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Odyssey chapter summaries?


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My dd is studying the Odyssey with an external class (and will be moving on to the Aeneid next semester, so hopefully this will apply to both books.) She has read it back to front and inside out, many times (leisure reading!) but I'm not confident in her retention of some of the main characters/events/locations. She's not doing so well on her tests.  :tongue_smilie:

 

I'm hoping to make up a kind of "chapter summary" sheet that she can use to go through the book, chapter by chapter, and take notes on the most important aspects of each chapter, as a study and retention aid. Not having studied the book myself, I'm not sure exactly what to put on such a sheet. I'm thinking "key events", "key characters and their relationships" and "key locations" but I'm wondering if she needs a place to summarize people's reasons for doing things? Could that be covered under "key events"? I'm trying to keep it to one page/chapter, but not miss critical info!  

 

Any tips or leads or links would be greatly appreciated!  Thanks in advance!

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You could listen to the Odyssey lectures by Vandiver together. It won't check for comprehension, but they're fascinating and help you understand the book so much better. If you don't have an Audible account already you can get a credit for free when you sign up.

https://mobile.audible.com/search.htm?keywords=Odyssey+vandiver

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 I  also used some of this free guide for the Odyssey..

 

and Pink Monkey for the Odyssey was pretty good, if you can wade through all the ads...

 

 and I liked this guide as well (links to all the books at the bottom of the page).  This  guide was college level, so some of it was usable for my high schooler, and some of it was just too much.  

 

 

Edited by Zoo Keeper
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How about having her write her own summaries?

 

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear in my first post, but yes, that's what I wanted her to do. However, I was hoping to come up with a template she could fill out, so as not to overwhelm her. (Summarizing is not her strong point, and I don't want to have to work on that skill within the context of trying to learn and remember the Odyssey. That's a different struggle for a different time.) So I'm trying to figure out what to put on a template. 😊 Edited by Piper
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I'm sorry if I wasn't clear in my first post, but yes, that's what I wanted her to do. However, I was hoping to come up with a template she could fill out, so as not to overwhelm her. (Summarizing is not her strong point, and I don't want to have to work on that skill within the context of trying to learn and remember the Odyssey. That's a different struggle for a different time.) So I'm trying to figure out what to put on a template. 😊

 

Oh sorry--I totally missed that.

 

The Vandiver lectures spend a lot of time summarizing what happened, which definitely helped my son (and me!) when we got lost.  So that might be helpful for your daughter too. 

 

I will say that every time I've not read the book and instead tried using something like SparkNotes to develop questions or whatever for my kid to use, I've ended up having trouble focusing on the right things.  If that makes sense.

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