Skip to main content

The Mythic Warriors of 4th Hour

After this year, I've realized that my Mythology class needs some more work. For one thing, I spent way too much time on Greek mythology. I also failed to remember how many times the class got interrupted last year by testing, track, drama, etc...all that along with the fact that it is already difficult to keep students rolling the last few months of school. Because I didn't remember that, I ended up frustrated by the same interruptions and things took much longer than needed. 

For next year, I think I'll work on developing smaller units of study based around themes (love, war, pride, etc.) with more project-based activities. I also need to find more visual media to interweave with the plays and short stories we read (which is tricky since mythology is scandalous enough on paper), although I did integrate more art this year. There also needs to be more cultural/historical context included with the mythologies that we study. For instance, I think there are benefits to knowing what everyday Greeks were like compared to the fantastic stories of gods and goddesses.

One of the challenges of being at a small school is planning quality learning experiences for four different courses each day (some teachers at rural schools have up to six classes to prep for). It's frustrating knowing that you aren't giving students your best but can't because there are only so many hours in the day. I definitely feel that this trimester, some of my classes are getting the short end of the stick. Hopefully with some time, planning, and collaboration I can fix that.

Despite all of the challenges, we had a fantastic time laughing as we read the plays, working on student-selected projects for Greek mythology, and competing in the Greek Olympics at the end. The Olympics consisted of five challenges: intuition, resourcefulness, strength, bravery, and intelligence. For the intuition challenge students played pin the eye on the cyclops.  For resourcefulness, they made togas out of toilet paper.  For strength, they competed in a discus (frisbee) throw. Bravery involved eating sour candy, and intelligence was a Jeopardy-style brain teaser test.  As you can see in the pics below, we had a blast (and I take very blurry pictures). This has been a great, small class, and we've shared a lot of laughs along the way.

We are now engrossed in the weird world of Norse mythology. 

Pin the eye on the cyclops

Prepping for a winning discus throw

She just sort of sat down

TP Toga Challenge

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Perception vs. Reality

Before I became a "real" teacher, my perception of teaching English was that I would be blowing kids' minds with classic literature and handing out grammar worksheets.  Needless to say, that hasn't happened...yet. Instead, I was surprised to find that I loved teaching about writing. In particular, I found a love of teaching argumentation and persuasion. The seventh graders are gearing up for argumentative writing. We begin by talking about the concepts of perception and reality and how those two things influence our views of the world and all its issues. I have them make a poster that's based off a popular meme to help ground those concepts. It hardly seems like work, and it's one of the few assignments we do where I get to hear things like, "Can I finish this at home?" or "Can I do another one?" The task is to make a perception and reality poster. I start by showing them an example for a teacher, like this one . This makes for a great
Post a Comment
Read more

First Week is in the Books!

In 7th grade English, we did some activities to help get students get acquainted with their new lives in junior high. On the first day, I challenged the students to work together.  We did this activity.  It was great to observe how each student approached the challenge and helped their team out.  My favorite part of class this week was talking about the Genius Hour project. I didn't have a much time to talk about it as I would have liked, but we were able to brainstorm a few ideas to think about over the weekend. Genius Hour brainstorming "Seventh Grade" activity Most of the students I have in Public Speaking had not previously had a class with me, so I think we got to know each other a little better this week.  We did a speaking and listening activity where one student had to describe a picture while the other student listened and tried to draw it. Students also worked in small groups to brainstorm all the different ways we communicate and wrote definitions of
1 comment
Read more

Tongue Twisters, Growth Mindset, and Self-Portraits

To celebrate the beginning of fall (or to mourn the end of summer), here is a lovely picture of a sunflower in my yard. Here’s what we were up to this week! The seventh graders continued their exploration on narratives this week.   We practiced summary writing and writing about theme.   We also talked about how setting can influence the events of a story.   We used close reading strategies using the Collections Close Reader .   To put all this practice together, my students have some interesting short stories of their own in the works.   I can’t wait to read them! I’m really kicking myself for not getting any pictures of the demonstration speeches we did in second hour this week.   I’ll leave it up to you to picture my students teaching the class how to make cheesecake, wash a dog, tie a bowtie, ride motorcycles, and make lava lamps.   It was a diverse set of topics to say the least. Friday, we relaxed a bit from the stress of speech delivering and had a Tongue Twister Battle.
Post a Comment
Read more