Project Ideas

Summer Reading

Upon entering the next school year, assigning students to read the same text over the summer has proven to be fruitful. This past summer, we assigned Because of Winn Dixie, and therefore we all had a common text to discuss after we introduced the monomyth.

Realistic Fiction Writing

The first writing piece of the year (much like Lucy Calkin's model for 4th Grade students) is a realistic fiction writing piece. Using ideas about story structure from Freytag's Pyramid and the monomyth, students develop a piece that follows this structure, including important pieces from the monomyth like the apotheosis and gift.

Apotheosis Podcast

Students select an apotheosis that they have had. They write about this apotheosis through narrative format and then learn about performing a story through analyzing podcasts and speaking with podcasters. They "perform" their apotheosis podcast, focusing on the presentation of their story through auditory media.

Formative Work

For each text that we read, we are constantly referring to Path of the Hero terms, such as: "Who is the mentor in this story? What was one road of trials you identified in this text?"

A list of book suggestions is in the additional resources section.

Path of the Hero Movie Nights

Each month, our team hosts a movie night where we make popcorn in an old-school popcorn maker and show a film that has a monomyth exhibited. They are optional for students. We do give them a reflection sheet and expect them to be watching out for the different stages so they are prepared for discussion at the end of the movie. It is a great deal of fun and the students really connect with the stages more after we reinforce the stages in each movie we show.

A list of movie suggestions is in the additional resources section.

Mini Hero Art/STEM

This is a STEM project in collaboration with our art teacher. She asks the students to think about a hero in their own lives.

In STEM, they measure their body portions and scale them down to 10x the size of their body. Whatever hero they selected, they create that hero out of clay or other materials in art.

They then make clothing for their hero and write a small paragraph about the reason they chose that person as their hero.

Class Hero Deck

Students choose a personal hero in their life correlated to a certain suit and color of a card of a standard deck related to that person (i.e. Freddie Mercury, Alex Morgan, et cetera).

They research that hero, present their findings to the class, and share why that hero is meaningful to them, and why that person is a hero.

Path of the Hero Journal

Each year our school goes on an extended camping trip (3 nights, 4 days) with our students. We give them a journal with the stages identified and ask them as the trip unfolds, to find a "gift" during the week. After they identify this (i.e. jumping off a high platform), they write and draw their path of the hero in the journal. This is one of our final assessments.

Personal Path of the Hero Writing Piece

Students select a "gift" that they have received. They then write a personal narrative about their journey to receive that gift. They also think about an aspect from that journey that they can apply abstraction to and write a poem about that same journey.

In conjunction with the writing pieces, they complete a Personal Path of the Hero Map, which is helpful for students to connect more deeply with their own journey and think of it from a metaphorical point of view.

Students create their own "metaphorical world," where they rename each stage using a metaphor (i.e. if a student is writing about a gift they gained in Gymnastics, the Road of Trials becomes "Injury Mountain, Testing Tower", etc. see picture below.)