Year 4 - How did the Ancient Greeks influence the modern world?

Year 4 have had a fantastic start to the year. We have been answering the big question, "How did the Ancient Greeks influence the modern world? " and the children have loved getting stuck into our new topic. In our reading and writing units we have discovered what Greek myths are, how to create our own ones and the importance of having lots of description to make character, setting descriptions and diary entries come to life. Keep your eyes peeled on Teams for our Ebooks, our High Stakes project, which we will be sharing with you once we have completed them. It will be a diary entry about a hero who defeats their mythical beast.

In our history lessons we learnt about the introduction of democracy, school life in Athens and Sparta and how these influenced modern schooling, the development of the Olympic Games and how these have diversified since Ancient Greek times and our use of the English language has developed from the ancient Greek alphabet and syntax. We even learnt about the story of Troy and the Trojan horse, and deception has been used for many years to win wars. To help us immerse ourselves into the topic, we were lucky enough to be able to look at some replica Greek tragedy and comedy masks and pieces

of ancient Greek pottery which we were loaned by the wonderful Museum Learning Team at The Langley Academy. We also listened to an immersive story using our NowPressPlay headphones to help us imagine what life must have been like at the time.

In DT we learnt all about building pavillions (buildings with a purpose). We started by drawing floor plans and aerial views, then we looked at what makes a building aesthetic before moving on to learn about how to build a strong and stable structure. We experimented with spaghetti and play-doh to make learn what is and isn't a strong and stable structure, and used our problem-solving skills to develop ways to increase stability and reinforce corners to stop them falling down. Our final products were made of art straws, lolly pop sticks, tape and glue before the children added cladding and decoration to the outside in an attempt to make them aesthetic.

We have had a brilliant half-term and are really looking forward to learning about the Ancient Romans and Queen Bouddica of the Iceni tribe.