Does Your Ancient Greece Need a ...FACELIFT?

I just responded to an email regarding "repackaging" their Ancient Greece unit.  Since this subject matter is so universal, I thought I'd share my response to others may consider a facelift for Ancient Greece.   

• With new C3 (College Career and Civic life) Social Studies Standards, we are encouraged to find "authentic connections" and find "real world problems" to relate content to.  
• With the CCSS, we are encouraged to embrace "research to build and present knowledge" as an Anchor Standard."  - Therefore, we are encouraged to package content via a research learning adventure. 
• Research can be viewed as a large or small "evidence-based claim." 

With that in mind, what if we repackage our Ancient Greece unit into an EBC with an

Essential Question:      

How has the Ancient Greece survived, even though it has died? 

Examine the Ancient Culture under the SS lenses: 

• Government - Democracy 
• Culture, 
• Values (education, arts, etc..) 
• Beliefs - (myths) 

If you guide kids by giving them those SS "lenses"  (now called SS 'practices' ) they should examine the past to understand it and hopefully discover that a Ancient Greece had lasting influence on our current culture. 

They could-should - build and EBC (evidence-based claim) to support their findings.  This research could be coupled with a more student-centered knowledge sharing expo such as creating a "living museum" of Ancient Greek influence.   This could include Nike Pegasus Sneakers, Midas Muffler adds, a democracy model, Outdoor Market, statues, etc... etc.    

This example "synthesizes"  the content and is real-life.  

Examine your local learning objectives and insure that your graphic organizer may cover all the "lenses" through which you want students to examine Ancient Greece.