Renaissance Figure Project & Gallery Walk

The Renaissance was a period of intellectual growth for Western Civilization where Europeans flourished in science, mathematics, literature, music, painting, sculpting, architecture, and many other fields. Individuals created many famous works of art and advancements during the time period. When I teach the Renaissance, I use this project as a way to go further in-depth on the various individuals and their impact that came out of the Renaissance.

This project has students research and create an informational and creative poster on their Renaissance figure. To make this different from many of the other Renaissance projects out there, I decided to conduct a Gallery Walk of the posters the students made. Students were given a certain amount of days to research and put together their poster, and on the last, my students participated in a Gallery Walk of all the posters. During the gallery walk, students complete a “scavenger hunt”/ “who is the description” handout.

My students enjoyed this project very much, and performed well on both Renaissance assessments (project and a smaller assessment). Interesting to note is that my students came up with the content guidelines of what to research on the individuals (with some guidance from me). Since there are hundreds of impactful Renaissance figures, I had to narrow it down to about 30 or so individuals for my students to choose from that vary in gender and occupation. Feel free to add your own. Also, note that the Gallery Walk/Scavenger hunt descriptions are only for the 25 individuals my class chose. Since not all classes choose the same exact figures every year, you may have to make some new descriptions for a few of them. Nonetheless, this project is something I have done in the past, and continue to do.

The zip file contains:

Renaissance Project Instructions with Teacher Instructions

Renaissance Project Rubric

Renaissance Project Gallery Walk Student Sheet

Renaissance Project Gallery Walk Teacher Sheet (answers)