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Reading schedule · Grades 7–12

The Odyssey in 6 Weeks: A Reading Schedule

A six-week plan for reading Homer's Odyssey in translation, four books a week. Each week gives the reading, a short summary of what happens, three discussion questions and the escape room that goes with it. For grades 7–12, in class or at home.

Pacing

Four books a week works out at roughly a book a day, which leaves a day for discussion and a day for the escape room. Students from grade 7 can manage this pace in a good translation; younger or slower readers can take two weeks over a section without losing the shape of the plan.

Each week ends with an escape room on that week's reading: seven self-checking locks that run in any browser, with no logins, and progress is saved, so a room can be finished another day. Every room has free taster locks to try, and members can open them all.

Print this schedule Escape rooms on The Odyssey

Week 1: Books 1–4

Read: Books 1–4

The gods agree that Odysseus, held for years by Calypso, should go home. Athena, in disguise, urges his son Telemachus to stand up to the suitors who are courting his mother Penelope and eating up the household; after an assembly on Ithaca, Telemachus sails to Nestor at Pylos and to Menelaus and Helen at Sparta for news of his father.

Discussion questions

1. Why does the poem begin with Telemachus rather than Odysseus?
2. How do the suitors break the rules of hospitality?
3. What does Telemachus learn from Nestor and Menelaus?

Escape room: The Absent King (lockedlessons.com/rooms/odyssey-books-1-4/)

Week 2: Books 5–8

Read: Books 5–8

Hermes orders Calypso to let Odysseus go, and he sails on a raft until Poseidon wrecks it. He is washed ashore in the land of the Phaeacians, where Princess Nausicaa finds him by the river and guides him to the palace of Alcinous, and he is entertained with games and the songs of a bard.

Discussion questions

1. Why does Odysseus turn down Calypso's offer to make him immortal?
2. How does Odysseus win help from Nausicaa?
3. Why does Odysseus weep when the bard sings of Troy?

Escape room: Washed Ashore (lockedlessons.com/rooms/odyssey-books-5-8/)

Week 3: Books 9–12

Read: Books 9–12

In the hall of Alcinous, Odysseus tells of his wanderings: the Cicones, the Lotus-eaters, the Cyclops, the bag of winds from Aeolus, the giant Laestrygonians, the witch Circe and his journey to the land of the dead. He goes on to the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis and the island of the Sun, where his men eat the god's cattle and are lost.

Discussion questions

1. Which of Odysseus' choices in these adventures were wise, and which were foolish?
2. Why does Odysseus tell the Cyclops his real name, and what does it cost him?
3. What changes because Odysseus tells this part of the story himself?

Escape room: Tales of Wandering (lockedlessons.com/rooms/odyssey-books-9-12/)

Week 4: Books 13–16

Read: Books 13–16

The Phaeacians carry Odysseus home to Ithaca, where Athena disguises him as an old beggar. He stays in the hut of the loyal swineherd Eumaeus, Telemachus returns from Sparta, and father and son meet and plan the suitors' downfall.

Discussion questions

1. Why does Odysseus need a disguise in his own home?
2. What makes Eumaeus a good host?
3. How does the meeting of Odysseus and Telemachus repay the journeys of the first books?

Escape room: Home in Disguise (lockedlessons.com/rooms/odyssey-books-13-16/)

Week 5: Books 17–20

Read: Books 17–20

Odysseus comes to the palace as a beggar, is mocked by the suitors and fights the beggar Irus. He talks with Penelope by night without revealing himself, the old nurse recognises his scar as she washes his feet, and dark signs gather on the day before the contest.

Discussion questions

1. How do the suitors' insults to the beggar prepare for what follows?
2. Does Penelope suspect who the beggar is?
3. Why must the nurse keep silent?

Escape room: The Beggar at the Door (lockedlessons.com/rooms/odyssey-books-17-20/)

Week 6: Books 21–24

Read: Books 21–24

Penelope sets the suitors the contest of stringing Odysseus' bow; only the beggar succeeds, and with Telemachus and his loyal servants he kills the suitors. Penelope tests her husband before she accepts him, and Odysseus goes to meet his father Laertes.

Discussion questions

1. Is the killing of the suitors justice or excessive revenge?
2. Why does Penelope test Odysseus, and what does the test show about her?
3. Why does the poem not end with the reunion of husband and wife?

Escape room: The Last Contest (lockedlessons.com/rooms/odyssey-books-21-24/)

Nothing in this schedule is quoted from any translation, so it can sit beside whichever one your class reads.