Ancient Greeks - The Olympic Games - Lesson!

This engaging and purposeful lesson is the fourth 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 the Ancient Olympic games. Specifically, they:
-Learn and recall key facts about the Ancient Olympic Games;
-Use a range of information to develop their knowledge of Ancient Olympic events and values;
-Explain how the ancient games influenced the modern Olympic Games.

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 how, when and where the Ancient Olympic games took place;
-Watching an interesting, age-appropriate video (hyperlinked) about the different events and values of the games, and demonstrating their understanding of this through comprehension questions;
-Understanding how the Ancient Olympic games ended and the Modern Olympic Games started;
-Explaining how the Modern Olympic sports and values are influenced by the Ancient Olympic Games;
-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 worksheet for the further research activity (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.