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Overview:
This lesson is intended for students who have already studied some of the basics of ancient Greek civilization. Students will investigate ancient Greek artifacts and artworks and will design museum exhibits to be placed in an Athens subway station. Students will create the exhibits either on paper or with a computer multimedia program.
Connections to the Curriculum:
Geography, world history
Connections to the National Geography Standards:
Standard 17: "How to apply geography to interpret the past"
Time:
Three to four hours
Materials Required:
- Computer with Internet access
- Drawing materials (if students will be designing the museum on paper)
or
- Multimedia software program, e.g., Hyperstudio or PowerPoint (if students will be designing the museum on the computer)
Objectives:
Students will
- discuss what they already know about ancient Greece, the ways that this information has been obtained, and the reasons it is important to study ancient artifacts;
- research and take notes on ancient Greek artifacts and artworks;
- discuss the things they have found in their research; and
- design museum exhibits to be opened in an Athens subway station, either on paper or on the computer.
Geographic Skills:
Acquiring Geographic Information
Organizing Geographic Information
Analyzing Geographic Information
S u g g e s t e d P r o c e d u r e
Opening:
Ask students to think about the things they have learned about ancient Greece. Where do they think we have obtained the information we have about this civilization? How do we know about what it was like in ancient Greece? What types of evidence are important (e.g., archaeological finds or written records)?
Discuss the reasons why it is important to look at artifacts from ancient civilizations, such as Greece, in order to understand what it was like to live in that civilization. What examples of ancient Greek artifacts or art have they seen? How can these items teach them about life in ancient Greece?
Development:
Have students read the mission and briefing for the Ancient Greece activity. Tell them that they will be designing their own subway station exhibits in a little while.
Discuss the reasons why the city of Athens would want to save and display the items found during the subway construction. Besides being put on display for subway travelers to admire, what other uses might these ancient objects have (e.g., research)?
Have students form pairs and ask them to pretend that the managers of the Athens subway project have hired them to design the subway station exhibits. They need to figure out what will be put on display and where each item will go. They also need to write the captions that will go with each item on display.
Have students conduct research to find out about some of the items that have been discovered from ancient Greek civilization. They should use the following Web sites, plus any print resources available. Encourage them to keep their eyes open for artifacts and artworks that might actually have been found in Athens (as opposed to Crete or other locations in ancient Greece).
Museum of Cycladic Art (see the Permanent Collections)
National Archaeological Museum of Athens
ThinkQuest: Greek Architecture
University of Pennsylvania: Worlds Intertwined—Etruscans, Greeks, and Romans
As students do their research, have them list at least ten items to include in the exhibit. These items can be pottery, coins, architectural ruins, or other objects they see. Next to each item on the list, have them sketch the object and write a one or two sentence description of what it was used for, where it came from, and what this object teaches us about life in ancient Greece.
[Note: If you are going to have students design their exhibits on the computer, have them copy the images into multimedia programs instead of, or in addition to, sketching them.]
Closing:
Discuss a class the specific things students found in their research. What were the items used for? Can they locate these objects' places of origin on a map of ancient Greece? Do these items appear worthy of being displayed in a museum? Why or why not?
Suggested Student Assessment:
Combine the pairs into groups of four, and ask groups to share and compare their notes on the items they have found.
Have each group design a subway station exhibit that contains ten items—a combination of objects from each pair's research. They can design their museums on paper or with a multimedia program on the computer.
Students should structure their presentations to illustrate the exhibit's floorplan, showing where each item will be located and providing a caption for each. Each caption should aim to tell visitors what the object is, what it was used for, and why it is an interesting piece that deserves to be in a museum.
Extending the Lesson:
Have students investigate the things they would find if they were to dig under their town. What items might be placed in their town's counterpart to the Athens subway museum?
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