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Driving Question: 

How can students infer the theme of a myth while learning presentations skills?

Language Arts
Grade 6
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Students began by reading a number of Greek Myths and analyzed common themes. They looked the difference between thematic topics vs thematic statements. The goal was to form a complete statement based on their assessment. of the myth. We used brief text to model how to identify these statements. Students worked in groups to with a selection of a myth and as a group, they had to find the best way to present a short summary of the themes. They needed to have a visual component,  a summary, vocabulary, the thematic sentence, and evidence. Students also made connections to the class reading, The Lighting Thief. 
Student Reflection

"I thought it was good because we got to learn different myths told by our classmates." - Simon

"We got to choose different ways to tell the story. We used different ways to present the story, like we could act out, present using video, keynote, or powerpoint, google docs." - Angela

"I liked it because each group got a choice of two myths and every group had a different myth." - Yunjin

"Going to different rooms was helpful to improve the presentation. We learned different things from different teachers. We learned how to make a better presentation with help from other teachers." - Miller

Student Products
  • Students gave presentations to the class in small groups (triads).
  • They also shared their ideas in written format. 
Teacher Reflection
"We would definitely do this project again. It was a nice extension of reading the novel. The idea of exploring more myths was interesting to the students. It was a natural follow through with the novel. There was an emphasis on text-based evidence which was a huge part of our curriculum. We also could tell about what needed to be retaught. We all worked well together as a team to teach the different skills necessary to do the presentation. Having three teachers work in collaboration was great. It was good to break out of red and gold and work as a team (orange) to address the topic. One piece to make it more powerful for kids would be to give them more time to work on the skills that we taught when we were doing the rotations. Having a chance to do some revising their presentations. Also, having the cross-discipline such as integrations, revision etc. to help make connections for kids." - Mary Burns, Phil Kittower, Erin Leininger

Designers

Mary Burns

Erin Leininger

Phil Kittower

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