What was the Saturnalia and why was it important to the Romans?

This lesson is designed with the OCR 9-1 GCSE spec in mind. Topic 1.5: Festivals in the Myth and Religion Unit of the paper.

The lesson starts with reminding students of who Saturn was and his background as father of Jupiter and rule of the Earth during the Golden Age. Students then look at the 17th c. copy of the 4th c. Calendar depicting elements of the Saturnalia and are encouraged to draw inferences about what might have happened during the festival itself. A worksheet is included in the .ppt file for this.

A knowledge organiser is also included on a slide to be printed out and given to students who then highlight and annotate it and use it to inform a travel guide/newspaper task where they have to write about their experience of the Saturnalia to a ‘foreign’ (I.e. non-Roman) audience.

Practice exam questions are also included with help on how to structure their answers. These involve a Source inference (2 mark question) and two 8 mark comparison questions where students are told to compare the festival to the Lupercalia.

Finally, students are encouraged to match a series of abstract images to their learning in order to demonstrate how much they have learnt in relation to the success criteria/ learning aims.