loved hearing pockets of students share information as they realized that their topic overlapped someone elses. Hello! Middle School Smarties collaborting on a school related topic? HOLLA
After we gathered our information we organized web pages for each god or goddess.
Each student created a template for the web page providing a summary of a myth containing the character, information about how the god, goddess or creature was related to others, and then an informative paragraph about the symbol. My teammate found the posters from Really Good Stuff. They are Show What You Know about Informational Text posters. You can find them
{here} if you are interested. This post is not affiliated with Really Good Stuff, the poster is something we ordered with grant money and felt Greek mythology was a good way to use them.
I read a new (to me) picture book while my smarties were searching for information. It's called Persephone and the Pomegranate by Kris Waldherr. The book I read is this:
I was already familiar with the myth, but not this version. The illustrations are beautiful! Unfortunately, the book is out of print, so I am very grateful that our library has a copy of it. I know I'll be on the hunt for it at library sales to add to my personal collection. I'm continuing our study of myths in Language Arts by reading
The Lightning Thief. Most of my smarties are familiar with the novel, but I am going to push them to dig deeper with evidence. Stop back over the next few weeks and see how it is panning out for us!
Do you study ancient Greece? I'd love to hear what you do with mythology.
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I think my kids would LOVE to work on a project where they could pick a Greek god or goddess....especially since they love reading the Percy Jackson series at this age. In fact, we started the Genius Hour last week and one of my students picked Greek Mythology as his topic that he would like to learn more about. I looked over and he was taking notes faster than he was taking breaths. At one point I heard his camera shutter go off because he wanted a picture of the Greek family tree.
ReplyDeleteAlison
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