I tested out an idea I've had for a while, but haven't yet implemented in my teaching: passports. My students are Time Travellers to the Ancient World, and every piece of background information they learn comprises a visa entry in their passports. Once they have completed each visa entry, they will get a stamp in their passports. The students use their passports as their bookmarks, so they always have the information at hand if they need to look something up.
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| Passport cover and back page where students fill in their information |
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| The titles of the ten visa entries that students had to complete and a place for the stamp |
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| One page for students to write down the task for each visa entry |
I printed out one cover, one visa titles page and six visa entries pages per student. The students then folded the pages in half to create a small booklet for their passports. I created ten visa entries as part of the unit.
Visa Entry #1: Founding of Rome myth - Romulus and Remus
The first visa was a short piece of homework the students had to complete: find the myth of Romulus and Remus. We discussed it in class and students wrote a short summary of the story in their passports.
Visa Entry #2: Word Power activity - ancient and modern
We watched a short video to learn about the Olympian gods and goddesses (and a couple of other deities), and then completed activities on the names of the planets and the days of the week (in English and Spanish). This is a rather 'trivial pursuit' kind of activity with a two-fold purpose. Firstly, it is designed to engage the students - they enjoy making the connections - and secondly, it allows me to plant the idea of relevance. Yes, the Aeneid was written 2000 years ago, but we can still learn from it and enjoy it today. Just as we see the daily use of the gods and goddesses in our solar system and calendars!
Visa Entry #3: Gods and goddesses - Jupiter, Juno, Apollo and Venus
Jupiter, Juno, Apollo and Venus feature extensively in the Aeneid and so students researched the main attributes of each deity in order to understand their roles in more detail. They completed the research for homework in their copybooks and then transferred the most important information into their passports after a class discussion on each god.
Visa Entry #4: The Underworld
Book VI is set in the Underworld and so the Roman (and Greek) concept of the Underworld is an integral piece of information. I put together a short powerpoint presentation and information worksheet on the Underworld and we answered five questions for the visa entry:
1. Who is the god of the Underworld and how did he come by his wife?
2. What role does Charon play in the Underworld?
3. What is Cerberus? What do his heads represent and how is this appropriate to the Underworld?
4. What did the Romans believe about the afterlife?
5. How did Avernus get its name and why?
Visa Entry #5: Vergil biography
I combined this entry on the poet with a brief history of Rome. We learnt about the kings, republic and empire, and about how Augustus "found Rome mud and left it marble". In the information about Vergil, I introduced the idea that the Aeneid was a commissioned poem and we learnt the concept of propaganda...
Visa Entry #6: Origins of the Trojan War myths
Throughout our journey so far, my students picked up on similarities to the movie "Troy". While I acknowledge the shortcomings of Hollywood's grasp on classical literature, I will concede that references to the movie helped. (I would also like to credit Harry Potter here, as we discussed Minerva McGonagall, Fluffy, Remus Lupin, etc.)! However, I think it is imperative for my students to understnad the greatest flaw of the movie (in my opinion) - there are no gods. All the epic poems feature squabbling Olympians; indeed, their quarrels guide the actions of the mortals. And so for this visa we learnt about Discordia's apple and Juno's hatred of Troy, and Helen's role in the story.
Visa Entry #7: Myth of Anchises and the birth of Aeneas
Of course we now knew that Venus favoured the Trojans (Dardans) thanks to Paris' judgement, but in this entry we found out that Venus' favour ran more deeply than mere gratitude. She is in fact the mother of Aeneas and so guides her son's path throughout his journey. Anchises' blindness is revealed and we were introduced to the man for whom Aeneas descends to the Underworld in Book VI.
Visa Entry #8: Introduction to epic poetry - epithets
This was a tricky entry and I wasn't sure how to tackle it at first. It's hard to explain stock phrases and "thus he spoke" so completely out of context, but I didn't want my students to falter at the formal-sounding language of Latin-in-translation. And so I copied the first seven lines of the Iliad and Aeneid in their original and read them to the class so that they could hear the lyrical quality of the Greek and Latin. We also learnt what a 'muse' is.
Afterwards we discussed the challenges of translation - being poetical versus being faithful to the original. We learnt about the Homeric question and the job of rhetors and gradually my students started to see the sense of stock phrases and epithets. The visa activity was for the students to use their new knowledge of the characters of the Aeneid and make up their own epithets for them, using both physical and personality traits.
1. Aeneas
2. Jupiter
3. Anchises
4. Juno
5. Venus
6. Neptune
7. Apollo
8. Pluto
9. Charon
10. Cerberus
This was a good activity because when we started reading the poem I made sure students highlighted all the epithets of Aeneas in particular, but also of the Sibyl and other characters. When my students come to write their essays on this text, they can learn these epithets as quotes to emphasise the themes of Roman glory, destiny, piety, etc.
Visa Entry #9: Prophecies and horoscopes
By this entry, my students had a commendable grasp of the Roman belief system, but I took the time to delve more deeply into the rituals and mysteries that pervaded every day life. Throughout the Aeneid, Vergil emphasises that Aeneas is destined to found Alba Longa and so everything he does is in accordance with the gods' wishes. For this visa entry, I created a worksheet about the Roman ideas of augury, sacrifice, oracles, the Sibyl of Cumae and the role of the gods in supporting or delaying Aeneas on his journey. We looked at the modern equivalent of tarot cards, crystal balls, fortune cookies, horoscopes and modern religions.
Visa Entry #10: Summary of Aeneid I-V
Since I had decided to read Book VI, we could not just delve in halfway through the poem, and so the final visa entry was to read a summary of Books I-V. Here I highlighted the important events that would come up in Book VI - Dido, Palinurus, and all references to destiny, religion, and Juno, Venus, Jupiter or Apollo.
Did it work?
Absolutely! I truly believe this was one of my better teaching ideas. I was so impressed with how much knowledge the students learnt and retained over the two-week period. There was no pressure on them to learn the information yet, as the idea was that they would absorb a lot of it while we were reading - i.e. the context would start to make sense in the context of the poem - but it was great to see them throwing out the answers to questions about Charon or the Sibyl when we finally started reading.
Things to fix:
Make the passports bigger! I printed two passport per A4 sheet of paper so the passports were close to the size of a regular passport. However, my students had to write very small in order to squeeze some of their information in.
Complete some visa entries while reading the poem. I had students complete the entire passport before we started to read Book VI. I don't think it got boring to do two weeks of passport work, but if I teach this unit again, I would think about saving some visa entries for after we've started reading so that the context and the poem are not so separate. I could definitely do visa entries 5 and 7 after we start reading, and possibly 2 or 3 as well.
