Troy | Unveiling Myths & History of the Extinct City Grades 7-12 ELA Resource

What does the ancient city of Troy have to do with Greco-Roman mythology? Troy is the central setting of Homer’s epic The Iliad. But why is it known to have nine layers? Well. Because it was destroyed and rebuilt (at least) eight times in ancient times. Learn more about the discovery of ancient Troy by archaeologists and explore its legendary, mythological history with this ingenious 3-day lesson pack.

This Resource Includes the Following Features:

• Available as a PDF and Google Workspace(Slides)
• 1 Teacher Three-day Lesson Calendar (with Teacher’s Notes)
• 1 Key Characters and Places Anchor Chart
  • Orient your learners by identifying the key characters and the geographical location that situates ancient Troy at the base of the entrance to the Dardanelles strait in the Aegean city. Includes a map activity!
• Reading Cards:
  • The Layers of Ancient Troy: A Brief Geographical and Anthropological History
  • The Legendary History of Troy
  • King Priam and His Fate and the Legacy of Aeneas
  • Art and Literature Intersection: The destruction of Troy and the captive Trojans.
  • Includes a Student-Friendly Reading Protocol.
• 25-Count Question Bank
  • Check for understanding with a quick and adaptable question bank.
  • Includes a Custom Note-taking template to ensure student accountability!
• Frayer Model Vocabulary Cards
  • 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 amazing to see the work they produce. A great way to decorate your classroom to showcase your kids’ vocabulary-in-text understanding. The cards can contain terms, geography, and challenging words (as well as contextual entries that fit the story).
• 1 Half-Sheet 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 your students have learned. I also provide two different tickets to offer academic choices for students.
• Writing Activity
  • Using literary analysis and research skills, the writing activity is a summative assessment for the lesson, asking students to analyze Heinrich Schliemann’s discovery of Hissarlik vis-a-vis the legendary stories of an ancient city named Troy.
• 1 Further Reading List
  • Don’t disregard 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 where learning can go deeper into the story.
• 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.
  • Standards Alignment Chart (Common Core, VA SOL, TEKS)

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

• Encourage students to talk about geo-political controversy, the ethics of archaeological research, myth versus history, gods behaving badly, and more.
• Use this resource as a stand-alone lesson or pair it with a larger unit on The Iliad, The Aeneid, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Robert Graves’s Greek Myths, or Edith Hamilton’s Mythology.

Know that this educational digital download supplements a unit on Graeco-Roman Mythology. The lesson also includes public domain content, original content, and links to full-text primary resources online. Special thanks to the New York Public Library Digital Collections for making a tremendous amount of public domain material available to the general public. You can navigate your web browser to my website, Stones of Erasmus, to follow me on my journey. © 2023-2025 stonesoferasmus.com