The central idea of this Unit was: “How Past Civilizations Influence our Present Society.”
Students inquired into various subjects ranging from the ancient languages to theatre plays and pottery. Below we have collected some reflections from our students.
Ancient Language Influences our Modern Day Languages – Julia Palensky (PYP 7)
During our Past and Present unit, PYP7 students were given the assignments to make a root tree connecting Latin and Greek roots to their modern use in English words. Lots of words used now in languages such as English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and many more come from Greek and Latin roots. Some important roots we learned were multi, morph, graph, geo, hypo, and ben. Do you know any words used today with those roots, we learned lots. Each student made their own root tree and presented it to the class.
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Greek Vases – Marina Comerma X. (PYP7)
Greek pots were a way for people to express themselves in ancient Greece. There were many types of vases. They showed and were used for many things. From drinking to music, to images of children and death. Some vases were extra skinny to drink or to pour water. They were also used to store food or drinks, like grain and wine. But of course, you could not make music out of a pot right? But it would show people playing music. Some vases would even tell stories on them. The first vases were not that detailed though. But they still had design. The colours they would usually use were black and maroon. They had people or animals on them.
So at school, we made Greek pots! (since we did not have vases). We used terracotta pots that were the same colour as the Greek vases. Many students put patterns and drawings on the pots. Of course, they were not the same because we each got to make one our own way. Some students even wrote little Greek messages on the pots. Well I hope you like our vases!
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Terracotta Warriors – (Cody Lau, Máté Pataki)
We learned about terracotta warriors in our ancient unit. The terracotta Army was invented in ancient China- Qin Shi Huang dynasty (221 BC- 206 BC) which is one of the most important dynasties of all time. The terracotta army was made from terracotta, therefore they called “Terracotta” Warriors. Each Terracotta Warrior have different face/body and poses. Till this day, there are over 8,000 Terracotta Warriors, including 130 chariots, 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses. Additionally, we made our own Terracotta Warrior during our unit.
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Reader’s Theatre Plays – (Irene Marieke Hospers and Madeleine Varga-Czischke)
We did 4 Greek myths: Pandora’s Box, Atlanta and the Great Race, Orpheus and Eurydice and Echo and Narcissus. We had 1 week to practice the plays and at the end, we filmed them.
Pandora’s box was about Prometheus giving the gift of fire to mortals. Zeus then gives Epimetheus a wife: Pandora. Pandora opens a box that was left in her care and all the worlds miseries fly out.
Atlanta and the great race was about a royal family who abandoned their daughter because it’s a girl and she ends up in the village again. Her father apologizes and tells her to get married. She says that whoever wins the race will marry her. But she was the fastest person in the village. All the men tried but lost so Hippomenes was smart and talked to Aphrodite and she gave him three golden apples and he won the race they were wed.
Orpheus and Eurydice was about Orpheus, son of Apollo who married Eurydice. After their wedding, she was chased by Aristaeus and got killed by a viper. Then, Orpheus went to the underworld and played beautiful music to get Eurydice back. Hades agreed but on one condition: he must never look back but then he looked back and became so sad that he died.
Echo and Narcissus is about Zeus who went down to earth to flirt with the nymphs and Hera comes so Echo has to distract Hera with her gift of gab so she doesn’t find the nymphs. Then, Echo finds Narcissus and Echo will only be able to speak the last words someone else says. Echo falls in love with Narcissus but Narcissus loves himself so both of them die. By creating these plays and acting in them, we learnt how to work together and we really got to understand the Greek myths. We learnt how to be a team and how to manage ourselves. We did this all by ourselves.