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A photo of headphones on top of musical notes in blue and white with the title "Song Pairings for The Odyssey" to use while teaching the Odyssey

3 Focused Song Pairings for Teaching the Odyssey

Are you teaching The Odyssey and looking to diversify your unit? Engage your students with contemporary song pairings! How do I start teaching The Odyssey? If you are about to start teaching The Odyssey, you might worry about its lack of diversity. You might also worry that your struggling readers will check out. You are most definitely not alone in your concerns!  Below are three contemporary songs you can use as a part of your introduction to The Odyssey. You can also choose to use these song pairings as an Odyssey activity to reinforce popular themes.  Pair these Odyssey activities with the “Introduction to The Odyssey” Escape Room, which includes all the pre-work students need before they read!  The Odyssey Activities Introduction to The Odyssey Idea Song: “How Far I’ll Go” by Auli’i Cravalho (2:36)

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Carina Assayed January 3, 2023

Teaching The Odyssey During Distance Learning

Are your students struggling to connect with The Odyssey? I get it. Somehow “It’s over 3000 years old!” isn’t a significant selling point for teens and tweens. Today I am going to be sharing resources to help with teaching The Odyssey during distance learning.     Teaching The Odyssey during distance learning While the literary merits of The Odyssey are timeless, it’s not very inclusive. I’m not suggesting that you remove it from your curriculum, but that you bring in some additional voices. Contemporary supplemental texts will not only make your lessons more inclusive, they will help students to connect with the original story. Many teachers are working to diversify their curriculum to include more voices. I’ve been working with Dr. Sheila Frye (from Teaching Literacy) on a project called “Rethinking the Classics” to help

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Danielle Hall April 13, 2021

Teaching The Odyssey with an Interactive Escape Room

Take a look inside my completely updated and redesigned Odyssey interactive escape room. New art, new hints, and a brand new digital platform for teaching the Odyssey. Have you played my Odyssey Escape Room? In this interactive adventure, students play as Telemachus, trying to solve Eumaeus’ puzzle and get access to Odysseus’ famed bow. It’s an introduction to the Greek gods and goddesses, the characters in The Odyssey, and life and customs on Ithaca.  Since I first shared this resource in 2017, it has been in constant evolution, improving for the better based on amazing feedback from students and teachers. One teacher told me that her class needed hints, so she set herself up as the Oracle at Delphi. I worked this into an update in late 2018, adding four hints in verse for the

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Danielle Hall January 9, 2020