Reading, Listening and Viewing a Text ... Pompeii

If you are looking for a high-interest topic to tackle the reading, viewing, and listening standard, look no further!

Pompeii, Mt. Vesuvius’ eruption, lava, Pliny the Younger… it’s all here. The videos are superb, the the text is rigorous (but short, accessible- and has humor!) and the audio is great.

I LOVE teaching Pompeii because the students are fully engaged- mesmerized!

1. The text for READING is by Pliny the Younger. A first-hand account of the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. Knowing that students may struggle a bit with the language, I have created a paired activity where students summarize each sentence. I have included my summary of each sentence (in case they get stuck- or ) to compare with the student’s finished activity. Yes, Pliny actually calls his uncle out for snoring!

2. The LISTENING text is “The Dog of Pompeii” by Louis Untermyer. If you don’t have the text in your anthology, search for free copies on the web.
   Students individually complete a worksheet (included) after reading.

3. The VIEWING component uses two videos readily available on the web- one made by PBS that is 2 minutes in length (but packs a punch!) and another lengthier, informative video.

Once the students have completed activities on EACH of the modes, there is a writing assignment. The writing assignment begins as a group activity. Groups will write a paragraph and compare to my sample paragraph. Then, students work individually for the final assessment- a similar paragraph that compares the three modes: reading, listening, and viewing.

This is a week-long lesson, but you can just teach a part of this lesson if you are focusing on other standards (For example, you may have “Dog of Pompeii” in your anthology. You can use the worksheets and activity for just this story instead of teaching the entire unit).

Thanks so much for your interest. Enjoy teaching Pompeii!