Great Ways to Teach Greek Myths in the ESL Classroom

Ancient Greece holds a lot of excitement and a bold history. Therefore, there is the distinct possibility of creating fun-filled lessons for your ESL learners using this as a stimulus. Continue reading for suggestions of how to teach your older primary-aged students about the Greek Goddess Athena.

1.   Our FREE Ancient Greek Mythology - Athena product includes a wealth of resources

2.    Role Play

Once you have got to know the myth of Zeus’ favourite daughter, Athena, you could engage your students with a wealth of role-play opportunities. Conscience alley is a popular activity. Get your children to make two lines facing one another. Choose one person to act as Athena – providing some sort of Ancient Greek robe and a headdress can bring the character to life. As Athena walks down the ‘alley’ created with the classmates, she should ask the same question to each person, such as Did I do the right thing? relating to a part of the story on which you are focusing. This encourages the use of justifying the answers they give and is a great way to develop spoken English skills.

3.       Athena is/has/can

Being able to use a variety of verbs in English is imperative to continued success in the language. The verbs ‘to be’, ‘to have’ and ‘to be able to’ are essential ones and, using the Greek myth of Athena, your students can practise their use easily. One worksheet contained in this pack encourages children to use their knowledge of Athena to write about what she is, has and can do. This activity could be done independently with each child writing their own. Alternatively, in pairs or small groups, important discussions can be had with one person scribing the answers on behalf of the group. Of course, encourage your students to use English throughout the entire conversation to stretch them further.

4.       Retelling the story

Understanding and being able to recall the key events in any story you are reading is an essential skill. For students learning about Greek mythology, retelling the story of Athena using their own words and sentence structure can be a fun activity. You could use the worksheets contained within this pack to do so. Alternatively, you could get your students to use their creative skills and make puppets to retell the story verbally. If you take photos of each section of the story, you could print and use them as the images for a comic strip. Some students will need help scaffolding the myth, so you could give them the sentence starters or word mats with the vocabulary they are most likely to use. Others will be more advanced with their English acquisition and may need little or no support.

5. 

Often, we have way too much to say and may struggle to condense it into a concise explanation, answer or request. Summarising is an excellent way of honing this skill. In addition to or instead of expecting your students to describe the story in fine detail, encourage them to tell the story in as few words as possible. Ensuring that the meaning is conveyed without adding too much information can be a challenge, and it is undoubtedly one that advanced learners of English ought to be doing.

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