I am once again teaching The Odyssey. I have posted my UbD plan for this unit over at the UbD Educators wiki. The unit plan is not different from what I’ve done with The Odyssey in the past, but I don’t think I’ve ever framed it with essential questions. Incidentally, inspired by Tom from Bionic Teaching, I have decided to integrate Google Earth into the project for the first time. I need to do some more playing with Google Earth so I can figure out how it works, but based on what I’ve seen so far, I think it will be a good tool for us.
The performance assessment is a project detailed in English Journal, “Bringing Homer’s Odyssey Up to Date: An Alternative Assessment,” Vol. 86 No. 1, pp. 65-68, Jan 1997. I was a student teacher when I first used it (the 1996-1997 year was my student teaching year), and I have always had great success with it. If you teach The Odyssey, I highly recommend that you get your hands on a copy of that article. I am going to have the students chart their own Odysseus’ journey using Google Earth. I am contemplating publication online through a blog or wiki or some other type of website, but we’ll see.
Sounds like fun. I hope you publish the work. I'd love to see what your students create.
Here are two links which might help you out-
1. The GoogleLitTrip that another teacher created for the Odyssey.
2. This is a quick series of Google Earth videos that might help.
Thanks for the resources, Tom.
I joined NCTE for $40 to get to the English Journal, so that I could order a back copy of your recommended article Bringing Homer’s Odyssey Up to Date: An Alternative Assessment, but their back-copies don't go back that far. Any ideas where I can find this article online? Thanks.
Wow, Pat. That's a lot of trouble! I'm sorry you had to go through all that. You can, with your membership access back copies. Login to the NCTE Web site. Make sure you are logged in and go to this link: http://www.ncte.org/journals/ej/issues/v86-1. Scroll down until you get to "Bringing Homer's Odyssey Up to Date: An Alternative Assessment by Sallie M. Fine. This direct link might work: http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/J… (it's a PDF file, so make sure you have Adobe Reader). You should have Web access with your NCTE membership. I hope you get some benefits from the membership aside from this article! Their conferences are great, if you haven't gone before, and you get a discount for being a member.