Section 1: Where and when was ancient Greece?
Give children postcards, maps, and holiday brochures of modern Greece and ask them what the pictures tell us about the climate of Greece, the landscape and terrain, the buildings, etc. Record their responses on the board or flip chart.
Discuss with the children what ancient means and place the period of the ancient Greek Empire on the class time line. Discuss or recap on BC and AD and relate these to periods the children have already covered.
Locate mainland Greece and its islands on a map. Discuss the physical features and highlight the difficulty of travel, eg Would it be easiest to travel by sea or land? Relate this to the idea of city states, which were isolated from each other by the difficulties of communication.
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Section 2: What were the similarities and differences between Athens and Sparta?
Locate Athens and Sparta on a map and ask the children to describe their location. Comment on the fact that these two states had their own laws, money, rulers, etc and were rivals.
Prepare a number of conflicting statements, eg We welcome writers, no writers here; we welcome visitors, we throw out visitors; we like books and free speech, no reading here; our boys go to school, our boys train to be soldiers; we trade with everyone, we do not allow trade; the sea is important to us, we control the states around us to protect us; our women must not be seen outside the house on their own, our women train to be soldiers and are fit; we allow every citizen to discuss new laws and vote on them and we call it democracy, we have strict rules and expect them to be followed and our kings make our decisions.
Ask the children to sort the statements under the headings: 'Athens near the sea, outward-looking and adventurous', 'Sparta land-locked, inward-looking and nervous'. Ask them to decide whether they would prefer to live in Athens or Sparta. Why?
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Section 3: What made ancient Greek fighters so powerful?
Referring to maps, discuss with the children why the Greeks needed an army and a navy.
Give the children postcards or pictures of ancient Greek pottery, including some illustrating Greek soldiers fighting and ships. Discuss what information about Greek soldiers, weapons and ships can be gained from looking closely at the illustrations.
Ask the children to look closely at the decoration on the pots and to select ones that show soldiers and ships. Ask them to draw a detailed, labelled diagram of a Greek soldier showing his equipment, armour and weapons, and of a trireme (an ancient Greek warship). Discuss the armour the soldiers are wearing and the weapons they are carrying, and how the boats were powered, the number of rows of oars, and how the boats might have attacked enemies' boats. Discuss what made the men and weapons so powerful and if enemies are shown, how the Greek armour and weapons are different from those of the opposition. Which side had the better weapons and armour. Why?
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Section 4: Was the battle of Marathon a great victory for the ancient Greeks?
Tell the story of the Greek success against the Persian army at the Battle of Marathon, noting key characters and making a time line of events. Discuss with the children what happened. What might the Athenians' view of the Spartan refusal to help have been? Why would the Athenians have been so proud of their success? What would the Spartan view of the battle have been? Why would the Greeks have built a temple at Marathon after the battle?
Referring to a map, help the children to calculate or estimate how far it was from Marathon to Athens, and make the connection with the modern athletic event. Ask the children to recount the story of the battle from the point of view of either an Athenian or a Spartan and to illustrate their account.
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Section 5: Who did the ancient Greeks worship and why?
Discuss with the children plans of the Acropolis and pictures of temples, eg their size, the decoration, the materials they are made from.
Ask the children to locate Mount Olympus on a map. Introduce it as the home of the gods and recap or introduce myths and legends. Ask each child to read a story about a different Greek god and complete a three-column grid with the column headings: 'Name of the god', 'Symbol of the god', and 'The aspect of the world the god is responsible for'. Ask each child to feed back the main points of their story to the rest of the class who listen and complete their grid for each of the gods.
Tell the children that stories about the gods were often included in plays performed in Greek theatres. Ask them to produce a storyboard for the story they read, which they could use as the basis of a play script.
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Section 6: What happened at the theatre?
Ask the children to look at the plans of the Acropolis and locate the theatres. Ask them to use the plans and a range of texts to find out as much as possible about Greek theatres, eg the shape, how many people could attend a performance, the position of the stage. Draw their attention to the altar and emphasise that the theatre was part of religious festivals. Ask them to find out about the sort of plays the ancient Greeks went to see and whether slaves and citizens went to the theatre.
Tell the children they are going to work in groups to present a short play in the ancient Greek style. Discuss the information they need, eg Who were the actors? How many would have had speaking parts? What costumes did they wear? What props did they have? What tasks have to be done? Help the children shape these ideas into a 'work schedule' for the production of the plays.
Divide the children into groups and ask each group to select one of the storyboards they produced, in the previous activity, to perform as a play. Ask them to produce a script for the chorus, make the masks, select the costumes, etc. Ask each group to perform their play to the rest of the class and hold a vote on which is the best play.
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Section 7: What do the sources tell us about the importance of the Olympic games to the ancient Greeks?
Ask the children to recall the different sources they have used to find out about the ancient Greeks. List the sources on the board.
Tell the children they are going to show how much they can find out about the Olympic games using a range of different sources.
Give groups of children 'information packs' on the Olympic games and a set of statements about the games. Ask them to look for information on the buildings, the events and the purpose of the games, and use this information to select statements that describe the games, eg It was a time for all the city states to come together. It was a competition when the city states could show how strong they were. The Olympic games were a religious festival to worship Zeus. Women and slaves could not enter the games. Ask the children to list the sources they used.
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