Teachers should have a map of the Ancient World, i.e. Mediterranean countries, and books about Ancient Greece, the Gods and Heroes.
LESSON 1
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1. Discuss the Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Greece.
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2. Discuss B.C. and A.D. Make a time line on the board.
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3. Talk about Heracles. What was he supposed to look like? What is a hero? Who is a modern hero? Do we make up heroes? Who are some Olympic Games or Comic book heroes heroes and heroines? What do they do?
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4. Have students invent a hero or super hero. Write a description and/or draw a picture. Describe that super hero to the class.
LESSON II
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1. Recap who is who among the Gods.
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2. Tell the story of Heracles’ birth and his strangling of the snakes.
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3. Give the students roles to play. Depending on cast numbers, you can adapt and add or subtract characters.
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CHARACTERS: Alcmene, Amphitryon, Heracles, Iphicles, Hera, snakes. Other possible characters: Nurse, Zeus, servants, relatives, townspeople.
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4. Clear a space and group chairs or desks for crib. Decide where the parents bedroom is, where Hera and the snakes come from etc. How do snake’s move? How is Heracles going to kill them? Discuss and work out fight.
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5. Teacher acts as narrator. Students can pantomime the action.
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6. Discuss how it went. Give more dialogue or sounds to the actors as you keep doing it. Narrator can become a student. Get suggestions from the class.
Teachers sometimes think that students will get bored acting out the same thing many times. In my experience this is not the case. Each time you do the scene there are changes because it is improvised. Keep it improvised. You can change roles if you like. You can go through all the Labors this way, making them simple or complicated. Keep it simple! Find the core of the story.
Act it out. Add in details as you repeat the improvisation.
LESSON III—The Hydra
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1. Discuss monsters. Describe the Hydra.
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2. Discuss animals that can regenerate parts of themselves.
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3.
Machine Game
(Monster Game). See note.
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4. Tell story of Heracles and the Hydra.
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5. Cast the parts. Cast: The Hydra (several people), The Crab, Hera, Heracles, Iolaus (nephew), Eurystheus, Villagers, family members etc.
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6. Decide how to depict Hydra. Act out, as in previous lesson, teacher narrating.
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7. Discuss and repeat. Have students design a monster and ways to overcome it. Draw and/or write a description.
Note:
Machine Game
. One student comes up and holds a pose as a part of a large machine. Other students follow, connecting in some way and becoming another part of that machine. When the machine is together, the teacher pushes the button and the machine starts to move. In this version we are making a monster instead of a machine.
LESSON IV—Heracles’ Shield
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1. Discuss what warriors wore in Ancient Greece and what it looked like. What materials it could have been made of.
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2. How big should a shield be for a man eight feet tall?
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3. Read from Hesiod’s
The Shield of Heracles
lines 139-320 aloud to the class.
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4. Assign parts of the shield to be drawn (you don’t have to use all of the scenes described by Hesiod, you could also make some up). Give everyone a pie shaped piece of paper, save one circle piece for the center. Work out dimensions. Pictures can be done on graph paper and enlarged or drawn free form.
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5. Color and mount on cardboard shield.
LESSON V—
Heracles
, by Euripides and
The Women of Trachis
, by Sophocles
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1. High School students read both plays.
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2. Discuss issues raised in the body of this unit, i.e. good and evil, brawn and brain, fame, insanity etc.
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3. What are the differences in the two authors?
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4. Read part or all of the plays aloud. Try choral reading with the chorus’.
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5. Have students select contrasting speeches from both plays to be read aloud as an argument or dialogue?
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6. Do dialogue as a radio play or debate. Who is right? Who is wrong? How would we judge these characters? What questions are posed? What do we think and how do we feel?