Ancient civilisations introduction_lesson

Editor's Notes

1. These are four different masks made by four different ancient civilisations / cultures. They are: Ancient Chinese Mask (top left), Sutton Hoo (top right), Death Mask of Tutankhamun (left bottom), Aztec Death Mask (right bottom). There are no right or wrong answers to this exercise, just see what the children spot. Due to the size of the images, you may wish to print this slide out.
2. These are four different pyramids made by four different ancient civilisations / cultures. They are: Ancient Egyptian Pyramid (top left), Aztec Pyramid (top right), Pyramid of the Moon (left bottom), Sudanese Pyramid(right bottom). There are no right or wrong answers to this exercise, just see what the children spot. Due to the size of the images, you may wish to print this slide out. You may wish to ask pupils why this shape was so popular as it ‘pops-up’ in a number of different cultures.
3. These are four different coins made by four different ancient civilisations / cultures. They are: Ancient Athens Coin (top left), Roman Coin (top right), Solid Gold Aztec Coin (left bottom), Ancient Chinese Coin (right bottom). There are no right or wrong answers to this exercise, just see what the children spot. Due to the size of the images, you may wish to print this slide out. It may be worth pointing out that the idea of money and currency came from the ancient world.
4. This is just a general information slide to explain the key terms.
5. This is just a slide that shows some of the more well known groups considered to be an ancient civilisation. Ask pupils if they already know anything about any of these groups (they should at the very least be able to tell you about the Ancient Greeks).
6. These are just pictures of some of the more magnificent ancient monuments from around the world. It may be nice to tell pupils a little bit about some of them as you show the photographs (particularly Macau Pitchu). It worth stressing to the pupils that these were built often 2000+ years ago. There were no machines to help with lifting, all of the stone would have been cut by hand, all built just on people power. You could ask pupils to estimate how long they think they took to build and how they managed to lift blocks of stone to such great heights. Ask them how, despite being ancient civilisations, there monuments and buildings have survived for so long when modern buildings are often destroyed or fall apart. What does this tell us about the abilities of these ancient civisations?
7. The only one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world that still exists is the pyramids. It is worth mentioning that the 7 wonders of the world was a list drawn up be the ancient Greeks and so included only those things they knew about and were quite close to them. Lots of others existed at that time – for example Stonehenge. Does this make the list very fair?If you click on the computer icon in the bottom right of the screen, it will take you to the Wikipedia page that is all about Wonders of the World and includes modern day lists of wonders. This could be used either before or after the discussion exercise.
8. This activity to try to get pupils to have some understanding of the chronology involved in these ancient civilisations. This is the most complicated of the three tasks they will do with these cards (which is why it’s first whilst their fresh). You will have to spend a little time explaining how the dates work and that it is not as simple as the highest date is the most modern civilisation.
9. This task is designed to show pupils that some ancient civilisations were in existence for a very long time. To help then grasp the time scales involved, you could link it to ‘modern times’ (maybe taking 1066 as the start of modern Britain – approx. 1000 years ago). If time you could talk about how why pupils think that these very powerful civilisations with millions of ‘subjects’ do eventually come to an end. Has anything similar to this happened in recent times (World Wars?) ?
10. This task is about comparing the civilisations and to give pupils an idea of their size relative to each other. If time it is worth exploring with them a couple of questions: Why don’t we know the estimated sizes if some of the civilisations on the cards?If you click on the computer icon in the bottom right hand corner, this will take you to a chart of the Worlds population at different points in history. You could work out the percentage of the planets population that was said to be part of a given civilisation. Some are very high and show just how important they were in the world at that time.The numbers seem very low compared to modern numbers (almost all civilisations have a population of less than the modern day U.K). They are not so small when compared to the worlds population of that that time.
11. Having completed the three previous tasks, pupils should now have become familiar with the values written on the different top trump cards. I would suggest that pupils now work in threes or fours and play mini games of top trumps. Pupils can use the values on the cards for Start Year, End Year, Length of Time and Population.Rules of Top Trumps – The cards get shared between the players as evenly as possible. Taking it in turns, the player looks at the card they have on top of their ‘pack’. They pick a value (for example population) and read out the value. All of the other players do the same using the category selected. The person with the highest value then takes all of the cards from the other players (if the value on the card says ‘unknown’ – this counts as 0 for a score). The winner of the game is the player that eventually collects all of the cards from the other players.