Nine Paths to Ithaca
A Unit Plan for 8th Grade
Designed for Block Schedule of 5 weeks
Diego Trujillo
EDUC 463, Fall 2010
Nine Paths to Ithaca Unit Explanation
The unit on The Odyssey will follow a unit on Greek mythology, preceded by a unit concerning the hero’s journey. These units will help the students understand the myriad of characters that pop up in Homer’s epic and establish what makes a hero and what can be expected in a heroic story.
The students will generally be age 13 to 14 while in this class and will possess reasonably established skills in reading and writing. Their interests will probably be everywhere but my classroom, however, it is my hope that the unconventional nature of mythology will increase their excitement for the core text of this unit.
This unit will fall early in my yearlong plan in order to help establish the class theme of how our collective identity has been established. The primary text will be the prose version of The Odyssey, however, the verse version will be used to augment class discussion. The graphic novel version, Odysseus the Rebel, will be used in small parts in much the same manner as the verse version of the text. The final text used for the unit will be the film, Oh Brother, Where art Thou?
This unit addresses Colorado Department of Education standards 1, 2, 3, and 4. The students will use a variety of techniques and strategies outlined in these standards in order to extend their mastery of this difficult text.
The initial assignment in the unit is for the students to cast themselves as one of Odysseus’ sailors for the duration of the unit. The creation of this persona is detailed in the initial hand out. This persona will be used for the duration of the unit and will be represented by “paper-craft” models, some examples are included in this unit, and the students should be encouraged to find their own sailor model for the unit.
These paper sailors will be placed in a central spot in the classroom that will represent Odysseus’s ship, there also needs to be a specific place to represent the underworld for those sailors who are defeated along the voyage. This can be a simple drawing or even an actual model of a ship that can accommodate the class’ sailors, a large sushi boat would be perfect for this. You will also need an area close to the ship to represent the underworld. The classroom underworld will be the final resting place for the model sailors and serve to keep a record of the losses on the voyage.
Being one of Odysseus’ sailors was harrowing job, and ultimately they all lost their lives in the service of their King. Some were lost to the monsters and dilemmas on the long voyage, but all of them eventually perished when their ship was destroyed. All of the units have homework components and doing these assignments will score the students “immunity” from that day’s potential dangers. Student’s who do not turn in their assignments will have their names entered in a random drawing in order to see which sailors have fallen to a particular dilemma. The entire class will then use contextual clues to determine how many sailors will fall victim to the day’s perils. Students whose sailor has been defeated before the fateful encounter with Scylla and Charybdis must record where their sailor met his or her end and include it in the epilogue for their persona that will sum up the unit.
The epilogue includes a special student researched component that can fill in for one missed homework assignment. Any student writing their sailor’s epilogue can include a paragraph on what section of the underworld their character ended up in. It is at the teacher’s discretion to add potential value to this part of the assignment to fill in for more than one homework assignment if the student includes a fitting eternal rest based on how his or her sailor was lost on the voyage. For example, if the sailor in question was blown away by the bag holding the world’s winds where might that sailor end up in the underworld? What about the sailors that makes it to the very end?
Each lesson that follows includes a script for class discussion, the homework, and the exercise for the classroom. The homework questions are designed to be light, but keep the class on task with the externally assigned readings. The verse version of the text should be used to augment in class discussions, but generally not for homework readings.
Ten years is a long time to be trying to get home, what can be learned in that time about yourself and the world around you?
Understanding by Design Unit Template
Curriculum Area / English / Time Frame / 5 Weeks, block schedule
Developed By / Diego Trujillo
Identify Desired Results (Stage 1)
Content Standards
1. Oral Expression and Listening
1. Content that is gathered carefully and organized well successfully
influences an audience
2. Effectively operating in small and large groups to accomplish a goal
requires active listening
2. Reading for All Purposes
1. Literary and historical influences determine the meaning of
traditional and contemporary literary texts
2. The development of new ideas and concepts within informational
and persuasive manuscripts
3. Writing and Composition
1. Literary or narrative genres feature a variety of stylistic devices to
engage or entertain an audience
2. Organizational writing patterns inform or persuade an audience
4. Research and Reasoning
3. Quality reasoning relies on supporting evidence in media
Understandings / Essential Questions
Overarching Understanding / Overarching / Topical
The Odyssey is one of the most important texts in the construction of western identity. Odysseus exemplifies the qualities of humanity that western society prizes about all things. As Odysseus grows so does the reader, and with that growth comes the ability to overcome challenges that were once thought to be insurmountable. / Why is Odysseus so critical to modern thinking?
What does The Odyssey teach us about life?
How is Odysseus different from most heroes? / Why doesn’t Odysseus just give up?
What are Odysseus’ strengths and weaknesses?
What other resources does Odysseus rely on?
Related Misconceptions
What does a text that is thousands of years old have to do with the life of young people today? This text is far too difficult for young readers.
Knowledge
Students will know… / Skills
Students will be able to…
v Who Odysseus was and his importance to western identity
v How The Odyssey has and continues to influence literature and popular culture
v The importance of problem solving / v Identify the themes of the text in other separate texts
v Read secondary sources for new perspectives
v Infer the perils of acting rashly
v Use new strategies for problem solving
Assessment Evidence (Stage 2)
Performance Task Description
Goal / To extend mastery of the text and allow different students to use their unique learning styles to produce a varied assessment.
Role / The students will act as artists in a visual and literary capacity.
Audience / Teacher
Situation / Contextualizing the radical events of the core text.
Product/Performance / Multi-genre project
Standards / 1. Oral Expression and Listening
2. Reading for All Purposes
3. Writing and Composition
4. Research and Reasoning
Other Evidence
Students will engage in the following activities.
Ø Floor plan sketches
Ø Original Songs
Ø Vignette style character profiles
Ø Traditional Quizzes
Ø Daily worksheets with textual questions
Learning Plan (Stage 3)
Where are your students headed? Where have they been? How will you make sure the students know where they are going? / This unit will set the foundation for how the paradigm for western thought was created. The students having already been well versed in the basics of Greek mythology will make solid connections to the text and make connections with upcoming texts.
How will you hook students at the beginning of the unit? / The interactive nature of the initial assignment will entice the students to create their own space within the narrative of the text. The competitive aspect that is inevitable will foster interest in the text.
What events will help students experience and explore the big idea and questions in the unit? How will you equip them with needed skills and knowledge? / The various activities in the unit as well as some additional texts will help students create inferences and ask questions that will ultimately help them find their own answers to the questions the unit poses them.
How will you cause students to reflect and rethink? How will you guide them in rehearsing, revising, and refining their work? / Because each lesson focuses on a different learning style students will be more reflective when bringing their strengths to bear on the task at hand. In a complementary way the tasks that do not play to the individual student’s strengths will cause the student to reflect and rethink in order to satisfy the goals of the assignment.
How will you help students to exhibit and self-evaluate their growing skills, knowledge, and understanding throughout the unit? / Because the students will be using many different strategies to complete their tasks, they will be constantly self-evaluating their own progress and their successes. Tasks that they may struggle on will give the students immediate feedback on where they need to seek help.
How will you tailor and otherwise personalize the learning plan to optimize the engagement and effectiveness of ALL students, without compromising the goals of the unit? / The variety of the tasks creates an almost automatic environment of differentiation. A student who struggles with one part of the unit will find a place they will excel at. Because the activities allow for collaboration the class will be able to make progress while addressing the needs of individuals.
How will you organize and sequence the learning activities to optimize the engagement and achievement of ALL students? / The progression of the lesson plans matches the progression of the text. It is a logical progression that will aid in the understanding of the text.
From: Wiggins, Grant and J. Mc Tighe. (1998). Understanding by Design, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
ISBN # 0-87120-313-8 (ppk)
Unit Rationale
As a child and was just starting my life long love affair with books and the written word, I was introduced to a series of books called, “Choose Your Own Adventure”. These books would present the reader with a passage that ended in a choice or a dilemma, following the passage would be one to three options of what the reader could possibly do in reaction to the choice or dilemma. The choices referred the reader to a specific page, the book was not read in a normal sequence, and the story would continue with either positive or negative results.
I was at the age when I was first reading these books that my imagination would run wild, and anything I was exposed to would become a potential tormentor as I would try to go to sleep. It’s funny how fear became such a part of my life as my world got bigger, and I constantly found new terrors around every corner. It was from the aforementioned books that my life took a big turn.
As I was reading one of the volumes in the series, the characters were facing off with a particularly nasty and well described monster. The book asked me what I wanted to do to deal with the monster, posing the options of fight the beast or try to trick it. I decided to try to trick the monster since all other attempts at open aggression had been met with a quick demise on my part, facilitating the need to start the book over again.
The characters told the gruesome one eyed monster that they were not alone and that their friend, Odysseus, was right behind them. The monster was so terrified at the prospect of having to face the man that had blinded his father sent it running off into the dark. I was so surprised by the conclusion of the encounter that I set the book down to reflect on what had just happened. That a monster could be scared of a person was an idea that I had never entertained. I was so galvanized by the idea that my nights quickly became lest restless and I fell asleep easily.
Over the next few days I became obsessed with who Odysseus was. I remember asking my father about him and he told me bits and pieces of The Odyssey that he could remember from his school days. The little bits he could remember were enough to satisfy me for the time being, but I would always keep Odysseus in the back of my mind.
Years later, in Junior High School I would finally get the chance to read The Odyssey and finally satisfy all the questions I had ever had about Odysseus. I can still remember being a little sad when we finished the unit. I loved every moment of it while my peers groaned at almost every turn.
Now I have come full circle, I am about to embark on a career where I will be answering the questions that are harbored in young minds. However, I think it will be an absolute rarity to find any of my students having the same kind of intense interest in The Odyssey that I came with in my English class all those years ago.
This all begs the question, why The Odyssey? With all the works available to the contemporary teacher, is there a need to teach such a difficult and ancient text? The easiest answer is that The Odyssey is one of the most important and influential texts in all of western literature. Every time we see a protagonist use wit instead of brawn, The Odyssey is there. Any time there is a journey made on film or in books we feel the power of Homer’s work.