What was the Great Panathenaia?

This lesson has been designed with the new OCR Classical Civilisation 9-1 GCSE in mind.

The lesson begins by asking students what they can infer about the Great Panathenaia from a set of images. A table is then included which can be printed off and completed by students as they are presented with the relevant information about each aspect of the festival itself. Students are then encouraged to rank the importance of each day of the 8 day festival in order to make the learning stick and to promote higher order thinking.

The next part of the lesson focuses on a range of study questions that are designed to get students to explain what they have learnt. An 8 mark GCSE style question is included as the final study question.

The plenary involves designing your own temple metopes/relief sculpture and this is a sheet that is again best to be printed out, completed and then explained by their students to see how far they have met the success criteria/learning aims.

Plenty of visual sources are included and each part of the festival is explained in a way that is accessible to all. Students should leave with a comprehensive understanding of not just what the Great Panathenaia was, but also why it was so significant in religious and community terms for the Athenians themselves.