Designing Greek Monuments in 3D

In the Designing Greek Monuments in 3D lesson, students design new monuments to honor events in Greek history, Greek gods, or another aspect of Ancient Greece. After sketching their design on paper, students create their designs in 3D using the web-based modeling tool TinkerCad. Finally, students explain their creations in a short essay to accompany their designs.

For Google Docs and Slides links, please visit https://www.ctlessons.org/social-studies/designing-greek-monuments.html

Topics addressed:
Architectural style of monuments in Ancient Greece
Historical and cultural significance of Greek monuments
Primary CT concept: abstraction. Students distill information about a Greek god or an event in Greek history into a relatively simple 3D design that symbolizes their chosen topic.

Students will be able to:
Design an architectural structure to represent a Greek god or event in Greek history
Create a monument in 3D using TinkerCad
Explain how their monument symbolizes their chosen topic

Materials:
PowerPoint presentation
Student worksheet
TinkerCad

Prep:
Create a Google Doc assignment in Google Classroom where students can write their short essay and share the link to their monument in TinkerCad
Familiarize yourself with TinkerCad for thirty minutes or so, to better support students who have questions while learning how to create models in 3D

Suggested lesson breakdown:
This activity can be run in one longer period, or split over two shorter periods.
10min – activity introduction with PowerPoint presentation
15min – students (individually) select a topic for their monument and draw their 2D sketch on the worksheet
5min – walk students through logging into TinkerCad
10min – students (individually) work through TinkerCad introductory lessons
40min – students create their monuments using TinkerCad
10min – students write a short two-paragraph essay explaining how their design relates to their selected topic