Net.Create Middle School Activities

Greek Mythology Network Overview

In this 8th-grade World History lesson plan, students will read Greek Myths and write 6 word biographies of themselves. Students then build onto a network visualization, demonstrating connections among gods, locations, mortals, and characteristics. Students will add themselves to the network, indicating gods, mortals, locations, or characteristics they identify with and analyze the interactions among the Greek nodes and their classmates’ nodes.

Lesson Overview

Resources

  • Greek Mythology Network Example
  • Greek Mythology Network with sample student responses
  • D’Aulaires Book of Greek Myths

Learning Target/Goal

Students will create a network visualization of Greek gods, mortals, locations, and characteristics and make connections to aspects of the stories they feel connected to.

Standards

Identify cultural contributions of Classical Greece, including politics, intellectual life, arts, literature, architecture, and science. Aligns with (8th grade “World History to 1500” in Alabama

Lesson Background

In this 8th-grade World History lesson plan, students will read passages from D’Aulaires Book of Greek Myths and write 6 word biographies of themselves. Based on the stories selected, students build onto a network visualization, demonstrating connections among gods, locations, mortals, and characteristics. Students will add themselves to the network, indicating gods, mortals, locations, or characteristics they identify with and analyze the interactions among the Greek nodes and their classmates’ nodes.

Lesson Plan

Before

  • Prior lessons should build background knowledge about Ancient Greece
  • 1-2 days before this lesson, students compose a 6 word biography about themselves. The teacher uses these biographies to assign pairs of students to stories from D’Aulaires Book of Greek Myths that represent one of their words.

During

In pairs, students read one Greek myth

  • Introduce data visualizations if students are not yet familiar with Net.Create
  • Students add edges to the mythology network to show connections within and between myths, based on interactions between gods, mortals, locations to the mythology network
  • Have students briefly analyze the Greek Mythology network.
    • Suggested prompts:
      • What information about our data is readily visible in the graph view?
      • Who or what has the most connections? Why do you think that is?
      • Who or what has the least connections? Why do you think that is?
      • What patterns do we see in our data as a whole?
      • How do individual data points (Gods or goddesses) look similar or different from that pattern? What might that mean?
    • Encourage students to use these Net.Create features to analyze the network:
      • Clicking on a node to learn more about it
      • Using the table view (including sorting columns)
      • Using filters (including fading)
      • Ask students: How do the different ways of looking at this data (graph, tables, individual data points) change what we see?
  • Students add a node for themselves with their six words in the notes and connect themselves to the character in the story they worked with that most closely matches these characteristics.
  • Students connect themselves to a character NOT in their story based on their six words and the themes/characteristics that have been added in the network.
  • Do a second round of analysis focused on values
    • Suggested prompts:
      • What could you say about Ancient Greek values based on this network? Do you think that is accurate?
      • Where do you fit in this network? Which Greek-myth figure would you be?
      • What might this network be leaving out?