EDUCATIONAL MATERIALS
6-12 Lesson Plans
Activities | Lesson Plans | Resources
Levant 6-12 Lesson Plans:
- Zenobia and Heroines
- PowerPoint on the ancient Israelite Civilization; created by the ICS (Institute for Curriculum Services)
- Three religions that consider Jerusalem a holy city
- Dead Sea Scrolls
Mesopotamia 6-12 Lesson Plans:
- Power in ancient Mesopotamia; original functions and context of stone carvings
- Ancient Mesopotamia and Today through artifacts, culture and history
- Hammurabi’s Code: What Does It Tell Us About Old Babylonia?
- Ancient Mesopotamia – literacy now and then
- Life in Old Babylonia: The Importance of Trade
- The Cuneiform Writing System in Ancient Mesopotamia: Emergence and Evolution
- Life in ancient Mesopotamia – reconstructing a personal “tell”
- Ancient tablets, ancient graves: accessing women’s lives in Mesopotamia
- Teaching violence, destruction and propaganda at Nimrud in antiquity and today
- Ancient Persian art and culture; Achaemenid jar with Lion-Griffin Handles
- Cyrus Cylinder – Persian culture and Persian interactions with the Greeks
- Sumerian City of Ur – teaching with primary sources
Egypt 6-12 Lesson Plans:
- Egyptian Book of the Dead
- Science and technology of anicent Egypt
- Touring ancient Egypt
- A day in the life of an Egyptian
- Egypt’s architectural marvels
- Egypt’s Greatest Leaders
- Queens of ancient Egypt
- Tombs and the afterlife
- Hieroglyphs and communication
- Egypt’s pyramids: monuments with a message
- Egyptian Symbols and Figures: Hieroglyphs
- Daily life of Egyptians
- Plans and ideas for student engagement
Nubia 6-12 Lesson Plans:
Ancient Nubia Video Part 1: Pre-Kerma – Kingdoms of Kush
Ancient Nubia Video Part 2: Pre-Kerma – Kingdoms of Kush
Roman 6-12 Lesson Plans:
- Can you save the Roman Republic? Students act as elected consuls and leaders of government
- “Gossip at the Forum” – Julius Caesar; a play for students to act out
- Which emperor would you choose to be your leader?
- Daily life in ancient Rome
- Bathing complexes (specifically the Baths of Caracalla)
- In Old Pompeii – the eruption and excavations
- What happened at Pompeii?
- Roman gravestone inspiration – students make their own
- Gods and goddesses transported to the modern world
- Aeneas, art and storytelling – connections between primary and secondary sources
- Muses vs sirens – analysis of ancient artifacts
- The Metamorphoses and Genesis: A comparison of creation-flood stories
- Variety of lesson plans related to ancient Rome
- The eruption of Mt. Vesuvius
- Pompeii today – what does the present reveal about the past?
- Discussion of Roman house – House of the Vine
- Roman public bathing
Greek 6-12 Lesson Plans:
- Using the Uluburun shipwreck to explore late Bronze Age trade in the Mediterranean
- Ancient Olympia and the Olympics
- It came from Greek mythology – discussion of Greek stories and their meanings
- Frescos and the process of making frescos
- Greek monsters – ancient storytellers inspired by the world around them
- Athletes in artwork and ancient poetry
- Gods and goddesses transported to the modern world
- Sophocles’ Antigone – ancient Greek theater, live from antiquity
- 300 Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae
- The victor’s virtue – a cultural history of sport
- A tableau vivant (living picture) from The Odyssey
I had entered a new world that has its own language – a place where “sectioning,” “registration,” “locus,” and “feature” have very specific meanings (Curious about these words? Come dig for yourself!). As a text and language scholar, I was especially struck by how collaborative the work in the field needed to be; while I do my research sitting alone at my computer, archaeological field research needs to be conducted in a team with a clear line of command so that decisions to document finds and context are made consistently and carefully. This meant constant communication between team members (like me) in the squares yelling up to the supervisors for clarification, and then working in tandem with other team members to execute their directions.
In general, I learned to take soil samples outside, inside, and under each vessel, and to set aside the fragment with the vessel’s base. Each of these samples would later go to a lab for residue analysis, to determine what was inside the vessel. Opinions differed regarding whether or not one should touch the samples with gloves, since contact with work gloves would mean possible contamination from anything like sunscreen that had been on the handler’s skin. The soil samples could be placed in paper bags, while the most cautious approach to the vessel sample would place it inside aluminum foil to protect it from contamination. Any plastics might contaminate a sample, so it was preferable to prevent contact with plastic buckets if residue analysis was desired. Only after a top plan was made and soil samples were taken could vessels in the assemblage be removed. And of course, everything was registered so that the documentation could be clear. In they went to the colorful buckets to be sorted and analyzed by the experts in the lab!
