Beowulf Lesson Plans

At our tutorial we do a 2-year cycle on all our language arts classes so that students can take them more than once. Therefore, I teach books every other year. I like to start my British Literature class out teaching about the history of the English language in some shape or form because I think it’s important for them to know. I find it’s fascinating how our language has been influenced by the history of Great Britain through things like the Viking and Norman Invasions. One year I accomplish this by covering Canterbury Tales and Middle English, and the next year I use Beowulf and teach about Old English.

This year was our "Beowulf" year. We don’t read the entire thing, portions of it. I use a free translation they can print at home rather than asking them to buy the entire book. We spent 3 weeks in class on this, so I thought I’d share what I do each week.

Before they come to the first class I have them read the 1st section of the poem encouraging them to read it more than once to understand it fully. I encourage them to use their colored pens to write comments or questions in the margins. I asked them to use their orange highlighters to highlight any words they don’t know in orange and any references they see to God, the Bible, or Christianity in green. I also have reading worksheets they print and fill out as they read.

I also like to assign discussion posts to help build community in the classroom to begin to get to know the students, and because they’re such a large part of college classes these days they need practice. I’m very blessed that our tutorial uses Schoology which is an online platform that allows us to post assignments and grades, message students and parents, and set up discussion posts. To start Beowulf this was their discussion post: “Write 2-3 sentences about what makes someone a hero. It can be real-life or fictional characters. Think about things like character traits, physical abilities, morals, and more.” Besides just answering this question they also had to comment on at least 3 other classmates’ answers. This assignment went so well, and the students had some deep thoughts on what makes a hero. This is our essential question for the study of Beowulf and one we will keep circling back which will then lead us into our essential question for our next novel of Frankenstein: “What makes a monster?”.

Week 1 Lesson Plans: We started class with an icebreaker question: would you rather fight a monster, mom, or dragon? This was just a funny way to start our class. By the way, we determined none of us want to fight an avenging mom!

For writing we covered 2 things: we talked about how to write journal entries as a character. I gave them scaffolded notes covering how to format journals and how to write creatively in a character’s voice. I wanted to take the time to teach this at the beginning of the year because I typically assign a journal writing for each novel we read. This is a fun creative writing assignment that also shows me if they are understanding the thoughts and motivations of the characters they are reading about.

We also went over alliteration today. I’ve had most of these students before and they are upperclassmen, so this was more of a review. The reason we discussed alliteration today is because it is the most used literary device in Beowulf. We were discussing how Beowulf was told orally by bards for hundreds of years and that they used alliteration as a technique to aid in memorization. This week in their homework I will ask them to highlight examples of alliteration in their Beowulf reading and include a couple of alliterations in their journal writing assignment.

My favorite activity from today was going over epic poetry and the 10 characteristics of them. I gave the students scaffolded notes to fill out on this. Then I divided them into groups and had them go through the Star Wars movies and list the ways they meet each of the 10 characteristics of an epic. I was surprised to find out that some of my students had never seen a Star Wars movie, so I had to make sure each group had people that had!

Week 1 Homework: They had to follow the format we went over in class to write 2 journal entries from either the view point of Beowulf or Hrothgar. I provided them with a rubric so they’d know exactly what they needed to include, such as an example of alliteration in each entry.

Their reading this week is the 2nd part of Beowulf and completing the reading worksheets I gave them. As they read they are to continue writing comments and questions in the margins and highlighting the same things in green and orange. I also assigned another discussion post this week since they enjoyed last week’s so much. This week’s question was: “Besides Beowulf or Star Wars, what is another book or movie that you think meets most of the criteria for being an epic? Refer to your notes for the 10 characteristics (they have to meet most but not necessarily all 10). Try your best to think of one no one else has mentioned. Write 2-3 sentences saying why you think your book/movie/character qualifies.” Then they had to comment on at least 3 classmates’ posts.

My favorite assignment was one I found online of writing your own Beopoem. They had to fill in their own answers in the blanks to create a boastful poem in the style of Beowulf about themselves.

Week 2 Class: We started class today with each student sharing their Beopoems with the class. This is a great thing to ask them to share because it’s short and something they can read to start getting those who are more shy used to giving class presentations. They came out really entertaining!

Then we spent the majority of class learning the history of Beowulf’s time period. I used a Power Point with pictures of Anglo-Saxon artifacts along with scaffolded notes covering the most important information. Since this is a British Literature class it was important to briefly cover the history of Great Britain and the English language before we dive into our other novels. Besides language arts my other passion is history, so I love these days! It isn’t just a history lesson, however. I focused on how archaeology finds such as Sutton Hoo have reinforced ideas about their culture seen in Beowulf. This is a catalyst for talking about how literature is important to teach us about cultures and preserves those cultures for future generations.

Since we are a Christian tutorial we always spend time talking about how what we read reflects on our faith. I’ve been having them highlight in green references to God, the Bible, and Christianity. Through the lens of history, we talked about how Beowulf comes from the time when Europe was transitioning from paganism to Christianity. Beowulf is fascinating in how it blends so many elements of Christianity and paganism. It’s fun watching them find the many examples of this

We talked about hyphenated adjectives (also known as kennings) because they are used often in Beowulf such as: battle-dew (blood) or sky-candle (sun).

We also did a writing lesson that I wrote about in this post.

Week 2 Homework: Their writing assignment this week was to write from the perspective of one of the villains, either Grendel, his mom, or the dragon. They had to add alliteration and hyphenated adjectives into it.

They read the 3rd part of Beowulf about the dragon and his death and filled out the reading worksheets.

Week 3 Class: Today I got to teach one of my favorite lessons over the history of the English language. I had a Power Point and scaffolded notes for this. First, I gave them a passage in Old English to see how much they could translate with a partner. There was hardly anything they could until I played this video of someone reading it out loud. Then they gathered a few words. It was the Lord’s prayer which we then listened to in Middle English as well. From there we covered the history of how the language developed which helps answer a lot of questions such as why knight is spelled the way it is (because they used to pronounce the letters that are now silent for us).

Then we discussed the end of the story and had a class debate about why or why not Beowulf was a hero. We decided that he was, but we discussed a lot about his bragging and whether that was OK for his culture and if a hero needs to be humble. They all had great thoughts, and the discussions were so fun.

All-in-all this was a great mini-unit to kick off our year. I think it was jut the right length and talking about what makes a hero perfectly set us up for our next novel of Frankenstein and discussing what makes a monster.