PROJECT DESCRIPTION
INSTRUCTORS
SCHOOL SITE
LEVEL
SUBJECTS
ELECTRICITY USAGE
LESS THAN FIVE MATERIALS
TEACHERS NEEDED
BOOK CHAPTER
“The best part would be the play.” Mark Aguirre’s inspiration for this project came from an academic talk that he attended on the connection between The Iliad by Homer, Median Dialog by Thucydides, and The Trojan Women, a play by Euripides. These three texts show an early civilization evolving from iron age brutality to a society with ideals about justice and empathy. “I thought I could adapt a study of these three texts for ninth graders, and the best part would be the play.”
The challenge was to get through these three dense texts with students who had widely varying levels of reading comprehension and maturity. The students were paired up, with each partner responsible for a small part of the text; this enabled them to help each other paraphrase their portions of the text so that everyone could understand the meaning.
Utilizing a form of Socratic Seminar, the students worked together to analyze the subtext and look at what these stories revealed about the societies that produced them. Guided by these plays, discussions ranged from religion, to the discovery of math and science, to the morality of war. With each discussion, students connected the themes to current world events.
The class started with The Iliad, reading in teams and translating the meaning into modern speech. They continued with the Median Dialog, unpacking the humanistic growth of the Greek society, and finally reading The Trojan Women aloud in class. The students decided to have the boys perform that play since in ancient Greek times, the audience and actors were all men.
The girls in the class wrote an adaptation of The Trojan Women following similar themes of genocide, war, refugees, and the treatment of women. There were many settings to choose from, such as the Holocaust, the killing of nuns in El Salvador, or the French Revolution.
Mark created a list of jobs: Director, Actors, Set Decorators, Lighting, Costumes, Publicity, and Writers. Many students had dual roles, which helped with communication and coordination. Mark’s goal was for students to have multiple jobs, some that fit with their interests and skills and at least one that challenged their concept of themselves.
Want to see the whole project? Click the button to download the pages from the book that discuss this project!
Want to see the whole project? Click the button to download the pages from the book that discuss this project!
The class started with The Iliad, reading in teams and translating the meaning into modern speech. They continued with the Median Dialog, unpacking the humanistic growth of the Greek society and finally reading The Trojan Women aloud in class. The students decided to have the boys perform that play since in ancient Greek times, the audience and actors were all men.
The girls in the class decided to write an adaptation of The Trojan Women following the same themes of genocide, war, refugees, and the treatment of women. There were many settings to choose from, such as the Holocaust, the killing of nuns in El Salvador, or the French Revolution.
The students got a list of jobs, Director, Actor, Set Decorators, Lighting, Costumes, Publicity, and Writers. Each group had members that overlapped with other groups for communication and coordination. Students had multiple jobs that fit with their interests and skills and also challenged their concepts of themselves.
The considerable time spent paraphrasing the texts helped make them accessible to all students. Everyone presented what they found in the text. Students worked in teams and sometimes one-on-one with a teacher to understand a story and its connections to the greater theme. Student growth, understanding of the stories, and ability to explain the underlying concepts were supported individually.
“I don’t give them a test. I ask the students individually to tell me what they know.” Mark used “Coffee Talks” every morning, in which students applied something from the news to their stories. “How does US policy compare to Agammemnon’s foreign policy?” Finally, each student kept a portfolio for assessment. The students were able to keep fixing and revising the work in their portfolios until they felt satisfied with the grade they had.
