Once upon a time in Ancient Greece
This set of teaching ideas and worksheets for KS2 has been produced in partnership with BBC Teach and accompanies their series of five short animated films entitled 'Once upon a time in Ancient Greece'. Each set of teaching ideas includes comprehension questions and answers, cross-curricular teaching ideas and worksheets.
The films and teaching ideas are:
1. Everyday life in the city-states
2. Gods, goddesses, myths and magic
3. Structures, statues, poems and plays
4. The Olympic Games (but not as we know them)
5. Theories, thoughts, language and law
During the series, pupils will:
• compare life in Ancient Greece with life in Stone Age Britain and the present day
• write for a variety of different purposes, including writing a balanced argument, a persuasive text, a playscript, a set of instructions and a recount
• develop their comprehension skills
• practise the art of debate
• understand the concept of democracy
• use a range of art and design techniques
• understand and use symmetry.
You may also like our resource Ancient Greek myths, also produced in partnership with BBC Teach.
A sample from the resource:
Let’s debate! The Ancient Greeks loved to debate. In the video, we heard how women were considered less important than men and how girls were not allowed
to go to school. Ask pupils to imagine they are living in Ancient Greece. Set up two (mixed!) debating teams and ask them to debate the motion ‘Girls should be
allowed to attend school.’
Letter to the council. Follow up your debate with a persuasive writing task in which pupils write to the council - one of the governing bodies of Athens – to state their point of view.
Create an Olympic event! Invite pupils to make up their own Olympic event and to write a set of instructions for it. They should remember to include all the features of instructional texts, including numbering and command words.
