Introduction Critical and creative thinking are two categories that analyze information and solve problems in either concrete or abstract ways. Assessing the ability to teach these skills as an overarching concept including subcategories within, is an essential piece to instruction. Without a proper evaluation of the strengths, areas for growth, and improvement plans, it becomes easy to feel misplaced or uncertain about what skills are being taught and at what depth they are being learned. As a teacher who engages with students, it is easy to identify that some critical or creative thinking training is happening, whether one, or both, perhaps one more than the other but the thing that needs to happen that often does not, is the use of reflection …show more content…
For example, I do an assessment every year on Greek culture that incorporates plays such as, The Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Aeneid. Students have to interpret scenes from the plays and determine what this would look like in the form of acting. They had to use creative thinking skills in order to take a text and show what that might look like using their imagination. There is a connection that can be made between the students in my classroom and the writers of these ancient stories. “People from widely diverse backgrounds and educational experiences have made creative, innovative contributions to all aspects or art, culture, science, and knowledge through the ages” (Trilling & Fadel, 2009, pg. 57). This quote sums up the fact that creativity can come from all people, whether it is the original creator or those that are centuries removed from that creation, time period, etc. Work Creatively with …show more content…
48). For me, a lot of time has been spent on telling the students what things are, with some autonomous exploration into a given topic. The reality is, this type of learning requires very little skill and does not prepare students for actions that they would strive for in the real-world, in their own lives. Actions that are listed in 21st Century Skills such as, “civic literacy (civic engagement, community service, ethics, and social justice)” (Trilling & Fadel, 2009, pg.
Focus on the descriptions of the palaces of Nestor and Menelaus. Find quotations that describe their virtues:
Teaching higher order thinking skills is not a recent need. It is apparent that students, at all levels of education, are lagging in problem-solving and thinking skills. Fragmentation of thinking skills, however, may be the result of critical thinking courses and texts. Every course, especially in content subjects, students should be taught to think logically, analyze and compare, question and evaluate.
Public schools have discovered the importance of critical thinking, many people are trying to teach children how to do it. The problem is that very few teachers know how to do. Robert Sternberg, an early advocate of critical thinking in teaching,
A comparison between Virgil's hero, Aeneas, and the Homeric heroes, Achilles and Odysseus, brings up the question concerning the relevance of the difference between the Homeric heroes and Aeneas. The differences in the poets' concerns are explained by the fact that Virgil lived many years after Homer, giving Virgil the advantage of a more developed literary and philosophical society than Homer had at his disposal. But the question remains: how are the differences between the Homeric heroes and Aeneas relevant to the epic at large? This question will be answered by first pointing out the differences between Greek and Roman society, then explaining
In The Iliad and The Odyssey, Homer has different portrayals of the roles that women play in each epic. These differences are so striking that some readers have even argued that there is a possibility that a woman could have created The Odyssey, modeled after Homer’s Iliad. In The Iliad we see women represented as war prizes and slaves, vulnerabilities to men, and in positions of limited power. In The Odyssey however, we see women capturing men and keeping them as prizes, rising from a status of limited power to dominating their household, and breaking free of the constraints of the “typical” household woman stereotype. We even see them making their own decisions and challenging their husbands. By comparing and contrasting these epic women
Virgil 's Aeneid takes a character form Homer’s Odyssey and constructs a life for him beyond Homer’s ideas. It is quite obvious that Virgil was heavily influenced by both Homer’s writings, The Iliad and the Odyssey. Both stories tell of parallel journeys home from Troy at the end of the Trojan War. Homer’s Odysseus is returning to Greece and the family he left behind ten years ago. Virgil’s Aeneas, in contrast has been given a direct command by the God, Mercury to create a new Empire. Both men set out on their ships, into the Mediterranean Sea, and both encounter mythical creatures along the way. Sirens and harpies respectively curse and unsuccessfully attempt to lure the men off course. Bad weather however is noted to blow both ships off course. Aeneas lands on an island and lives with the beautiful Dido for a period of time, putting his journey to found a new city on hold. Similarly, Odysseus remained on the Island of Cyclops with the beautiful Calypso for several years, only leaving when the Gods command him to. The love in not everlasting and both tales tell of the men subsequently abandon their loving women waiting for them at home.
In The Aeneid by Virgil, I identified similarities to The Odyssey by both having obstacles intervening to complete their journey. The approach Dido decided to take on Aeneas leaving the island I considered to be selfish because she is only thinking of how it would benefit her future. The drastic measure Dido arranged to killing herself over Aeneas was irresponsible of her because she had her kingdom to rule.
The second comparison is the Roman and Greek Underworlds. In the Aeneid and the Virgil portrays an underworld which is very similar to the underworld which Homer wrote; “Aeneas and Odysseus both travel to the underworld in their own stories and their journeys have many similarities as well as differences” (Course Hero). Homer describes the Greek underworld when Odysseus is about to leave the underworld, “But before that could happen, the tribes of the dead came up and gathered round me in their tens of thousands, making their eerie clamour. Sheer panic turned me pale. I feared that dread Persephone might send up from Hade’s Halls the gorgon head of some ghastly monster” (The Odyssey). Virgil describes the Roman underworld when Aeneas is being
The Odyssey vs. The Aeneid: Are They the Same or Different? How can one possibly compare The Odyssey and The Aeneid? They are both masterpieces in literature. How could one masterpiece be compared to another?
As we look through history, we notice that many civilizations have cultural similarities: from food to language to customs. This occurrence also applies to Homer’s The Odyssey and Virgil’s The Aeneid with the former being from Greece and the latter originating from Rome. One of the biggest similarities being that the heroes in both of these works of literature, Odysseus from The Odyssey and Aeneus from The Aeneid, fates are determined by the role the gods decide to play in their lives.
Nice, friendly, bad, fake, dependable, spacy, independent, passionate. As I sift through the layers of adjectives I have been labeled throughout my adolescent life, I pose myself the question: who the hell am I? Too easily, I resort to answering that question with a list of things I have accomplished or partake in, replying with I am a runner or I sing in the choir. While both facts may be true, they fail to truly answer the original question.
Long ago, there were two powerful nations located in southern Europe. First there were the Greeks, this nation was known for the first practice of democracy. Other than democracy, during the Greeks era there was a man by the name Homer who wrote a story called The Odyssey about a great legendary hero named Odysseus. After the Greeks, then came the Romans who ruled Greece for centuries. The Romans during their time were known to have practiced and used many of the Greeks cultures and theories. There was a Roman named Virgil who wrote about the beginning of the Romans. He created a story called The Aeneid; this story was about a Trojan who escaped a losing war to find a new home and peace. Even though these two stories may be hard to understand, Homer and Virgil are making statements about their nation after the Trojan War, because Odysseus was a legendary Greek king and Aeneas of Troy was known to be a beginning of the Romans.
There are many reasons to draw connections amongst Homer and Hesiod. The Greek poet, Homer, who came sometime in the 9th or 8th century B.C., in Ionia (modern-day Turkey), is the writer of “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey”. Hesiod, came around 700 B.C., is often referred to as the “father of didactic poetry”. Hesiod wrote “Theogony” and “Works and Days”. Like Homer, not much is know about him a rhapsodist, a reciter of poems. Both composed in the dactylic hexameter, the traditional meter of Greek epic, and in an oral conventional tradition. Though the poets have many similarities they also have many difference as shown in their writing. From the role of women, the definition of valor and views towards religion hesiod and homer established many
The Odyssey by Homer and the Old Testaments: King James Version are two of the most read and most sophisticated pieces of literature that have transcended through generations. While they share similar qualities; both greatly differ as well, especially when it comes to the women characters. Classical historian and professor of classical studies at Wellesley College, Mary Lefkowitz, makes a significant contrast between these two famous writings. She believes that a major difference between the women of each story differ dramatically when it comes to their personality and actions. “[Although] the notion... that a man should be active and aggressive, a women passive and subjected to the control of the men in her family, are expressed in virtually every Greek myth, even the ones in which the women seek to gain control over their own live.…[so] that it is possible to show that the Greeks at least attributed to women a capacity for understanding that we do not alway find in the other great mythological tradition that has influenced Western thought, namely, the Old and New Testaments." (Women in Greek Myth, Mary Lefkowitz). I completely agree with Lefkowitz statement on these characters, it’s very clear that most of the women in the Old Testament are very flat while the Odyssey is full of well rounded characters especially when it comes to Jacob’s wife Rachel and Odysseus 's wife Penelope.
When defining the term “critical thinking” it can seem overwhelming and daunting, especially for young learners. In laments terms, you are teaching your student how to think for him or herself when it comes to problem solving. Instead of giving the student the answer, you give them the tools to discover the answer him/herself. Critical thinking is an important component of any classroom. No matter the age group, these skills stay with a child for the rest of his or her life. As a teacher, it is important to understand what critical thinking pertains to and how to structure part of your lesson plan around developing critical thinking skills.