Free Lesson on Homer, the Blind Poet: Launch Your Greek Mythology Unit with Ease!

Kickstart Your Greek Mythology Unit with a Free Homer Lesson!

Hello, fellow educators! My name is Greig, and I've been teaching English language arts and humanities for over 15 years. One of my favorite teaching strategies is frontloading units with engaging background lessons—and that's exactly why I've created this brand-new free lesson on Homer, the Blind Poet of Ancient Greece.

If you're gearing up to teach The Iliad and The Odyssey, you know how important — and sometimes tricky — it is to help students grasp the rich context behind these epic masterpieces. This freebie makes that task easy, interactive, and fun!

Why Teach Homer First?

Before diving into Achilles’ rage or Odysseus’ adventurous homecoming, it's crucial students understand a few big ideas:

• Who was Homer? We dive into the legendary poet's life (and the mysteries around him), illustrated beautifully with images, including Raphael’s famous fresco from the Vatican Museums.
• The "Homeric Question." Spark lively discussions with your students about the nature of authorship and oral storytelling in ancient cultures.
• Cultural & literary connections. How did Homer shape Greek mythology, moving from nature-spirits to fully-realized divine personalities like Zeus, Hera, and Aphrodite?

What You'll Get in This Free Resource

• 📚 Illustrated Reading Cards: Adapted from secondary sources to boost comprehension and engagement.
• 📅 Two-Day Lesson Pacing Guide: Detailed teacher notes and clear lesson structure.
• 🗺️ Anchor Chart: Easily print or digitally distribute, introducing key characters and concepts visually.
• ✍️ Interactive Task Cards & Question Bank: Use for trivia games, assessments, or engaging classroom discussions.
• 📝 Exit Tickets & Cornell Notes: Quick, effective assessments capturing student writing and insights in real-time.
• 🎨 Frayer Model Vocabulary Templates: Visual vocabulary instruction to deeply embed key terms.
• 🔖 Further Reading List & Answer Keys: Comprehensive teacher support included.

Seamlessly Digital & Printable

Whether your classroom is paper-based, digital, or blended, this lesson fits perfectly. You'll receive PDFs for easy printing and Google Slides and Easel Activities compatible with Google Classroom and other LMS platforms.

Standards-Aligned & Classroom-Tested

This resource aligns effortlessly with multiple standards:

• Citing textual evidence
• Determining central ideas and themes
• Mastering vocabulary in context
• Collaborative discussion skills

Perfect for ELA and humanities classrooms—grades 6 through 10, easily adaptable for advanced younger learners, too!

Ready to Dive In?

Get your students excited and curious about ancient Greek literature. This resource is completely free and ready for immediate download:

Download Now from Teachers Pay Teachers!

If you love this resource or have questions, please leave a comment, review, or reach out directly at support@stonesoferasmus.com.

Happy teaching and may your unit on Homer be truly epic!

— Greig from Stones of Erasmus

PDF Copy for Printing

Marcel Proust On the Advantage of Books Over Images

"... a new book was not one of similar objects but, as it were a unique person, absolutely self-contained .... Beneath the everyday incidents, the ordinary objects and common words, I sensed a strange and individual tone of voice" (v.1, p.55-56). While photographs capture objects in the world, they are vulgar since they find what they happen to capture at the moment and so remain in quality a "commercial banality" (v. 1, p. 53).

Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

PDF Copy for Printing

Handout: Invocations Inspired by the Odyssey of Homer

A little handout of made up invocations for the Odyssey (with apologies)

credits: odysseus, penelope, telemachus, athena   text: greig roselli © 2010 with apologies to the muses and to homer.

PDF Copy for Printing

Book Review: "The Farming of Bones"

Edwidge Danticat's novel Farming of Bones

Edwidge Danticat’s novel Farming of Bones (1998) is set in the Dominican Republic in October 1937 during the Parsley Massacre, the systematic slaughter of Haitian illegal laborers. Danticat writes the novel as a memory. The protagonist, Amabelle Désir (It is no coincidence that her name is désir/desire) is a young Haitian woman who survives the mass killing ordered by General Trujillo; around 30,000 people died.
The novel is a study in trauma: using sensuous language Danticat writes the body in pain. Like a patient in therapy, when the story is retold, the subsequent retellings of the story, four things happen.

1. The body remembers.  This is why Amabelle says, “This past is more like flesh than air; our stories testimonials …” (281).
2. The story, as a testimonial, repeated and retold differently and with divergent perspectives, with an occasional interpretation by the therapist is revisited. 
3. The third consequence of this telling is a recognition that the story is held in tension with the official story — here the story told by the Dominican victors against that which is held in the heart of survivors or lost forever with the dead.
4. The language acts as a kind of counter-narrative to the anger and hatred against the black, coffee-colored, bodies of the Haitians.