The Grecian Urn

I recently read a blog - https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/grecian-urn-lesson/. It described how sometimes our beautiful projects and assignments can be a "Grecian Urn." We can sometimes find ourselves focusing some much on the "thing" or product that the students are creating, that we forget to focus on what we are wanting them to learn from it. I think this blog is a very effective tool to remind us to look at the big picture of a project. What is goal the product? How is this helping them learn? What are we wanting it to show us that they have learned? After reading this blog, it had me re-evaluate, tweak, and add to a project that was given to me to use in my 3rd/4th grade IMA class! Now when I am planning, I say to myself, "is this a Grecian Urn?" when deciding what and how to access my students. Projects can produce beautiful work...but was it worth the time and effort that went in to it? Did they learn the standards that we were addressing?...or did they just cut, glue and color really well? This stood out to me as not just a GT teacher, but as a teacher in general, because I want to maximize my students' learning time in my classroom.

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