Book your visit here!
Note: All visits are free of charge. If coming to the UCD campus, students must be supervised by an adequate number of teachers during the visit.
Access Classics is delighted to visit schools to conduct tailored workshops with students or to welcome school visits to the University College Dublin campus. For school visits to UCD, we work very closely with the UCD Classical Museum to ensure students can get the most from their visit. Below are some visit options combining Access Classics and the UCD Classical Museum:
Option 1: Groups <20 A visit to the Classical Museum. Students are given a guided tour of the museum (30 minutes) before being divided into two groups. Group 1 does a museum activity worksheet, while Group 2 works with the museum’s handling collection. The two groups rotate after 15 minutes. [Duration = c. 60 minutes]
Option 2: Groups <20 (curated tours based on Junior Cycle curriculum) A visit to the Classical Museum. Teacher chooses in advance one of four curated tours based on the Junior Cycle Classics curriculum. Students are given a 40-minute tour (option available on booking form), followed by 10 minutes with the artefact-handling collection and time to browse the collections. There is an option for teacher-guided Greek and Latin tours of the museum. [Duration = c.60 minutes]
Option 3: Groups 20-30 (Thursdays are preferred) A visit to the Classical Museum. The group will be divided into two. Group 1 will have a guided tour of some of the exhibits while Group 2 does an activity in museum, e.g. artefact handling. The two groups rotate after 25 minutes. [Duration = c.60 minutes]
Option 4: Groups >30 (Thursdays are preferred) Classics-based activities in one of our lecture theatres or teaching rooms, followed by visits to the museum in smaller groups of c.20, for a 20-minute slot. Worksheets can be provided for self-guided tours and the curator will be available to give information and answer questions. Teachers are asked to organise these smaller groups in advance, and to make plans for occupying those visitors not at the museum (e.g. lunchbreak, coffee, UCD tour, etc.). Duration = varies depending on numbers, but allow 40 minutes for activity, plus 20 minutes for each museum group visit.
Option 5: Access Classics visit to school (limited availability) Request a visit to your school by a member of the Access Classics team. Duration = to be determined through conversation with the director of Access Classics. We are happy to liaise with teachers regarding the nature of the workshop, but some common ones are as follows:
Ancient Greek workshops
During these workshops, we introduce students to the Ancient Greek alphabet and do a series of decoding exercises, deciphering some commonly used Ancient Greek words that we still use today!
Pottery painting
Using some pottery “fragments”, we introduce students to the world of Greek painted pottery, particularly the fun and stylized paintings of Geometric pottery!
A day in the life…
This interactive workshop asks students to create their own ‘day in the life’ in the ancient world by picking options to a series of questions. What are your options if you get a headache? What festival would you like to attend? Would you wear make-up laced with lead!?
Topic-specific workshops/talks
Working with teachers, we offer topic-specific workshops to students who currently study Classics, including Alexander the Great, the context of Greek tragedy, Oedipus, the ancient Olympics and Virgil, or to students who have never met Classics before! We are also very happy to talk to students about Classics at third level and the different ways of studying it in UCD!
Access Classics 