Greek Gods-workshop
Internship with 13-year-old students at High School Groenhout
During the first internship period of my second year in the PKV teaching program, I worked with a second grade class at Groenhout School. The school welcomed us with open arms, and the class group I worked with was wonderfully enthusiastic! We linked the theme of the workshop to an active topic they were learning about in other classes: Greek Gods.
The workshops I developed gave students a unique opportunity to explore Greek mythology creatively and translate it into their own forms of expression. By using active and cooperative methods (such as a photo scavenger hunt and the placemat technique) students were challenged to connect their content knowledge with their artistic skills.
The first workshop started with a photo scavenger hunt, where students linked visual features to Greek gods. This served as a stepping stone to analyzing artworks like Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus and Klimt’s Pallas Athena. These artworks inspired students to recognize and apply visual building blocks—such as form, color, and line—in practice. They then brainstormed their own invented god, based on their favorite place in the school, incorporating not only artistic but also personal elements.
In the second workshop, the focus laid on creating these life-sized gods. Students worked with acrylic paint on large cardboard surfaces and learned techniques such as layering and using different types of brushes. They produced an artistic final piece that was not only visually striking but also enriched with a short story describing the characteristics and life of their god.
In this document, we look back at the structure and flow of the workshop—feel free to take a look!
The final result of their invented Greek Gods!
