Ancient Greece

What I know ...

We spent some time discussing what we had learnt from our recent Geography unit about modern day Greece and added if there was anything we knew already about Ancient Greece. 

We looked at images and wrote on post-it notes what we noticed in the images and any similarities and differences. We then looked at some incomplete pictures and completed them using a detailed drawing technique with a wonderful Greek musical soundtrack in the background.

Chronology

First we needed to put our learning in to context. We looked at four main time eras within the Ancient Greek time and used our timeline to try and put them in the correct order. We talked about how far that was from today and other things that were happening in Britain and the wider world at this time. 

Minoan and Mycenaean Eras

We spent a little bit of time researching and learnt that a lot of what we know is based on myths. We created a class mind map with the facts we learnt.

City States

We moved on through The Dark Ages and split in to groups to complete a research project on different city states; Argos, Corinth, Athens, Sparta and Megara. 

The Archaic Period

The Greeks and The Persians

During this session we learnt about the Persians invading Greece. During the city-state time there were little fights but nothing more substantial but the Persians had more experience.

We acted out the scenario using tag rubgy as the structure. We started off with the Greeks all working individually to try to keep their tag and then discussed how as they weren't working together they were more easily defeated. We talked about the new democratic system that was developing and how they were leading together they also started to fight better together. We then tried again and this time when the Persians attacked, the Greek army stood together which made it more difficult for the Persians to collect the tags.

We found out that the Greeks actually successfully defeated the Persians three times during the Persian Wars.

Pottery

During our work in to each time period we looked in to different examples of pottery and art and discussed the similarities and differences through time. We designed a pot for each time period.

After learning all about different time periods in Ancient Greece we created our own timelines and a collaborative class one for our display.

We researched every day life in Ancient Greece and wrote a non-chronological report.

Mythbusters

Mrs Crowther gave us a variety of sources some groups looked at Greek Medicine and the others the Olympics. We talked through and discussed the sources and learnt about reliability and validity and the difference between primary and secondary sources.

In groups we were then given a pack of sources all about two myths; The Minotaur and The Trojan War. We conducted a collaborative investigation using the sources to decide whether it was true or not.