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An earlier version of this post was published in 2013. This is an updated version.
A few years ago, I was working with a group of student teachers. One of them—we’ll call him Eric—was teaching seventh-grade social studies. His class was studying ancient Greece. The standards for grade 7 required teachers to address concepts like the government, economics, and culture of this era. For his 5-day unit, Eric was going to focus on the “culture” part.
On the first day of the unit, which Eric developed with his cooperating teacher, students would read the chapter of their textbook that swept through three centuries’ worth of ancient Greek culture in about five pages. Then they’d write answers to a set of end-of-chapter questions. On days 2 through 4, students would create their own Grecian urns by wrapping balloons with papier-mâché. Once the urns were dry, students would paint them in a similar style to that of the Greeks, incorporating something personally meaningful as the main artistic feature. Finally, they would present their urns to the class. On day 5, they would be given a quiz asking them to match 10 vocabulary terms, such as comedy, tragedy, urn, and Olympics, to their definitions.
Feeling more than a bit skeptical, I asked Eric to show me the standards his unit was aligned with. He rustled through some paperwork, then pointed to this language from the state standards: Students will demonstrate an understanding of the complexity of culture by exploring cultural elements (e.g., beliefs, customs/traditions, languages, skills, literature, the arts) of diverse groups and explaining how culture served to define groups in world civilizations prior to 1500 A.D. and resulted in unique perspectives.
I read this out loud to Eric, then asked him to show me exactly how his plans taught or measured the standard.
For a long moment, he said nothing.
Finally, he shrugged and told me the unit was basically what his cooperating teacher had “always done for ancient Greece.” She’d told him the urn project was really fun, and that the kids loved it. The only problem was, it had nothing to do with the standards. Draping wet, gluey newspaper around a balloon has nothing to do with deepening one’s understanding of societies and cultures.
All Hands-On Tasks Are Not Created Equal
I wish Eric’s story was just a rare example, but in my work with student teachers, as a classroom teacher myself, in my many years as a student, and now as a parent, I’ve seen far too many “Grecian Urns”: projects that look creative, that the teacher might describe as hands-on learning, interdisciplinary teaching, project-based instruction, or the integration of arts or tech, but that nonetheless lack any substantial learning for students. What’s worse, because these activities are often time-consuming, they take away from other tasks that would give students the chance to wrestle with more challenging stuff.
In their groundbreaking book Understanding by Design, Jay McTighe and the late Grant Wiggins describe this problem as the Sin of Activity-Oriented Design. Instead of focusing on the desired learning outcomes, this approach merely seeks out tasks that might be fun, or at least keep kids busy: “The activities, though fun and engaging, do not lead anywhere intellectually. (They) lack an explicit focus on important ideas and appropriate evidence of learning.”
To illustrate this, Wiggins and McTighe describe a 3rd grade unit on apples. In this two-week unit, students read about Johnny Appleseed, paint pictures of apples, do math problems that involve apples, write apple-themed stories, make applesauce, and take a trip to a local orchard. Students probably enjoyed all of these activities, and it’s likely that both teachers and students were charmed by how cleverly the theme was woven into so many different content areas. Throughout the unit, students probably seemed engaged, the classroom was full of colors and productivity and maybe even collaboration, but what valuable learning actually took place?
Let’s move our lens to the higher grades. Here, the Grecian Urns might involve no crafts at all, but still force students to ride along curricular tangents that, rather than inspire and ignite a passion for learning, lead to dead ends.
Take the math and social studies teachers who decide to co-teach a two-week unit on famous mathematicians. Math and history, right? Students spend most of the first week on computers, researching the mathematicians’ birthplaces, families, deaths, and contributions to the field (which most students simply copy, because the actual mathematical concepts are over their heads…how many eighth graders do you know who can explain the Fibonacci sequence?). They spend another three class periods creating PowerPoints or Prezis full of facts about these obscure pioneers in math, complete with neat-o animations and stomach-turning transitions, and another three days presenting these to the class…
For what?
None of the kids got any better at math, nor did their thirst for history grow. But to someone walking by, maybe even to an administrator doing a formal observation, this unit would look kind of amazing. Students doing online research! Cooperative learning! Technology! Interdisciplinary study!
No!
These teachers misunderstood and misapplied the concepts of interdisciplinary study, hands-on learning, and tech integration, and two weeks of precious instructional time were wasted because of it.
How to Spot a Grecian Urn
It could be argued that all lessons have some educational value, that any kind of reading and writing, manipulating materials and words, interaction with peers, and exposure to the world in general offer opportunities for learning. With that in mind, think of “Grecian Urn” as more of a relative term than an absolute one: Few lessons will be pure Grecian Urns; almost any lesson will probably have some arguable educational value. Far more lessons will simply contain elements that are Grecian Urn-ish; we can make these lessons better if we try to minimize those elements.
The best way to identify a Grecian Urn is to look at a task and ask this question: Does it consume far more of a student’s time than is reasonable in relation to its academic impact? If students spend more time on work that will not move them forward in the skill you think you are teaching, then it may be a Grecian Urn. And it may need to go.
Here are some more specific ways to spot the Grecian Urns in your teaching, and what you could do to replace them:
1. Excessive Coloring or Crafting
If your lesson requires more time coloring, cutting, or pasting than meaningful work with the content you’re trying to teach, it might be a Grecian Urn. If you are a primary teacher and students need to develop their fine motor skills, or if you are, in fact, an art teacher, then these activities have a clear place in your classroom. Everyone else should use these tasks more sparingly.
This doesn’t mean you should never ask students to color, cut, paste, sing, act, or draw, but every time you do, ask yourself if that work is contributing to learning. If not, there may be a way to cut down the time it takes. Suppose you want students to draw illustrations of vocabulary words. Adding visuals can work wonders to boost memory, so this is an instructionally sound decision. But is it necessary for these illustrations to be colored? On posterboard? Or hanging from a mobile? Would a simple line drawing beside each word on a regular sheet of paper serve the same purpose?
Now if your goal is true integration of the arts into your curriculum, I have two articles to recommend to you. Both of these really dig into what it looks like when teachers use art to really enhance students’ learning: read this post on arts integration from MindShift and this one from Edutopia to learn more about what this looks like.
2. Excessive “Neat-O” Tech
This is the tech equivalent of item #1: If students are spending lots and lots of time searching for images, making digital drawings, adding animations or effects to slideshows, adding sound effects or special titles to podcasts and videos, you are probably heading into Grecian Urn territory.
The key phrase here is lots and lots of time: Our students will absolutely benefit from learning how to combine text with images, manipulate presentations to make them more interesting, and make use of all the digital tools at their disposal. But when a student burns two hours listening to sound clips so he can make a photo of Langston Hughes zoom onto his PowerPoint slide to the sound of screeching brakes, well, he’s probably not doing much thinking about the Harlem Renaissance.
So when you’re assigning work that requires the creative use of tech, be mindful of how much time students are putting into the bells and whistles. Look at your rubric and make sure you haven’t required too many of these bells and whistles to begin with. And if possible, see if they can make the bells and whistles relevant: If students want sound in their slideshow about the Harlem Renaissance, have them add a Duke Ellington song, music that’s actually from that era, rather than a funny sound effect.
3. Low-Level Thinking
Most of the thinking in a Grecian Urn task is on the lowest level of Bloom’s Taxonomy. In other words, the task appears to be creative, but the primary academic work is rearranging and regurgitating basic facts or definitions.
Let’s look at two possible assignments for students to demonstrate their understanding of the Food Pyramid. In one class, the teacher has students re-create the pyramid as a hanging mobile. They write all the parts of the pyramid on pieces of colored paper and hang those papers onto a hanger or something. They might also be asked to draw or cut out magazine pictures of foods that represent items within each part of the pyramid. All of this work is at the Remember and Understand level of Bloom’s. Students are more or less defining stuff, and yet the task still takes an awfully long time to complete. Grecian Urn.
But what’s the point of teaching the Food Pyramid? Don’t we want students to learn it so they can make healthy eating choices? Here’s a different assignment: Have students write up a 3-day eating plan that applies the principles of the Pyramid. Sure, they can draw a border around it if they like. This will take five minutes. They can choose a cool font for the headings; that’s 10 minutes. But shouldn’t the real time-consuming work be put into deeply wrestling with the content itself?
4. Big Points for “Creativity”
An assignment might be a Grecian Urn if a significant part of the grade is based on “creativity” or “attractiveness.” And by the way, I’m a big design snob. I think presentation is important. But if more than 10 percent of a grade is based on these things—and I even think 10 percent is pushing it—we’re not measuring the learning that’s supposed to be taking place.
The fix for this couldn’t be easier. Cut way back on the points you assign for creativity or attractiveness. And if you find that the projects you get don’t excite you because they are not colorful or pretty, it’s time to start planning projects that will excite you with their content.
5. Word Search
If the task is a word search, there’s a very strong chance it is a Grecian Urn. Some argument could probably be made for how word searches reinforce letter recognition in the very early grades. Fine. But if some form of letter recognition, decoding skill, or language development is not the curricular intent of your word search, then your word search is probably a Grecian Urn. If you are a teacher who doesn’t have time to do things like project-based learning or Genius Hour, but you have time to make word searches and have students spend time doing them? Drop the word searches and you just bought yourself and your students at least 30 extra minutes per week.
What Then?
So you have identified a couple of Grecian Urns in your lessons. What do you do about them?
One option is to cut them out. Just move those lessons out of your plan book and replace them with activities that will actually result in learning. Look again at your goals: What do you want students to know or be able to do by the time they’re done? And what tasks will help them get there?
The other option is to revise them. Let’s go back to Eric and his urns. Maybe instead of using up three class days on all that wet newspaper business, he could have students draw their urns on paper. He could build the historical relevance by providing students with images of typical Greek urns, have them choose one, then draw their own urn with images that parallel those in the original, but with a modern twist. So if the urn they choose depicts a battle, they might draw something on their own that represents a significant war or other “battle” that has occurred in the last century. Students could then add captions to their drawings, pointing out these details and the thinking behind them.
If you really like your Grecian Urn activity, you don’t have to completely drop it. But if you can tweak it to make it take less time and build in more curricular relevance, you’ve made it a lot less “urn-y” and, in turn, given it a more rightful place in your classroom.
The Fun and Sanity Loopholes
Having said all this, I think it’s important to note that not all classroom activities have to have a clearly defined, rigorous academic purpose. There will be times when a task that would be called a Grecian Urn in one context serves a completely different purpose in another.
The Fun Loophole
Building relationships with students, creating a family-like atmosphere, and making the classroom a place students love to come has incredible value. If I didn’t believe this, I never would have written something called When a Principal Whips and Nae-Naes. Some things should just be done for fun. If students absolutely love playing with the drawing app on their iPads, make that an option for free time. If students want to create a collage as a thank-you gift for a departing student, by all means let them.
The Sanity Loophole
At other times, you just need your students to be still and quiet. Maybe you’re coming down with a stomach bug or you just got bad news over the phone. Maybe the morning assembly left you with only 6 minutes of class time and you know you’re not going to get anything done. Maybe they have driven you to the absolute brink and you’re about to start throwing things. The best teachers in the world have days when they just can’t be on. At those times, good old-fashioned busywork is like manna from heaven. That’s when you have them color. That’s when you pull out the word searches.
When used for fun or sanity, these tasks are no longer Grecian Urns; they’re more like classroom management strategies. The important thing is to know the difference.
That’s what I tried to teach Eric as we revised his unit. We had him use some graphic organizer activities, where students did side-by-side comparisons of ancient Greek and modern-day cultural elements. Students then completed a lengthy questionnaire, where they took on the identity of a person in Ancient Greece. Each student chose a social rank, age, and gender, and wrote about what their life was like. Some questions asked them to describe their feelings about other people in their community and about social issues. They had to draw a few sketches of some of the artifacts in their daily life and describe why these artifacts were important to them. Once all students completed these questionnaires, they worked together to arrange them on a wall in a way that represented their social hierarchy.
The activity took three days. Students collaborated, used technology to research their person’s life, and even used a bit of color for their sketches. In the end, they understood a lot more about ancient Greek culture and about how culture influences who we are.
And they did it all without a single strip of gluey newspaper. ♦
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I am a new special ed Science/English teacher. Trying to incorporate engineering design process projects into the classes I teach weekly. Sounds like that student teacher was using material that someone else had reviewed or approved or given to them and had used before? And sometimes we are crunched for time. It takes many years to grow a reflective teacher. But I always try to use material that’s vetted by reputable websites, like tryengineering.org.
Hi Maria,
Yes, I believe he inherited quite a bit of his original plans, and if we are short on time, we may have no other choice. You’re right: Doing this job well takes many years. I’m hoping this post will help contribute to pushing teachers in the right direction over those years. Thanks for recommending tryengineering.org! I downloaded one of their lesson plans (The Phone Charger Conundrum) and it’s excellent!
I wonder about retention here. I would predict, and I think research supports, that a task like filling out a questionnaire will be forgotten nearly the minute the next unit comes. You can dismiss the Gracian Urn, but it is an experience students will likely never forget. I would suggest incorporating more content into the gluey paste, not cutting the gluey paste.
That’s certainly an option, and I think there’s a lot of value in making things tactile and visual. The questionnaire, by the way, asked some pretty interesting questions, so although the final product wasn’t visually colorful, the responses certainly were “colorful” in a conceptual way.
I was wondering – as someone who is a retired teacher educator and early childhood grade teacher – whether the making of the urn could have met the requirements of the standards if the students also were asked to discuss urns and and their purpose in Greek culture. Are they an expression of something in the Greek culture? Where did they come from? I believe that 7th graders could have come up with a wealth of questions about urns that they could have researched that would have given them the opportunity to create the urn and meet the state standards. The teacher/student teachers often think about fun first and not always how the fun activity promotes learning. Knowing exactly what you want the students to learn from the topic should come first – backward design – and then design the activities that should get you there. This is a hard concept for teacher education students and for many teachers to understand.
Nora,
In the “What Then?” section of the article, Jenn talks about how the urn activity could be revised to bring deeper learning, which is really what you’re talking about and what we want to try to do. I taught first grade for 14 years – maybe it was because I taught 5th grade for 18 years prior to that, but I just wasn’t one of those teachers who did a lot of “cute/fun” projects/units. So, you bring up a good point about perhaps what we mean by “fun,” because we were having tons of fun researching, exploring, and solving problems every day. Sure we sometimes colored and cut and paste, but it was with purpose. And the kids, yes 1st graders, knew that purpose. If they chose to color during Choice Time and were asked, “What are you working on?” a typical reply would be, “My fine motor skills. This will help me do lots of other work that I might want to do like build or tie my shoes,” or “My fine motor skills and using color to create patterns.” And we would conference about the progress they were making and what they wanted to try next time. I think this article raises an awareness: In the end, will we be able to assess what we really want kids to be able to do, transfer and understand? Instructional time is already limited, so let’s just be sure to use it well. Thanks for sharing!
Agreed. Some students are not going to remember the content, however they will remember the experience. Some of the tech experience helps them with other skills.
great!
Placing a value on learning experiences being “memorable” rather than the actual learning that is accomplished is part of the problem. Yes, students will remember paper maché forever, but, so what? Find a way to generate lifelong memories in the context of actual learning.
I’ll never forget my 5th grade project to gather tree leaves and classify them. That was both memorable and was actually developed both content knowledge and skills in biology.
In a coaches life, we have to believe that the drills and plays we teach and use are right and proper. I have been a coach for almost 50 years. There have been more times than I can remember that some of the drills have been a waste of time. They were either to hard or to long for what I was trying to teach.
Creativity needs to be expressed. It is in our true nature to create. When he includes a creative process with the learning, It not only gives children something they are craving but a neural connection that cannot only be understood through beating information into the brain, but a neural pathway to the arts, themselves, their senses and their dreams. If it were up to me, more teachers would stoke this creative fire in other subjects. I remember the projects and teachers who allowed me to create these projects more than any of the ones who militantly tried to force learning down our throats. I was that kid who made straight As regardless… but maybe that gives me a hand in an objective observation, since I have always been hungry for knowledge.
This article was recently posted on an Art Teacher Facebook page. Most commenters, including myself, agreed with some of it, but ultimately felt it was anti-art. Long live strips of gluey newspapers! 😊 Creativity is sorely lacking in our society and is also what employers are currently seeking.
Hi Jane ~ For more discussion on this, please scroll down to the comment by Anna Nichols. I believe she agrees with you, and I wrote a lengthy response to her about this topic. I hope you’ll join in there!
Hi,
I’m unable to locate comment by Anna Nichols. It seems that the comment timeline is wonky.😛 Will keep looking. Thank you.
I love project based learning and I teach Middle School and High School math and have the Special Education resource room. I think that the ability to apply the skills they are learning to real life SO important. Simply learning the content on a surface level doesn’t allow for long term memory to kick in. When you “deeply wrestle with the content ” your students will remember those things forever.
As an art educator, I’m curious as to why you have chosen to dismiss an activity (Grecian Urn lesson) that demonstrates creativity, explores a historical culture, allows students to use recycled materials, activates 3-D thinking and gives them individual choice. Surely the lesson plan could be strengthened and aligned more closely with Social Studies and/or History standards, but the manner in which you have chosen to coin the term “Grecian Urn” and simultaneously undervalue a creative lesson plan requires reflection on your part as an educational blogger. You may have alienated many other art educators and creative types in writing this lopsided article.
Hey Beth,
There’s a lot of discussion throughout the comments that point to some of these things. If you get a moment, scroll through to learn more of Jenn’s thoughts. As an aside, I think what it really comes down to is intention. When we’re asking kids to do something, it needs to be intentional. As a first grade teacher, I did have my kids color. I’d start them off coloring large areas and then when ready, they’d work with smaller spaces. If you walked in the room and asked the kids what what they were doing, they wouldn’t say they were coloring. They’d say they were working on their fine motor skills. They knew what the intention was, while they were enjoying the artwork. I needed to teach them how to trace, move their paper to go around curves, think about their color choices and any patterns (patterns are important – we see them in art, math, music, books) So the coloring was just the means to what I wanted kids to be able to do. It’s about the why. Why are we taking time to do this and what am I really assessing?
Such an important post. I made a similar point when I shared my biggest takeaways after attending an assessment conference. http://bit.ly/1lFvvIN
Thanks for sharing this, Denise! Yes, we are very much in line on this.
This might be my favorite article yet! I have felt alone many times as others in my dept. wanted to assign projects that I just didn’t seem valuable.
Thanks, Allison. It’s pretty difficult to articulate this, especially when someone else is so excited by an idea. Our best bet may be to encourage them to make small changes that add more rigor.
I strongly agree. Things like this have always been a pet peeve of mine. I do think, however, that the apple example could involve meaningful learning in the early grades. Many students have never been to an apple orchard, or made applesauce, and these kinds of activities give them direct foundational experiences. The change of apples to applesauce can also provide a chance to introduce or reinforce science concepts like osmosis (http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/osmosis-and-applesauce/). I guess I am basically extending your point about being thoughtful and deliberate about what we do in class.
Love that osmosis and applesauce article! Yes, with just a little more effort, even a totally “themed” unit like the apples unit could be boosted to add in more significant learning targets. It would take more effort the first time around to make that happen, but then it would be done, and teachers could keep the fun projects they’ve always enjoyed knowing they were making significant learning strides at the same time.
Nearly spot on, a lot is futile, but the apple stuff was quite good.
Thanks, Howard!
I think you see a lot of fun activities because, as teachers, we went through urn schools and urn teaching colleges. I didn’t have instruction on preparing the activities you suggest but have tried to develop some over the years. Teacher education programs should spend time developing these skills so that we can address a deeper knowledge base. Most of the time we are asked to prepare lessons without the background you mentioned. Professional development does not occur on the topic either. It spends too much time on telling us we are doing urn activities without explaining how to go about making others. You educated that one teacher and I hope you are helping others. The just do it mentality will not makes us better educators.
Agree 100%. Since districts do not provide training in this area. We have to rely on self-education, spending hours scouring websites to find a few lessons. These are precious hours that we don’t have as I sit here on a Sunday reading education posts and creating my lesson plans. For schools like mine that don’t have an art program sometimes a Grecian Urn project is as good as it gets. I envy teachers who have the time and resources to teach the way they want to teach. Perhaps posting some tried and true websites and books would help.
Michele and Karen, you’re both pointing out a big problem common to teacher prep and PD: lots and lots of theory, but not enough specific examples of what TO DO. In the same way that examples help our students understand a concept and transfer that knowledge to new situations, giving teachers concrete examples of high-quality teaching can go such a long way toward helping them apply new strategies in the classroom.
Before we throw all teacher preparation programs under the bus, let me comment on a couple of points. I speak from 27 years of teaching, and 11 years preparing teachers. So first point – the most difficult job I have ever had is the later, because you are preparing teachers in a very short period of time (and it is worse today – fewer hours and basically two years of methods) who have already determined what it means to be a teacher through years of education of their own. So, with that said, much of what we do as teacher educators is theoretical because we are not in an actual classroom (our students do have a component in each class that is connecting their knowledge to a real classroom each semester, in every upper level class). But EVERYTHING is theoretical if you have nothing to scaffold those ideas on. It is not dissimilar to what we are talking about in this post. I believe the root of the problem suggested here is transfer, not the knowledge base of pedagogy. So my second point is that the political, institutional, and social constraints we feel as teacher educators and teachers are very similar. We are constantly asking ourselves how to help our preservice teachers be better prepared….and more standardized testing has come our way instead. When I am asked to do PD, the first thing I do is request that I talk to the teachers about what they want or need from the experience. If I am allowed, it works well, and if the answer is no, I don’t do it. No reason to. I won’t go into all of this more deeply here, as it is not the point. My point was to say our desires and our contexts may appear different from the outside, but on the inside they are similar. Just wanted to share!
Appreciate you sharing your point of view, Cindy. I’ll be sure to share this with Jenn.
Maybe this rant is a greater in K-12 but there is also a potential issue in Higher ed. In K-12, maybe there is lots of time though I see results that students are lacking basic skills, knowledge of history, or subjects in context and instead urns are being made.
However, there are issues that are insane excuses but are occurring that limit the teacher’s abilities and that is the educators drawing up useless curriculum requirements that are obsolete, not challenging, not relevant.
So when I see urns (and I have some college level urns), I force the students to at least go outside of the box to seek solutions. It does require more work on the part of the instructor to follow up with corrections and for teachers to provide encouragement and feedback. That means instructors need to be performing at higher levels of engagement and I am not sure that all are capable or are energetic enough.
Your idea has great merit. I might update it with asking instructors to see urns and totally remake them so that they are relevant skill building actions.
That is my rant.
Thanks, Gordon! Revising their own Urn lesson would be a great exercise for a group of teachers working together to improve.
I love this! Very thoughtful and insightful. But also giving lots of alternatives and ways to change a Grecian Urn into something of more substance. In our family, when my children were in high school, we had a name for Grecian Urn projects. These projects often seemed to come from foreign language classes and were dubbed QLP. Questionable Language Projects. They were instantly recognizable and often involved paper mache. There was a kernel of cultural learning, but it just took up too much time. This post offers ways to reflect on my own questionable projects and see what can be done to make them more effective for deeper learning of content.
Hi Sally. Yes, it’s that “kernel” that sometimes causes the most trouble, because it causes us to fool ourselves into thinking we’re delivering a quality lesson, when in reality we could be doing so much more with it. I would love to hear what you come up with in your reflections!
Thank you for this post. I went to a conference several years ago that opened my eyes to this very important topic. After I recovered from my toes being stepped on, I omitted or changed a lot of my activities and to remove my Grecian Urns. I now feel much more confident that my units are directly aligned to the standards I am supposed to be teaching, and I still incorporate as much creativity and project based learning as possible. However as I browse Pinterest, I sometimes feel guilty that some of my lessons aren’t as cute, clever, and creative as others, but this post was a good reminder for me to not abandon content for the sake of something cute to show off in the hallway (not saying that it can’t be both). Finding the balance between content and creative projects is certainly not easy, but it is one of my goals as a teacher.
“After I recovered from my toes being stepped on…” Yes, Ashleigh. That’s it. And it’s why I was nervous right before I hit “publish” on this, because I wondered how much backlash I might get. But that’s really the difference between an awesome teacher and a mediocre one: The awesome teacher KNOWS there’s always room for improvement, whereas the mediocre one gets defensive at the mere suggestion she might be less than perfect already.
I also think lessons can be high-quality AND cute!
As always this has given me a lot to think about as a Head of Department and mentor. I will share the link to this with my department members.
Thanks, B!
Coming from upper elementary, I would add many interactive notebook activities to your list of Grecian urns. Very cute, but what’s the ratio of higher level thinking to time spent?
As with so many other instructional tasks, this really depends on what’s inside. I feel the same way about worksheets–they get a terrible name, but I think I have put together some pretty good stuff that happens to be executed on an 8.5 x 11″ piece of paper. Interactive notebooks have the potential to be awesome, but those who create them should identify and remove the Urns as much as possible.
I came to this realization as a science teacher. AT the high school and college level, often times science labs are merely magic shows. Often times the bridge from abstract to concrete or vice versa is not easily managed. I see this often at the middle school level with number sense, the activity is seen as a separate concept, not part of the whole picture. Very frustrating, but being aware of it helps.
I agree that the awareness is key. If we can just take take that one extra step, asking ourselves whether the task really links to the learning goal, it will push every lesson closer to quality.
And I would point out there are artistic standards that do not honor the art form in such projects. As a music teacher, I am always a bit offended when music is used as a tool for some other means. Singing a song about apples isn’t a music lesson. It is only integration if you have looked at the musical standards you are also teaching while using that song. True integration honors each subject so that the integrity of each is intact. So do your Grecian Urn, but connect that activity to not only a learning standard in the subject area, but also in Art. Applies to music, dance and theatre as well. (I also respect that this is a LOT of work no teacher is compensated for or given the time to do.) Our National Core Arts Standards can be found here: https://www.nationalartsstandards.org/
As a teacher and a parent, I am infuriated by the ridiculousness of some assignments. My 15 year old son, taking 3 AP classes, is required to make a poster of a traffic sign for driver’s ed.
Just replicating the sign? Gah!!
My Grecian urn is a dinosaur diorama. For my two oldest children this cursed project was a big deal in second grade. It represents everything you are talking about in your post and one more thing that drives me crazy. Parents did most of the work. If there was any benefit to be had from the project, and there wasn’t much, the child didn’t receive it! Mom or dad did. As an educator myself, I try very hard to avoid the diorama or Grecian urn projects. Your post is a great reminder.
Yes, dioramas!! You know what would make those so, so much better?
(1) Let students choose whatever medium they want to work in — so it could be a play-doh model, a drawing, a collage, or whatever would help them get the “stuff” visible the most quickly.
(2) Completely eliminate creativity points. Just give a tiny amount of points for neatness so the student doesn’t just slop something together that’s impossible to interpret.
(3) Make the vast majority of points relate directly to the standard. So say it’s an animal habitat: They have to demonstrate how the animal is uniquely suited to its environment, maybe showing five different connections.
(4) Require students to write a short paper to go along with the project, giving a tour of their “diorama” and actually pointing out the features that represent whatever it is they are supposed to be demonstrating.
That reminds me of the covered wagon models in my hometown middle school. E even though I went to a private school instead I still heard about it. Apparently it took hours of work and was usually completed late at night by parents who had already sent their frustrated child to bed. It was apparently worth a bunch of points in history. I don’t know what it was supposed to teach about history that we didn’t already know from playing Origon Trail.
This is genius. I have to go to PD every week and everything the administrators say seems to be either stating the obvious or idealistic nonsense. Every column you write takes me 5 minutes to read and is worth more than 10 hours of the PD my district offers. I have one comment about the grecian urn analogy. I have assigned a flipped class project for the AP BIo students where each was assigned a molecule involved in cellular communication and they had to present the topic to the class, explaining how it was linked to the bigger picture and using 3 outside resources to elaborate on what was in the text and provide a connection to current research such as a study reported in the news. They could use powerpoint, prezi, make a video, write a song, pretty much any form of communication of the idea was allowed. Some students demonstrated an understanding worthy of a PhD student and others turned it into a Grecian Urn. Thoughts on how to prevent that, or will some students always focus on the non-academic portions of any creative assignment?
Hey Katie! I think the way you prevent it is to have a few samples done ahead of time. I usually would do these where I basically did the assignment, but substituted the topic for something similar (that way I wasn’t actually doing the task for them). Then, before students even start the project, take each sample one at a time and have students score it with whatever rubric you have created for the assignment. If the rubric demands true demonstration of the learning target, only the best sample will get the high score. If students don’t get that, this is your opportunity to help them understand the requirements. It still may not reach everyone, but doing this should cut way down on the lower-quality products.
Yes yes yes!!! Thank you! This is something we all need to be aware of in our own teaching. I also find it frustrating how often those “Grecian Urns” get praise from other teachers/administrators. Thank you for addressing this.
I hope this helps!!
A comment and a question here. First, I think sometimes “urns” are assigned to help students raise their grades. If students don’t perform well on tests and quizzes, their grades sink. An “urn” gives them the opportunity to earn an A–and hey, it’s on a complicated project!–to help bolster sagging grades. Second, what about interactive notebooks? I’m experimenting with a science/SS interactive notebook this year (I’m in elementary), and yes, it does involve a lot of coloring. But it’s less dry than merely filling in blanks on a planner, and I’m trying to use the coloring to color-code information and help students make connections. It’s early in the year, so the jury is still out on effectiveness. I would be interested in hearing what others think about INs and how these can adhere more closely to standards and enhance upper-level thinking skills.
See now I love color-coding stuff, Barbara. I worry that this post might make some teachers completely abandon visuals, and reinforcing understanding with visuals is HUGE for storing things in long-term memory. I love the idea of color-coding concepts to help students make connections. As for the coloring, as long as it serves some academic purpose OR is not too time-consuming OR it’s just used as a filler activity (e.g., “If you’d like to decorate the cover of your interactive notebook, you may take it home tonight or do that if you finish early with xyz.”
Also: YES about the grade-boosting use of the Urn projects. And what a shame. I would rather have fewer grades in my gradebook than a bunch of grade-inflating fluff. I’m a much bigger fan of letting students re-do assignments than giving them assignments that are easy A’s.
… Or an opportunity to “urn” a grade. LOL. Sorry, carry on.
Wonderful article. As a former middle school librarian I am often appalled at the ridiculous “fun” activities librarians do that have nothing to do with what is going on in the school’s classrooms. Grecian Urn projects could be turned into magical interdisciplinary learning projects with relevant outcomes, if only teachers (and librarians) would collaborate, as you have demonstrated doing so skillfully with Eric. Thanks for keeping our focus on educationally meaningful strategies.
Thanks so much, Barbara! I really like the model we showcased earlier this year with the Big Walnut Middle School Learning Center. The media specialist in charge of that library collaborated regularly with teachers to ensure that he was providing resources and tech that would support the learning in their classrooms.
Thank you! This is a huge problem at the high school where I work. The district as a whole has implemented incredibly lenient grading standards that allow students to pass classes while doing very little work, so there’s not a lot of incentive to participate in class activities. As a result, teachers assign a lot of Grecian Urn projects so at least the kids are doing something. It’s not at all what I went into teaching to do, which is why I’m moving to a different district after this year. I just feel bad for the kids who are missing out on so much valuable instruction time.
This makes me sad, Marie. I feel bad for them too. See if you can change some minds before you head off to greener pastures.
I loved this post and felt grateful that my principal a few years ago discussed urn projects when staff was feeling overwhelmed by the new CCSS. Teach want students need to know to learn and grow and that may mean your”urn” project may not fit the need and will have to go. Good reminder
Thanks, Kimberly!
I loved this article. In the name of creativity and for the sake of using technology, teachers do waste a lot of valuable time. Instead of trying to find an activity for every topic, it would be better if the teachers give just one or two activity for their entire course that a student would actually learn from.
I think there’s a balance for sure. You’re right: Not everything needs a big project, and sometimes we can just have one-day tasks that can be done right in class that are interesting and rigorous at the same time.
Thank you for this – It is so useful to sharpen that sword mid-semester! Making learning the centre of everything I do in the classroom, and elsewhere, is the true goal.
Thanks, Glenda!
This is perfect timing for my Teacher Ed class. This post will be an assigned reading because it supports the backward design model we are using in class. As a teacher, I know how hard it is to let go of really fun activities- but when I realized they did nothing to increase student learning it was a bit of a wake up call. We teach that it is critical to start with the outcomes and then build the learning intentions from them, next selecting instructional strategies to support the learning and finally. success criteria to enable students to check on their own learning. Our problem is that although we drill this into the classes and model it, it is not what is being modeled in the classrooms of their Associate Teachers or in the great units shared by other teachers. One of my beefs with one-off lessons from the Internet– what are they plugged into? Thanks for sharing this- so, so timely!
Trista, I love UbD so much and wish that model was standard practice! I think the book itself is really tough reading, especially for beginning teachers. I’m working on ways to get that model out there in a more digestible form. And yes, not seeing this modeled in real classrooms is a huge problem.
As for the one-off lessons? I think they have a place when it comes to reinforcing a concept, providing extra practice in a skill, or offering enrichment to students who don’t need extra practice in something else. But as with everything else, teachers need to be very clear about why they are choosing those lessons. Too often we think keeping students busy is equal to teaching them. And it’s just not.
I really enjoyed reading this article and all of the subsequent comments. I think book trailers are the best example of a Grecian Urn project that I can think of, and I see a lot of teachers in our building doing projects with iMovie that seem to be Grecian Urns. In fact, I’m going to suggest that iMovie is responsible for more Grecian Urns than any other form of technology.
I am concerned, however, that at the secondary level (where I teach) we sacrifice creativity too much for the sake of the standards. We have removed creativity out of the classrooms because it can’t be measured by the standards, and let’s face it – creativity takes time. I don’t think creativity should ever be a criteria on a rubric – for one thing, it’s difficult to measure and I’m not sure that it can be taught – but I don’t think we should completely abandon hands on stuff. The world needs creativity more than it needs people who can do what’s required of them.
I agree, David. But I think the standard definition of “creativity” is too often limited to the visual arts. This is why I think the emergence of design thinking in classrooms is exciting, because it honors problem-solving as a truly creative process.
Since I know you are in ELA, let’s consider the creativity that’s necessary for good writing. When I hear “creative writing,” I think of poetry and cute short stories, but creativity is really what’s needed to take a solid piece of writing in any genre and turn it into something really powerful. Think of how much more effective a piece of persuasive writing is if it starts with a provocative lead. But how much time do writing teachers spend showing students how to experiment with different kinds of leads for their writing? Or different ways of using dialogue to add dramatic effect? Or studying all the different kinds of titles and endings real writers use, not just in stories, but in high-quality journalism, blog writing, and essays? In language arts, this is where the creative work should lie. But if students spend 12 hours on an iMovie book trailer changing the speed of their voices, they have strayed pretty far from the kind of creativity that’s possible in an English class.
I cannot help but disagree. The title language ARTS emcompasses many types of art. Performance, inflection, speed, tone of speech, all of that is an art.
What I wish you would emphasize more than dictating standards and content is your very valuable point of REFLECTION. Too many of us keep on keepin’ on with the same activities and material, instead of reflecting on if it was the best or how it could be better. My time as an instructional coach has solidified how important these conversations are, and how rarely they are led or focused on. That is what can come out of this—true reflection, assessment of activity, learning outcomes and objectives. Personally, I feel your emphasis on content instead, here, comes off as condescending, though I recognize it is not intentional. There are many, MANY ways any of these lesson ideas could be revised to meet standards, not just “your” vision.
I appreciate your point, David. Creativity in mathematics is actually something I push for. I actually take issue with the example that was presented of the students looking up autobiographies of mathematicians. One of the things that is most difficult in middle and high school mathematics classrooms is attending to 4 dimensions of equity/learning that I think are important for all students to have: access, achievement, identity, and power. I wrote a 2 page article about this that people can download from http://www.todos-math.org Four Dimensions of Equity
“Play the Game” and “Change the Game”
(TEEM, volume 1, 2009) Attending to the standards in mathematics only addresses access & achievement. It almost never gets at affirming the identities of students (allowing them to use algorithms from their home countries, using their native or first languages, drawing upon cultural frames of reference like indigenous ways of knowing, etc.) or allowing students to use mathematics in ways that are powerful for their own purposes or home communities (e.g., social justice mathematics). So, we end up sending the unintended message to students that most mathematicians are white European males and mathematics is important for…well, just more mathematics coursework. Having students research current or previous mathematicians who may share cultural backgrounds (including gender!) is an important way to remind them that mathematics is a human practice, full of heated debates, cult-like followings (e.g., Pythagoras), women, and individuals who took on the sanctioned mathematics of the day (e.g., that’s how we got non-Euclidian mathematics). So, I worry that readers of this post will see all of the high fives and “I agree 100%” and think that doing these kinds of creative projects are simply Grecian Urns. Of course, this kind of work is complex and requires attention to specific things one wants to get out of the project, but using the standards is only one (and, in my view, limited) way of deciding what should be in a mathematics lesson/classroom and what should not. Organizations such as http://www.SACNAS.org have done a nice job of chronicling some of the Latin@ and American Indian scientists today; the American Mathematical Society has also created a website to feature current Latin@ mathematicians and their research http://lathisms.org/. I am not trying to make a specific push for a project about the biographies of mathematicians, as much as I am saying there are resources out there. To the question of, “Does it consume far more of a student’s time than is reasonable in relation to its academic impact?” I would respond: “Who gets to decide what counts as academic impact?” If finding a mathematician who looks like you and who has done some important work in the field gives you a new view of what mathematics is, who is good at it, and how it was practiced at the time, I think we should think long and hard about whether that makes for an unnecessary “creative” project.
Jennifer, my thoughts exactly!
Hi Rochelle,
The approach you’re suggesting, looking at famous mathematicians from a social justice angle? That sounds like a great assignment, and if a project like that pulls a person of color into a career in mathematics, so much the better. But the project I described in the example above just isn’t that. It’s a pair of teachers skimming the surface of both content areas and finding a thin thread to connect them. There was no study of social justice in that activity.
My hope is that anyone who reads this will understand that I really do think defining a project as a Grecian Urn is not a black-and-white science: Some projects are more Urn than others, and “creativity” as defined by the teacher may not ultimately be all that creative. Still, it would be a shame if every time a teacher brought out a jar of paste or a set of markers, another teacher yelled “GRECIAN URN!!” To me, that would be almost as bad as the teachers who THINK they are doing project-based learning when they are actually just doing cute activities. Doing this job well requires careful planning, collaboration, and reflection. It requires people who are capable of nuanced thought. So right along with you, I don’t want the high-fives to get out of control. I just want us to draw more deliberate lines between the work our students do and the outcomes we intend to produce.
Thanks so much for contributing your thoughts here.
All true, Jennifer, and in a memorable format. Principled thinking is what teachers need to grow on. You have made your epiphany theirs. Congratulations
Thanks so much, Frank.
First of all, your title made me think of the joke where the teacher says “It’s like a Grecian urn.” and the student replies “What’s a Grecian urn?” and another student says “About eight euros a day.”
On another note you actually got me as I was doing a quick read about the teacher’s project and said to myself that it could be a meaningful. You then pointed out the same thing at the end and did some of the things that I’d been thinking could’ve been done. Thanks for the thought provoking article to prompt me to think again about what I’m doing. Maybe the trifold brochure on biologically important compounds and the food they’re in will get tweaked!
I’m glad this made you think, and tweaking is what I’m ultimately hoping for with everyone who reads this. Feel free to come back and tell us what you did with the trifold assignment!
Thank you for this great reminder. As a teacher in the humanities, I feel the pressure to have my lessons imitate the “fun” activities students do in their hands-on science labs; so I named my classes “minds-on English”.
“Minds-on” sounds great! It’s important to remember that “fun” doesn’t always have to look like a party. Sometimes a great class discussioncan be more engaging than a hands-on project, especially for a high school student with a lot of opinions!
I have never been able to express the idea behind this article, but this is exactly what I needed to read! I used to work in a school that pushed PBL, but many teachers turned that into Grecian Urns all year long. I’m afraid that if placed in certain classrooms, students didn’t learn a single thing that year. This was very helpful, especially developing my own projects. Thank you!
I’m glad it helped, Natalie!
You hit is out of the park on this JG. Said “ouch” myself a few times as I read, so some of my “best laid plans” will get a tweaking this year. Thanks for sharing.
Hey Kelly! Come back and tell us about the tweaks you make!
A great topic well tackled…thank you! The idea of project-based learning with a clearly defined purpose is one thing, but making sure students are “deeply wrestling with the content itself” is another. You have inspired me to re-think a few lesson plans.
Glad to hear it, Carol. I would love to have you come back and tell us what changes you decided to make!
I agree with your thoughts on creating meaningful lessons that develop critical thinking and critical response, not cookie cutter Pinterest lessons. However, as an art teacher, I am concerned about the elimination of creativity in lessons in core classes. I am a strong believer in collaborative learning and learning through multiple intelligences. Process vs product. I believe there is a way to propose problem solving and critical thinking in project-based learning that utilizes the highest blooms taxonomy skills. I agree that the Greek urn lesson is not utilizing those skills. However I would would not discourage students from focusing on creativity and design of their projects as there are many careers where these skills need to be fostered. I believe it is the careful balance of integrating content with creativity that creates the optimal learning experiences. The way lessons are posed, as a problem to solve, is where the research and learning are taking place. What will it look like? No two projects should ever look the same.
Maria,
I agree with you wholeheartedly. I definitely see this authors POV in terms of making sure projects are meaningful for students; however, at the same time cutting out creativity eliminates students ownership over their learning. The author mentions that the Mathematician Project has no lasting impact on students. I beg to differ as this is an opportunity for students to discuss WHO are famous mathematicians. This begins the conversation about ethnomathematics–mathematics as a world contribution, while standard mathematics is Eurocentric. History is extremely important and impacts our students on a regular basis.
But does it improve their ability to do math?
This is where I worry. I don’t doubt that the questions you’re proposing have value, but I also think those kinds of questions can be woven throughout the year as students encounter texts that canonize certain people over others…and ultimately, I think these are questions that fit better inside a social studies or history class. Now before we start to debate whether all subjects can be successfully integrated with one another, I do think they can. I just don’t want to forget about the actual math skills and mathematical that students NEED in order to build math confidence and success. I have seen schools that go so far in the direction of big picture discussions that students are several years behind in basic skills. That simply can’t be good for any child’s perception of their own belonging in an educated society.
Maria, the two articles I linked to in item #1 (“Excessive Coloring or Crafting”) offer fantastic, in-depth discussions of what high-quality arts integration could look like. Reading these makes me wish more teachers were taking this approach! Also, I totally agree with your last line: If all student products look just about the same, that’s a pretty clear sign that there was no actual “creativity” from the students.
Spoiler alert: my comment both agrees with and argues against the topic.
In the Grecian urn story the problem isn’t the activity, it’s the impossibly broad reaching standards imposed on the teacher [the paragraph you read]. I would venture to say that teacher at least covered the ‘culture’ part of the expected standards and nothing further probably due to lack of time. Had this been an interdisciplinary unit with Art > Greek art history there would have been a deepening of understanding. If they had a Technology class, better materials or techniques than balloons and newspapers would have been used to create the urn.
The apples unit example from the book “Learning by Design” does sound like overkill at first blush. And then they ask “What valuable [substantial] learning took place?” Was taken aback by their question. Did they mean what measurable learning took place that can be assigned a numerical or letter grade? None; but IMO students learned that the world is a series of interconnected ideas and activities. I think they had a deepened understanding and broadened appreciation of the apple’s versatility. Students learned about art, sales and manufacturing, basic culinary skills, and theme writing. I am astounded that the authors mentioned did not consider these intellectual learning.
High Tech High has a really good project embedding history into math: https://gse.hightechhigh.org/unboxed/issue13/cards/6.php
I agree with your basic premise, that we as teachers need to design our lessons to align with standards. However, as an art teacher, I feel that your article seriously devalues what we do in our classroom. Comparing art activities such as coloring, cutting, pasting, and paper mache with “word searches” is faulty at best. Your first example, the paper mache vase used in the 7th grade Social Studies class, most definitely meets the highest level of Bloom’s Taxonomy; “Create.” Students are designing their own, original vases and incorporating personal and unique subject matter. They are creating something out of nothing, as art students everywhere do in our classrooms.
I have personally incorporated Greek vase design within a cross-curricular Social Studies unit; some of the many learning objectives included:
1. Improving design skills; how to use the shape of the vase to create a successful composition with the students’ chosen subject matter… wider vases lended themselves to narratives while taller, narrower vases were more appropriate for a single standing figure such as a soldier or a musician, etc.
2. Learning all about the variety of vase designs and their cultural uses; red-figure pottery, black-figure pottery, kylix, amphora, etc.
3. Students learned about common cultural themes for subject matter from Ancient Greece; gods/goddesses, war, monsters/supernatural creatures, athletes/Olympic games, family life, music, etc.
4. We read stories from Ancient Greece to learn more about these themes before students chose what to add to his/her own art piece.
I think creating a Greek vase is a perfectly valid way to teach about that culture, whether you do drawings of vases, paper mache vases, clay vases, or scratch art vases like we did.
There is much value in spending time, a LOT of time, creating something that can be both meaningful and beautiful. Art making is another way of communicating, whether a student is coloring, cutting, pasting, or using paper mache.
Students need to have fun, they need to get messy, they need time to experiment, explore, and express ideas. Many times, the only reason students get engaged in a lesson is due to the hands-on aspect of it.
Ms. Gonzalez, your article is thought-provoking, so much so that it was distributed today in a professional development session at my school. The small community I serve has little value for the arts, and I was appalled when I read this article. I am afraid that any of my colleagues who had a vague idea that what I do in my classroom is “fluff” now has fuel for the fire after reading “Is Your Lesson A Grecian Urn?”
As an educator yourself, one who holds multiple degrees, I would have hoped that you would be more thoughtful with the examples used here. With all due respect, I am sorely disappointed.
Hi Anna,
Thank you so much for taking the time to share your thoughts. I think you probably speak for a number of other art teachers who have read this, so I’ll see if I can clear things up.
I certainly had no intention of minimizing the importance of art, and I believe there’s a lot of value in arts education. All students can benefit from arts instruction in its own right throughout their school years, and well-designed arts integration can make any content come alive. In the “Excessive Coloring or Crafting” section above, I link to two posts that provide excellent examples of what high-quality arts integration can look like. The social studies unit you describe here sounds fantastic. If I understand it correctly, it sounds like students were focusing on the art elements and the creation process in your class, while focusing more on the cultural and historical elements in social studies. If that’s the case, then this sounds like a thoughtfully designed, truly cross-curricular unit.
I think the sticking point is in the separation.
Although I don’t think hard lines need to be drawn between both courses, it’s important for both teachers to protect their own instructional time and make sure that their students are, in fact, learning their course content. There absolutely is wiggle room here: Ideally, students would be working with the art and the social studies in both classes in an arrangement similar to what I showcased with the Apollo School program, which blends social studies, art, and language arts.
But with any kind of integration, I think everyone needs to be asking themselves whether students are truly digging into the content as deeply as they could be. And a huge factor in whether or not they dig deeply is TIME. Mathematically, if the student in the Harlem Renaissance example above (#2) spends two hours playing around with PowerPoint animations, that’s two hours he didn’t spend reading Hughes’ poetry or researching the social context in which it was written. Substitute PowerPoint animations with, say, creating a painting of Langston Hughes using the style of artist Aaron Douglas. That’s definitely getting closer to more relevant arts integration, right? But if the student spends two weeks working on that painting, and they do not actually have an art class set aside for this time, and it ultimately takes away from learning about other significant people and movements of the Harlem Renaissance, could it be argued that something was lost? If art is the priority, then no; the time was well spent. But it can’t be denied that if substantial time is given to hands-on art projects, something else logically has to go. If that “something” is writing or math skills, discussion of government systems and cultural movements, or designing and carrying out science experiments, that might be a problem.
Especially if you take that one example and multiply it: Assume that same teacher has students do similar projects all year long, where they spend 80% of the year doing hands-on art projects, but it’s actually a language arts class and they spend only 20% of their time actually writing and reading…isn’t that a problem?
As with everything I write here, I often fear that readers will skim for the general idea, find something that confirms a misconception they already have (in this case, that art is “fluff,”) and use my posts to justify those misconceptions. For that reason, I think your concern is valid, because if this isn’t read carefully, that could be the interpretation people walk away with. I want to be clear that I’m not saying we should get rid of art. I just want us to integrate it more thoughtfully. There IS a way to do it right. In fact, while doing just a cursory search of Harlem Renaissance artists, then learning about how many of them lived in Paris and the other art movements they were responding to, I got pretty excited about the idea of integrating these stories and images into a larger study of that period. It really does take things to a completely different level. My point here is that I see far too many teachers going the papier-mache route instead, and missing the opportunity to do some powerful arts integration.
———-
Ok. One more thing. The “create” level of Bloom’s. If students are creating art, then they are working at that level of Bloom’s in art. They are not, however, working at the “create” level in the other content area. But in your Urn unit it’s different. #3 and #4, where students learned about the cultural themes depicted on Urns and studied other stories to learn more about these themes before creating their own? I believe that’s working at the “create” level in social studies. Your example, despite the fact that it happens to actually BE a Grecian Urn lesson, is not the kind of “Grecian Urn” lesson I am describing in this post.
Anna, I hope this clears things up, but if not, please come back and continue this discussion here. I would also love to hear from other art teachers.
I teach K-5 TAB/Choice-based Art and Coding (Computer Science). Although you didn’t intend to minimize the importance of art, I believe it was minimized. The arts do not only have “a lot” of value, they are essential, but are often the first to be cut. I get the point of your article, when my coding students are too often creating their characters in their assignments rather than learning the main concept at hand. Just wish art and the Grecian urn wasn’t the title and main example. We need all the props we can get!😊
Maybe I need to get to work on a post that really digs into the value of arts instruction and ways to successfully integrate it with other subjects. I can see how “a lot of value” sounds weak. But you do get it — all that time spent on creating their characters isn’t students getting the benefits of true art instruction, right?
Is there a way of getting a copy of the questionnaire? I teach Ancient Civilizations in middle school and would like to replicate the lesson mentioned at the end of the blog post. Thank you!
Hey Emily! No, unfortunately I don’t have access to it!
I am totally guilty of doing projects in my high school science classroom that I think are hands on learning, but are actually just coloring. I love the tips for how to spot an urn! A colleague has been helping me revise projects so they include more meaningful learning. For example, instead of creating a model of the layers of the skin, students choose a disease and build a model of the diseased skin highlighting the abnormal parts. There might still be too much “art time” but at least there’s some critical thinking!
I find that when I tried to do PBL it turned into a Grecian Urn Lesson. I tried teaching thermodynamics by having the students build a steam boat. The process took an incredibly long amount of time and when it came to the assessment, students hardly knew anything about thermodynamics but they did know that working with silicon to make a boiler is a really difficult process. That’s why I am a bit skeptical about Project Based Learning because yes the students are very engaged but I am not so sure they are really able to delve deep into the content.
Having taught in an ILC environment, I found myself guilty of creating Grecian Urn projects because it was ssssoooo difficult to get my students to get interested and involved in their work if I did not have some sort of creative component in it. In many cases my administration applauded my creativity getting slow working and in some cases NO working students engaged. NOW that I teach in an inclusion environment, I found myself either doing or going along with other teachers who sometimes use this method. This is something to think about going forward.
Thank you so much! I realize this comment is a couple of years late, but I have never heard ANYONE ever address this issue, so I wanted to comment. I have been both a writing teacher (middle grades) and art teacher (elementary). Even though I love drawing and art, I always hated assigning crafty projects in my literature/writing classes because I never thought students grew any closer to being better writers or readers from those activities. In the same way, when looking for ideas in my art classes, I have trouble finding significant projects that truly accomplish the desired goal. Much of it looks cute for sure, but does it really help develop any artistic skill?
The food guide pyramid example is really clear and helpful. The meal plan vs. the mobile activity is an easy picture for me to think about in the future! Thanks!
Interesting lesson on Grecian Urn. Definitely guilty of a few, and will try to fix it. Thanks. I’m a junior high and high school science teacher. I see the loop hole more in elementary education since we seem to cater and entertain younger students than “teaching” them the concept through projects. High school is more direct hands-on teaching through experiments without sacrificing time. energy, and work. Nevertheless, we can sometimes fall intot he category of the urn.
Thank you for the eye-opener scenarios mentioned.
I really enjoyed your article. As a Family and Consumer Sciences teacher, I incorporate hands-on activities daily. Your article will help me decipher if these activities are enhancing student learning. I would like to point out that the Food Pyramid was replaced in 2011 with the MyPlate for healthy eating. I sure hope teachers are not still teaching the Food Pyramid.
I was interested in the coaching aspect of this article. What do you do with the student teacher who shrugs and says, “This is what the cooperating teacher has always done?” How far can you push when the student is in a school with an ingrained culture? How far can you push a student when the models they’re seeing in their schools (which they often consider to be more legitimate than what they learn in their college classes) are not great models?
I have a bad taste in my mouth about the whole article, but IMHO, the coaching going on here is not coaching at all, as it’s 100% coach led and not teacher led
Suzie,
I’ve actually been in situations like this with lots of teachers, many of whom have taught for a long time. Something I try to keep in mind is that teachers come from a place of wanting to help their kids and they all really believe that what they’re doing is good practice, even if it’s pedagogically different. To get diaglogue going, I think it’s important to validate and grab onto something you can find value in, even if it’s just a small kernel. Rather than “push,” see if you can just nudge them into opening their lens by referencing an article, a book, or some great results you once saw happening in a classroom. We can get comfortable being really good at what we know how to do; trying something new can make us feel vulnerable, so it’s easier to stick with how it’s always been done (which is what a principal at one of my kid’s schools once told me when I asked about a practice that was put in place.) I think all we can do is share what we know and what we learn and keep opening up the “I wonder” conversations; keep on planting the seeds and of course – do some modeling.
Yes and amen. One of the best articles I’ve read in a long time.
I really enjoyed this article.
What are your thoughts on doodle diagrams? They are a bit of. ‘thing’ at the moment but I just can’t really see the value in them. Some might teach specific concepts (diffusion for example where colouring molecules can show which will pass through a membrane) but overall they seem colourful and pretty for no reason other than that.
Great article. Thanks for the insight. It should be noted in your nutrition example, that the Food Pyramod is no longer used as a model for healthy eating. It has been replaced with MyPlate. For more information, you can refer to ChooseMyPlate.gov
Dede,
Thank you for sharing this updated information!
Thank you! This is such an important message. I was reminded of an experience I had when student teaching in 4th grade. The class was building a set for a play they were producing and the teacher had them each make yardsticks to be used for the measuring. It took a long time for each child to make one and I was curious why he didn’t just buy or borrow more yardsticks. He said that yes, that would be faster, but that it would take away the opportunity for them to truly learn the meaning of an inch, a foot, a yard, and all the fractional parts. The light bulb went on for me – the goal wasn’t to have a set, the goal was for the students to gain knowledge and skills. As educators, we need to always look for the why in the activities we ask our students to do, regardless of how much fun they are!
The problem with this argument is that the student teacher was trying to measure what thinking, skills, collaboration or otherwise ‘non Social Studies standard’ learning occurred in the Grecian Urn project. As the supervisor, I would have helped the student teacher discover what other learning could have occurred, because trust me, a lot of learning would have occurred and with some direction, the urn could have displayed many connections to the social studies standard via art standards and definitely learning would have occurred. I think a visual art specialist would have helped tremendously, because that is what they do. Not everything is about the social studies standards. There are other standards out there, that could have been tapped into. Teachers get caught in ‘meeting standards’ vs student- centered activities. Sometimes our students need to do kid things, especially when the arts have been scrapped from their school. This was not a fair argument, and possibly teacher creativity was thwarted.
National Art standards:
Apply visual organizational strategies to design and produce a work of art, design, or media that clearly communicates information or ideas.
“Draping wet, gluey newspaper around a balloon has nothing to do with deepening one’s understanding of societies and cultures.”- was a condescending remark of only one aspect of the process. Someone needs an arts refresher course. This student teacher was trying to make important connections. I know arts integration and this teacher was trying.
I was searching in google about ways to make spelling more meaningful than just memorizing and make it more engaging. It’s my first time handling grade school especially grade 1 and I have no idea how I should address them (i just happen to see your video on youtube and look into your blogs).
Seeing this article made me reflect on my objectives and the activities I included. I guess I need to do some revisions with my LP
(-_-)… and I totally agree that all the furls and gluey kinds of stuff isn’t always the answer to make the learning more deeply meaningful to the lesson you intend them to gain. (though I like those kinds of things)
Looking forward to reading more about your blogs and everything.
I can’t believe I hadn’t come upon this excellent piece sooner. On an English teacher’s Facebook group, I created a long post on this very topic. I was seeing so many people posting cool-looking project ideas, but I kept wondering, “Is this a valuable ELA activity?…Is it worth the time investment?…Is it more than just ‘engaging’, but something that drives deeper thinking and learning?” And it all reminded me of the many times I’ve reflected following a really cool unit in which I knew the kids were into it but I just could not justify the time as far as the real learning went. And the learning in my subject area. So I created the post and it generated a lot of great conversation – including a link to this piece. I’m going to share it with my team during a facilitated discussion soon.
One additional thought that might fit into the What Then? section would be to work on cross-curricular cooperation. I wish more teachers would try to do this. There is so much redundancy for students in which one aspect is the focus (because it is the course subject), while everything else is kind of ignored. A history teacher assigns a presentation, but doesn’t really grade the writing quality, or the presentation structure and design quality. Meanwhile, the tech teacher assigns a presentation on “whatever you want” and the English teacher is having them do a third presentation. Three projects that could be one, with each teaching and assessing their domain…and the kids not wasting time tripling up.
Anyway, thanks very much for this piece.
Backwards design/UbD is the model that we are learning and utilizing in my teacher prep program, and it has been a system that is taking a lot of practice and reflection for me to grasp. After reading about this Grecian urn example outside of a university classroom context, it makes a more sense. Even though this assignment example may have missed the mark with the standards, scrapping it completely wouldn’t be the best use of time, especially after the time that was put into designing and planning it. I agree completely that revising and altering the activity would be more valuable.
Thanks!
Glad this was helpful, Steve. If you haven’t already, you may also want to check out the Summer 2014 Book Study: Understanding by Design.
As a 25 year French teacher, I imagine that I have had a lot of “Grecian Urns” over the years.
After hearing Beatrice McGarvey speak, about 7 years ago, and her description of the “mole” activity, I quite quickly started to revamp my projects. I am now in the middle of revamping (once again) one of my projects in the style of a Problem Based Challenge.
I do appreciate, however, your acknowledgement of keeping those “Grecian Urns” around for when they are needed. I am dusting some off now in the era of remote learning (keeping students engaged, but not overwhelmed).
Looking forward to summer when I can enjoy my “Grecian” pool.
Hi Meg- I know your post is a few years old but I was curious about the “Mole” activity you mentioned. I am designing a PD and it might be just what I am looking for… `but I cannot find it online.
Thanks!
Sue
The article, especially in its hypothesizing of “Grecian Urn-ish”, seems a bit offensive in the first impression to a person like me who being a profound lover of John Keats is a firm believer in the abiding efficacy of his “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, wherein, he calls the Grecian Urn a sylvan historian to simultaneously deliberate about his philosophy of “poetic” art as an activity merely for art’s sake or for some utility unraveling in long years to come. The article however is an eye-opener. The way outcome based learning has been most effectively elaborated through ironically subverting the misconceptions that “Grecian Urn-ish” strategies, activities and goals can lead to is simply amazing.
Dr. Aqeel,
I’m sure Jenn’s intention was never to disparage Keats or the concept of art for arts’ sake, rather, as the post explains, the Grecian Urn example represents the practice of designing instruction around superficial activities that fail to assess or convey the true learning that takes place. Much could be said about project-based learning that results in trifold board presentations or the like. The point is the learning outcome should be rigorous, engaging, and also reflect the depth of learning that takes place.