Planning for teaching Ancient Greece KS2

Teaching ancient Greece at KS2 features a fully-resourced medium-term planner with lessons and resources for 6 enquiry questions plus a home study. Each question is now tightly linked to the existing outstanding lessons that many of you are familiar with plus loads of new smart tasks that you’ll love. For the legacy question alone there are 5 brand new activities, including evaluating a BBC video, analysing a story for evidence of Greek-origin words as well as a bit of healthy debating to discover the greatest Greek, and some fun with Under the Cloth , plan your own Greek legacy museum and decide/justify what images should go on a new set of Greek legacy commemorative stamps.
Because this is quite demanding stuff, I have chosen lessons on Ancient Greece mainly suitable for Years 5 and 6 and there are some stunners here. The lesson on making ostracons is a fantastic way into Greek democracy. Speaking and listening are massively enhanced through the role play concerning whether to support Pericles’ Millennium dome-like idea to build the Parthenon. Contrasting interpretations are dealt with ingeniously through the lesson on the battle of Marathon which also features an excellent history mystery. For enormous fun potential alone, the ‘Call My Bluff’ and ‘Who wants to be a Millionaire’ approaches to pictures and replica artefacts from Ancient Athens should win you over.
This KS2 smart task places pupils in the role of detectives trying to prove that the legend of Theseus and the Minotaur may actually have been been a fact. First they have to think...
This lesson on the Battle of Marathon makes a major contribution to pupils' thinking skills. They are presented with a paradox. How could the David of Athens beat the Goliath of Persia?
Instead of...
We thought we would offer you a range of different cameos showing how the history of the Olympics could be imaginatively integrated into your current teaching.
The teaching activities below have all be tried...