Unit of Work: Euripides' Alcestis

Euripides’ Alkestis makes a great introduction to Greek tragedy, with its highly engaging story of a woman who volunteers to die in place of her husband. This unit was taught to a Year 9/10 (ages 15-16 years) mixed-ability class and can be taught with any good modern translation of the play.

The 54-page unit comprises:

• An introductory lesson on Greek tragedy
• Lessons on the seven scenes of Euripides’ play, with questions which encourage lateral thinking, contextual reading, creative response, and comparison with other short texts
• These short texts are provided (modern poetry and short stories)
• An assessment question which requires students to write persuasively
• A selection of questions for other long-form responses

NB If you buy this unit and would like to use the same play text as our class used, drop us a message and we’ll share it with you at no charge. We used George Theodoridis’ free translation (copyright to Theodoridis and the poetry in translation website. We have simply split Theodoridis’ text into seven scenes for ease of teaching.