Students in Julie Turnbow’s seventh grade honors reading language arts class recently immersed themselves in the world of Percy Jackson and the Olympians as they read the first book in the series, The Lighting Thief.
The students jumped in headfirst with research and class presentations about the various Greek gods and goddess that make appearances in the book. This helped create a better understanding of the characters and make a connection to the novel.
The essential question for the unit was "How do our journeys define us?" Throughout the book, Percy Jackson discovers that he is a half-blood. His father is a Greek god, and Percy is sent on a journey to find the master lightning bolt to prevent a war from happening.
“Students can relate to Percy because he is a 12-year-old boy who struggles as a student, and he also finds out what he is capable of along his journey,” said Turnbow.
In the novel, half-bloods are sent to Camp Half-Blood where they are assigned a cabin based on which god/goddess is their parent. To help bring the story to life, Turnbow had the students divide up into cabins for classroom activities.
Each member of the cabin held a "job". These jobs were agreed upon by their team—jobs were simple tasks such as one student was the designated person to check in with the teacher on progress and another was to help relay information to a member of the group if they happened to be absent one day.
“I thought that a little bit of competitiveness in the classroom would encourage my students to want to learn more,” said Turnbow.
To encourage some of the competitiveness between cabins, as in the book, the cabins were able to earn points in various ways. From acts of kindness, having all assignments completed, and being prepared for class, to being creative and creating items that represented their god/goddess or related to the novel, working well as a group, reading a Mythology book, and more.
“I love being able to incorporate student-led learning into my classroom and this unit does just that,” said Turnbow. “We often read the chapters together, but then students work with their groups to discuss the assignments that follow each chapter.”
Toward the end of the Unit, the classes did a couple of chapter jigsaw readings. This is when a member of each group reads a different chapter and then teaches the rest about it.
“It was amazing watching my students learn and then being able to teach their classmates about what they have learned,” said Turnbow.
Some of the students were hesitant when Turnbow first introduced the novel because they were not all Fantasy Fiction fans. However, by about the third chapter students were begging to keep reading. Turnbow loves using The Lighting Thief for this unit because it is an enjoyable way to cover RLA content such as setting, character growth, conflict, theme, and inferencing while discovering a new genre.