Ancient Greeks - Seafaring City-States Lesson!

This engaging and purposeful lesson is the second in a series of lessons in which children develop an in-depth understanding of Ancient Greece. There is a particular focus on the achievements of the Ancient Greeks and how these have influenced the world.

In this lesson, children learn about Greek City states and how they were formed. In particular, they:
-Understand why seafaring was essential for Ancient Greek civilizations;
-Describe the seafaring skills that helped City-States to form and thrive.
-Name Greek City States and recall key facts about daily life in them.

The learning is guided by a clear and colourful PowerPoint presentation, which guides students through the following step-by-step journey:
-Knowledge recall of basic history skills and baseline information about the Ancient Greeks;
-Understanding key information about the Greek terrain and it necessitated the advancement of seafaring knowledge and skills;
-Discussing and understanding the advantages gained by the Greeks by developing seafaring skills, and how this led to the development of city-states;
-Learning what ship-building and navigational skills they developed;
-Following navigational instructions to find and label the major Greek city states (the map for this is included, as both Word and PDF documents)
-Watching an engaging video (hyperlinked) to find out more about life in city-states and how it relied on the sea;
-Recalling key information about housing, food, education and work in Greek city-states;
-Self-reflecting on the extent to which they feel they have met the learning objective.

Included is the comprehensive PowerPoint presentation (23 slides), which contains all of the information needed to teach the lesson, and the maps required for the navigation activity.

In the past, I have used this lesson with children in lower KS2 (years 3 and 4), however this was an advanced class and these resources could easily be used with upper KS2. The key learning is aligned with KS2 curriculum expectations for history. All images are licensed for commercial use.