Ancient Sumer : Developing chronological awareness- activities

Ancient Sumer

A set of resources to develop and reinforce knowledge and understanding of Ancient Sumer (Mesopotamia), especially in terms of chronological knowledge and understanding. There is a range of distinct resources, covering people, places, events etc , all of which are suitable for use in class -both as a main activity and as an extension task- and many are suited to homework / independent study – as well as resources for ‘school at home.’ There is a power point presentation of a range of 25 events - from from c5000 BCE -start of the Uruk period and increasing urbanisation to c1760 BCE when the Babylonians conquered Mesopotamia. (Each slide has picture & one sentence summary) One version of the above plays automatically to give a sense of the passing of time each event slide is on show for five seconds and the whole presentation lasts for approximately five minutes. Two related activities develop this study of events with tasks using a selection of the same developments/events - The first is a set of printable ‘cards’ which can be used for sorting or matching tasks (such as the matching pairs game) – each event is on a separate ‘card’ from its date, organised in sets of 10 -there are two sets, but each can be used separately or the two combined to increase the difficulty level. The second is a set of ‘domino cards’ to provide a more supported matching challenge; these feature the same events and each ‘card’ links to another forming a ‘domino’ like chain (which again can be used as a set of 10 or both combined for greater challenge). There is also a time-line based sequencing task featuring 22 events from the power point- A simple sequencing activity to help develop chronological knowledge. There is a list of events with dates -but events are listed alphabetically- and a blank table to enter the information into. So students need to sequence the dates first (there is a sheet/table to help them with doing this). There is also a support version in which the table to complete has the dates in order so that students just need to find the corresponding event There are three of the word search and a combined word search & quiz challenge. Each comes in a range of versions to provide differing degrees of challenge: each wordsearch has a grid and words (names/ places/terms) to find – the same names so that all students are covering the same answers whatever the level of support/challenge. The three topics are: people(s), places, terms In each set the first version is a ‘traditional’ one with the words provided. Then there are four versions with a quiz: this has the same words to find but they aren’t provided -first you need to use the clues (questions) to work out what word you are searching for. One just has the clues then there are three supported versions (each of the four has the same clues): the first has the first letter of the answer; the second has the number of numbers in the answer and the third has both the first letter and number of letters. A set of three crosswords to help reinforce knowledge of Ancient Sumerian history (people, places and terms -though mixed up to allow for the creation of appropriate layouts). To provide a differing level of challenge each crossword comes with a support version with the first letter of each answer. They are suitable for use in class -both as a main activity and as an extension task- as well as for homework / independent study Finally there is a set of 37 colouring pages (pdf) ;the images are taken from a 19th century book (now public domain As they are screenshots of old book pages this may be reflected in the quality of the outlines though many have been digitally enhanced to help provide an outline for colouring in. They have been selected to cover a range of topics including animals, abstract art and images of human figures.