GENRES CLASSES AND TOPICS

Teaching with Harry Potter

Teaching Kids

Fun activities and references Chemistry (potions)Cooking (Potter themed treats)Crafts (wands, art, costumes)Psychology (Patronus and Boggart)Good moral choicesGetting girls into STEM

English Class: Writing

Composition: concepts like third-person limited narration or cross-genre fiction.

Easy reads for ELD studentsCreative writing: Hero’s journey, plot diagramming,

foreshadowing, surprise twists, worldbuildingWriting bestsellers, self-publishing and transmedia:

Online, Rowling is pioneering the web as a new kind of author: Pottermore, a virtual community and computer game in one, teaches readers a new way to interact. Readers are creating fan fiction, fan art, video mash-ups and more.

Literature

Children’s literature (of course) Basic analysis (themes, metaphors, symbolism) Film studies Name meanings and associated symbolism Hero’s journey/bildungsroman Greek/Roman/Celtic myth Arthurian romances The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter: Perspectives on a Literary Phenomenon,

edited by Lana Whited, 2002 Reading Harry Potter: Critical Essays, edited by Giselle Liza Anatol, 2003 Harry Potter’s World: Multidisciplinary Critical Perspectives, edited by

Elizabeth E. Heilman, 2003 Critical Perspectives on Harry Potter (2nd ed.) edited by Elizabeth E.

Heilman, 2008 Reading Harry Potter Again: New Critical Essays, edited by Giselle Liza

Anatol, 2009

Classics like Harry Potter

These are all adult fantasy or semi-fantasy novels, but ones not too graphic for older kids and young teens.  

Bulfinch’s Mythology by Thomas Bulfinch Le Morte D’Arthur by Thomas MaloryThe Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness OrczyIvanhoe by Sir Walter Scott The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by JRR TolkienThe Once and Future King by T. H. WhiteBeowulfFolklore and myth from around the world

Inspiring the Classics

Chaucer, whose “Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale” concerns alchemy, and “Pardoner’s Tale” inspired the Tale of the Three Brothers.

Ben Johnson, whose comedy The Alchemist explores alchemy and the legend of the philosopher’s stone.

Harry Potter’s Bookshelf by John Granger examines Rowling’s inspirations: Dante Alighieri, Jane Austen, Bram Stoker, Dorothy Sayers, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, William Shakespeare, Jonathan Swift, Geoffrey Chaucer, and C. S. Lewis.

College students found elements of fairy tales and the monomyth present in texts like Great Expectations, Pride and Prejudice, etc., or magical symbolism in a text like The Faerie Queene.

English Vocabulary or Romance Languages

Latin RootsThere are so many simple, well-known Potter spells

that offer memory aids for Latin roots. “Lumos” (the light spell) contains the root “lum,” meaning light (illuminate, luminous, luminescent). The Fidelius Charm (also known as the Secret-Keeper charm of book three) has a “fid,” Latin for trust or faithful (fidelity, confide, perfidy).

Imperio, the curse of commanding, gives us the Latin root “imper”: to govern or command (emperor, imperative, imperious). Crucio is Latin for torture (crucible, crucify, excruciating).

Social Science

Introductory freshman classes focus on Harry Potter as a fun transition class, welcoming students to university with a taste of the familiar.

Education majors construct lesson plans for the K-8 curriculum using the series.

Marketing and brandingReligion: considering the Potter questionHarry Potter and International Relations, edited

by Daniel H. Nexon and Ivar B. Neumann, 2006The Law and Harry Potter, edited by Jeffrey E.

Thomas and Franklin G. Snyder, 2010

More Social Science

Jungian archetypes shine in all seven books, producing fodder for psychology.

Philosophy or theology: concepts of good and evil, the soul, the afterlife, and true righteousness.

Sociology, Gender Studies, Disability Studies, etc: issues of race, gender, class, marginalization, and stereotypes

Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral DevelopmentHarry Potter and Philosophy: If Aristotle Ran Hogwarts, edited

by David Baggett and Shawn E. Klein, 2004The Psychology of Harry Potter: An Unauthorized Examination

of the Boy Who Lived, edited by Neil Mulholland, 2005The Ultimate Harry Potter and Philosophy: Hogwarts for

Muggles, edited by Gregory Bassham, 2010

Medieval Studies

Alchemy, magical recipes Culpeper’s Complete Herbal Ancient bestiariesAstrology Romance tropesEtymologiesMandrakes, bezoars, cauldrons, and love potionsCulture: feasting, disease segregation, mapsArchitecture: the fourteenth-century Gloucester Cathedral

Cloisters features in the first film, while the Great Hall at Christ Church College, Oxford, serves as the model for the dining hall at Hogwarts. Other film locations include Lacock Abbey, Alnwick Castle, and Durham Cathedral.

Modern History

WWII: the blood purity laws and ghettos of Deathly Hallows, false propaganda and racism

Civil rights, suffrage, class differences, racial profiling, LGBT Rights, and more

Harry Potter and History by Nancy R. Reagin

Science

Hermione’s fascination with logic, arithmancy, and astronomy can provide a theme for events.

Science professors speculate whether antigravity research could someday create the brooms and flying cars of Harry’s world.

“Harry Potter and Genetics,” taught at Sun Yat-sen University in China, clarifies that the series is stretching far beyond its origin as a work of children’s fiction.

Roger Highfield’s The Science of Harry Potter: How Magic Really Works

Math, Computers…

The key here is word problems: two trains coming toward each other could be the Hogwarts Express and a hippogriff. Calculating variables can decide which house someone will be sorted into. If one is multiplying and dividing money, knuts and galleons can be used. This all works quite well for kids or for a Halloween lesson.

One can make computer programs using all these variables as well.

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