PYTASH: Lesson Design for Classical Literature

I really like how this chapter really walked us through a bunch of different activities for classical literature, while mostly applied to The Odyssey. I think that my favorite assignment was where her students imitated the first 16 lines of The Odyssey. I think that it is a really good way to incorporate creative writing into the classroom while having it still tied to the text being studied. The one girls piece was really good and it can help a teacher see that she really got it and went with it instead of just writing the bare minimum.

Another part of this chapter I liked is "A Note on Visualizing Fictional Works." I think that some students have such a hard time visualizing an unfamiliar setting that they get discouraged and stop reading the text. I also liked the venn diagram idea on page 147 with comparing heroes. It helps tie all the texts being read together.

Yet another thing I liked from this chapter was the ideas she had on quizzes. I know in my one college class, we had quizzes on the reading every day. I think this really helped keep me on track and made me really work at reading closely at home. If he would not have quizzed us, I most likely would have fallen behind on the reading because it was a lot of reading every night.