To show what they’ve learned about the Iliad, sophomores in English 10 teacher Amy Lutz’ class are creating newspapers regarding the subject of the Trojan war. 

“I want them to take away the experience of reading a very old text, and realizing things don’t change that much, and that we still have brotherhood, honor, respect and friendship,” Lutz said. “This should overall teach students to analyze things in literature find text evidence to support ideas, and connect reading to historical time period.”

Given two class periods to work, students must choose between one of the sides: the Trojans or the Greeks.

“My favorite part of the newspaper was designing it and being able to use all of my creativity,” sophomore Cheri Chan said. “I think I’m proudest of my headlines because they turned out really nice and shape the newspaper really well.”

The newspaper will have three columns in which they will need to write. They must have one on a major event that happened in the book, one on the main themes that is symbolized throughout the story and one Greek article.

“My newspaper had everything the rubric required and I added a few more things so that it could stand out,” sophomore Aze Lopez said. “For the writing portions I tried to grab the most significant moments in the Iliad and tie the themes into my paragraphs and news stories. The book itself was somewhat interesting, I thought the cause of war was a bit childish, but a good book nonetheless.”

Lutz’ goal for the project was for students to experience old literature,  analyze and connect the ideas from that historical time period to today’s modern time. 

“The themes in the story and the content of the story itself is a little different than writing an essay,” Lutz said. “This will help students to realize that there is more than one way to show your knowledge other than writing an essay it allows to to access their creative side, different skills and strongpoints.”