Amazing learning in Key Stage 2!
If you take a walk along KS2, you have to step carefully, as without warning, you will be trapped by the Romans, you will find yourself throwing the disk in the first Greek Olympic Games or you may be the new Egyptian pharaoh. Step carefully as history comes to life and learning is magical!
Year 3 children had the amazing opportunity to develop inquiry-based research skills as they learnt about an important time period in world history: Ancient Rome. They have been investigating this topic with depth and breadth in their history sessions, and so far they have learned about the founding of Rome and the myth of Romulus and Remus, the Roman expansion, and Roman ruling systems under kings, senators, and emperors. They have also learned about the ancient Celts and what life was like in Britain before the Romans came, in order to have a point of reference about how much influence the Romans had in shaping the Ancient and the modern world.
They have also learned what life was like for legionaries in the Roman army, and about the various weapons and equipment that helped to make the Roman army so successful. In Literacy the students have explored Roman myths and created their own myths around the Roman gods and goddesses they learned about. In Art, they have created paper models of gladiators and chariots, painted Roman shields, and sketched a Roman gladiator and his equipment. They engaged in various roleplay and worked on choreographing their own dance to represent some of the facts learned about the Romans. What a fantastic topic!
Year 4 children had a fantastic adventure discovering interesting facts about Ancient Egyptians.
The students learned why Egyptians depended so much on the River Nile, they used important research skills (such as skimming, scanning and selecting information to find out facts about the river, organised them into informative posters, added subtitles and suggestive pictures. They analyzed and discussed ancient Egyptian traditions, daily life and clothing and then they drew their portraits as Egyptians in oil pastels, blending colours to create powerful contrasts. They continued to develop their artistic abilities when they created beautiful collages of Nefertiti using different fabrics, textures and patterns and they had a lot of fun designing -out of cardboard -Egyptian houses, using glue guns to stick the pieces together.
They experienced writing hieroglyphs in a creative way on papyrus papers (real ones, but also made by children out of shredded papers). Children used clay to model Egyptian cartouches and to create mummies. Using pieces of wood, measuring, cutting and hammering they designed little sarcophagi for the mummies and decorated them afterwards with specific designs
In Literacy children learned about ancient Egyptian gods and created their own god or goddess, the role society and his/her powers. They created extraordinary descriptions, which were brought to life through role play.
It was a very engaging topic for both teachers and students and the children created wonderful masterpieces!
The year 5 children have stepped into the world of Ancient Greece. As the journey led us to great discoveries they learnt more about the roots of democracy, the Olympic Games, and medicine. The students found out about the greatest army leader, undefeated in battle, Alexander the Great, who had a dream to conquer the world.
They also learnt about the Ancient Greeks’ beliefs and how they influenced their life. They loved using developed sketching skills ( various tones and perspective) while observing and reproducing the most famous temple, that was the home of Athena’s golden statue, the Parthenon.
They know more about the Ancient Greek myths and the fantastic creatures mentioned in them, which we analyzed in our Literacy lessons and took some special time to represent their details in painting.
We created our own Greek vases from clay and painted them with specific decorative details from ancient Greek wars or Olympic Games. We found it fun to build our “ancient” toys out of clay and while comparing the life in Ancient Greece with the life today, we felt lucky that we live in the present day!
Amazing learning in Key Stage 2!
