Ancient Greeks - Democracy and Law - Lesson!

This engaging and purposeful lesson is the third 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 Ancient Greek democracy and law, with a particular focus on Ancient Athens. By the end of the lesson, they:
-Understand the difference between monarchies, dictatorships & democracies; -Explain how matters were decided by democracies in Ancient Athens;
-Describe the similarities and differences between democracy in Ancient Greece and today.

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 prior facts about the Ancient Greeks;
-Understanding key information about different types of leadership (monarchies, dictatorships and democracies) and how they vary;
-Understanding that Greek city-states had different forms of leadership and that Athens formed one of the world’s first democracies;
-Understanding the different roles and procedures within Ancient Athenian democracy and law;
-Comparing and contrasting Greek systems to modern-day democracy, and evaluating to what extent they feel that the Athenian system was fair/ effective;
-Demonstrating their knowledge of democracy and law in Ancient Athens through completing a ‘Bloom’s Taxonomy’ style worksheet, with questions requiring progressively more difficult skills and depth of knowledge;
-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 worksheet for the main task (provided in both Word and PDF).

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.