Beowulf Lesson Plan | Introduction
This LitPlan has been designed to develop students' reading, writing, thinking, and language skills through exercises and activities related to Beowulf. It includes 18 lessons, supported by extra resource materials.
The introductory lesson introduces students to the historical background of the time in which the epic, Beowulf, was composed. Following the introductory activity, students are given a transition to explain how the activity relates to the book they are about to read. Following the transition, students are given the materials they will be using during the unit. At the end of the lesson, students begin the pre-reading work for the first reading assignment.
The reading assignments are approximately thirty pages each; some are a little shorter while others are a little longer. Students have approximately 15 minutes of pre-reading work to do prior to each reading assignment. This pre-reading work involves reviewing the study questions for the assignment and doing some vocabulary work for 8 to 10 vocabulary words they will encounter in their reading.
The study guide questions are fact-based questions; students can find the answers to these questions right in the text. These questions come in two formats: short answer or multiple choice. The best use of these materials is probably to use the short answer version of the questions as study guides for students (since answers will be more complete), and to use the multiple choice version for occasional quizzes.
The vocabulary work is intended to enrich students' vocabularies as well as to aid in the students' understanding of the book. Prior to each reading assignment, students will complete a two-part worksheet for approximately 8 to 10 vocabulary words in the upcoming reading assignment. Part I focuses on students' use of general knowledge and contextual clues by giving the sentence in which the word appears in the text. Students are then to write down what they think the words mean based on the words' usage. Part II nails down the definitions of the words by giving students dictionary definitions of the words and having students match the words to the correct definitions based on the words' contextual usage. Students should then have an understanding of the words when they meet them in the text.
After each reading assignment, students will go back and formulate answers for the study guide questions. Discussion of these questions serves as a review of the most important events and ideas presented in the reading assignments.
After students complete reading the work, there is a vocabulary review lesson which pulls together all of the fragmented vocabulary lists for the reading assignments and gives students a review of all of the words they have studied.
Following the vocabulary review, a lesson is devoted to the extra discussion questions/writing assignments. These questions focus on interpretation, critical analysis and personal response, employing a variety of thinking skills and adding to the students' understanding of the novel.
There is a group theme project in which students will work in small groups to discuss several of the important themes relating to Anglo-Saxon society and their manifestation in Beowulf. Using information they have acquired through reading assignments and class discussions, students will meet in groups to discuss the Anglo-Saxon societal influences in Beowulf.
There are three writing assignments in this unit, each with the purpose of informing, persuading, or having students express personal opinions. The first assignment is to inform: students compose an essay in which they illustrate how Beowulf exemplifies the features of a literary epic. The second assignment is to persuade: students pretend to be Grendel’s mother, writing a persuasive journal entry that describes the action and events from her perspective. The
third assignment gives students the opportunity to express their personal ideas: they are to write a composition in which they identify what passions or qualities that they possess that if fostered could lead to them living in fame after their deaths.
There is a nonfiction reading assignment. Students are required to read articles or chapters relating to the time in which the epic, Beowulf, was written, and to gather information about the nature of the Anglo-Saxon people and how the history in this text relates to the accounts in Beowulf.
The review lesson pulls together all of the aspects of the unit. The teacher is given four or five choices of activities or games to use which all serve the same basic function of reviewing all of the information presented in the unit.
The unit test comes in two formats: multiple choice or short answer. As a convenience, two different tests for each format have been included. There is also an advanced short answer unit test for advanced students.
There are additional support materials included with this unit. The Unit Resource Materials section includes suggestions for an in-class library, crossword and word search puzzles related to the novel, and extra worksheets. There is a list of bulletin board ideas which gives the teacher suggestions for bulletin boards to go along with this unit. In addition, there is a list of extra class activities the teacher could choose from to enhance the unit or as a substitution for an exercise the teacher might feel is inappropriate for his/her class. Answer keys are located directly after the reproducible student materials throughout the unit. The Vocabulary Resource Materials section includes similar worksheets and games to reinforce the vocabulary words.
The level of this unit can be varied depending upon the criteria on which the individual assignments are graded, the teacher's expectations of his/her students in class discussions, and the formats chosen for the study guides, quizzes and test. If teachers have other ideas/activities they wish to use, they can usually easily be inserted prior to the review lesson.
