Atlas Mythology 3-Day Lesson

Starting from:

Atlas the Titan Mythology Unit for Middle and High School Students Grades 7-12

Engage Secondary English Language Arts students with the story of the Titan Atlas, the second-generation god of Greek mythology who is fabled for holding up the space between earth and sky. Learn Atlas’s backstory, who he was, who he married, who are his kids, and his relationship to Hercules, Perseus, and the rest of the ancient panoply of gods, monsters, and giants. Use a suggested lesson calendar to provide three days of activities and assessments.

Use this Digital Download for a Three-day English Language Arts Lesson

Using my tested-in-the-classroom resources, your students will want to discuss allusions and tropes derived from Atlas, the idea of anthropological personification, perverse punishments, trickery, and the clash of the Titans! So I have loaded this resource with FOUR reading cards and a set of TWENTY questions that will get your students talking, writing, and wondering!

Common Core Standards: This resource aligns well with the reading literature standard: “Analyze the representation of a subject or a key scene in two different artistic mediums, including what is emphasized or absent in each treatment (e.g., Auden’s “Musée des Beaux-Arts” and Breughel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus).”

This Resource Includes the Following Features:

Available as a printable PDF and Google Workspace (Google Slides)
1 Teacher’s Three-day Lesson Calendar
- With a teacher-tested stamp of approval, follow my suggestions on how to teach the origin story of Atlas. Start with background knowledge, places, and geography, engage students in group reading with custom-made reading cards, and quiz your class with trivia-style questions. Cap the lesson off with a creative writing activity.
Key Characters and Places Worksheet
- Orient your learners by identifying the story’s key characters and geographical location.
4 Art + Literature Reading Cards
- Included in this resource are four illustrated reading cards:
  - Atlas, son of Iapetus
  - Atlas, depicted by Maxfield Parrish
  - Atlas, art and literature connections
  - The sculpture of Atlas in the plaza at 30 Rockefeller Center in New York City.
A Bank of 20 Trivia-style Questions about the Titans
- Test their knowledge with a custom-made question set after your students engage in the reading cards.
- Also, Includes: Easel Assessment Quick Check
Frayer Model Vocabulary Cards (with student sample)
- Frayer models are a way to get kids to think about vocabulary visually in a four-section square —- A square for meaning, one for examples, another for non-examples, and a sketch. It is fantastic to see the work they produce. A great way to decorate your classroom to showcase your kids’ vocabulary-in-text understanding. The cards contain terms, Greek and Latin roots, and challenging words (as well as contextual entries that fit the story).
Half-Sheet 3-2-1 Exit Ticket
- Exit tickets are a way to get data about your students’ understanding of the lesson right before the class is finished. Collect these exit tickets and quickly see what ideas your students took away from reading and discussing the myth.
Creative Writing Activity
- Cap off this three-day lesson with a creative essay prompt to get students to imagine what would happen if Atlas had a day off.
- Includes a custom note-taking template and a rough draft printable page to encourage writing.
Further Reading List
- Consider this further reading list if you think it is merely a bibliography. Share the list with your students or have them do projects based on the available research. Assign different sources to students and organize presentations on various topics, including Atlas.
Answer Keys for all student-facing documents
- Teachers always ask for answer keys for my products, so I gave you plenty of guidance on what to expect from students in their written and oral responses.
- Includes a standards alignment chart for planning.

I created this resource with secondary students in mind. It is designed for an English Language Arts Mythology unit —

For any myth-related unit!
On the Clash of the Titans!
Use this resource as a stand-alone lesson or pair it with a larger unit on Myth, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, The Theogony of Hesiod, Robert Graves’s Greek Myths, or Edith Hamilton’s Mythology, or Parallel Myths by J.F. Bierlein.