Lesson Overview 

I have included a Group Work here that was designed specifically for Remote Learning.  By this point - after about 6 months of being remote - I had learned some ways to make Group Work online more successful. 
For the nonremote version, there are still some very pointed instructions at the top - to make their end product a much better experience (for them and for me - grading it).  I am also proud of how my Group Works (and everything else that I did in the classroom) evolved to both appeal to a more diverse student body and to show how great classical works can apply to all of us.  I am taking the rare step (in this website) of repeating part of one such question on this group work:
There is a huge debate right now as to which books, texts should be covered in schools and in classes.  Some believe, like the Count, that it should be only those texts that are readily perceivable and admired by students:  Texts from our own experience – that speak directly to us.  Last summer I discovered a wonderful article by Toni Morrison (the African American author of Song of Solomon, Beloved, The Bluest Eye) on Grendel and his Mother (and Beowulf). 
She begins that article with the following: “ I AM HOPING that you will agree that the piece of literature I want to draw from is, as one of its translators says, "equal to our knowledge of reality in the present time." And discover in the lines of association I am making with a medieval sensibility and a modern one a fertile ground on which we can appraise our contemporary world.”  Her article goes on to show just how much the ancient Anglo Saxon text Beowulf and the more modern take on that novel (which came from it) Grendel – have to tell us about our lives – our own predicaments, our own worlds.
Last night as I was reading the news, I came across this article: “U.S. report: Much of the world’s chocolate supply relies on more than 1 million child workers I thought of the poem we read a few weeks ago (you should get it out) “Cocoa Beans” by Freda Dennis Cooper.  I then thought of the slave that Candide and Cacambo encounter at the end of Chapter 19 who tells them: “Those of us who work in the factories and happen to catch a finger in the grindstone have a hand chopped off; if we try to escape, they cut off one leg.  Both accidents happened to me.  That’s the price of your eating sugar in Europe.”  
Discuss among your group the premise of restricting texts to only those that are modern and directly related to our respective culture (ie high school students in an urban setting).  There is no right or wrong answer here – you also do not have to agree.  

For more, see the Group Work below - also don't forget we have an entire page devoted to Group Works.

Thoughts on the Lesson 

As a member of many Social Media High School English Teacher Groups - I am pretty saddened that there seems to be an abandonment of much of the classical literature cannon.  It seems that for a good number of teachers - they are only teaching modern, nonclassical works in the interest of appealing to all of their students.  In my opinion - Great Literature appeals to all students.  It just takes a little work to show that connection and I hope part of what I am doing with this site is accomplishing that.