Goals

 

Details

Duration: 90 minutes

Assessments: Student writing

Materials: lcd projector

 

Description

Background context:
We spent 2 weeks exploring Ancient Greek culture, language, and geography as well as investigating the traces of these things that are present, and indeed, prevalent in modern society. During this time, students were also introduced to the foundational stories presented in D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths. As an entire class and in small groups, students read and analyzed the creation stories of Gaea and Uranus, the Titans, Zeus and his family, and Pandora. Students became familiar with the names of the major gods and goddesses, and examined each story for the evil that the story was presenting.

The launch of this project began with a Project Overview (see handout) that gave students the basic description of what they would be working on. This was followed by the Project Menu (see handout) from which they would choose their final creative product that would be presented to the class.

Once students had a general idea of the project, they were instructed to get into groups of 3-4. Before the selection happened, we had a discussion about choosing wisely for groupwork and how to do that. Students then selected their groups.

Their first task was to come up with a Group Contract that covered the following areas:

Contract Requirements:
1. What will you do when someone is absent? How are they held accountable?
2. What will you do if someone comes in without his/her work? How will you hold them accountable? How will you be sure that the work gets done?
3. How will you start each group work session? What are the signals that show everyone is ready to begin?

What are your group members' goals for this project? Each person must write down one goal.

Each group member had to sign the contract and it had to be signed off by me. The contracts had to be specific and detailed, and group members had to agree on all points. Groups could not move on until the contract was completed and approved.

Once groups completed the Contract and turned it in to me, they received the Mythology Packet of 4 myths from D'Aulaire's that they would be examining for the next 2 weeks. Each group received different packets, and I was able to differentiate a bit for different skill levels.

The rest of class was spent exploring the myth packets and reading in small groups.

Mythology Mastery: Project Menu
Download (82K)

Mythology Mastery: Project Overview
Download (78K)

Author Reflections

The beginning of the launch lesson was very "handout-heavy" and included a lot of teacher-led instruction. I tried to be very transparent about this with my students, asking them to give me about 15-20 minutes of listening to me talk at them and thrust lots of papers in their faces. I am not sure how I would change this, but it did take some coaxing with my more high-energy classes.

The student-generated contracts were FABULOUS. I will use this for every project in the future! Some of my most challenging students were the ones begging to use the phone during class to call a group member who had not shown up to school and demand a reason for his/her absence.