Mrs Tafau Social Sciences blog

Gladiator movie This week we completed the movie Gladiator, where hopefully the understanding of the technology and progress that had occurred was easy to see. Students then completed a Roman Soldier webquest, explaining the ability of the roman army and how important and influential it was to the success of the empire. The class were taught to use a blog as their class work book, so each week they will have a blog post that can be marked. The class were then given the chance to design their own gladiator shield or mask, which will be decorating the walls of S1 over the next few days. As a summary to the technology throughout Roman times, the class were given a choice of 4 key inventions from the time; concrete, aqueducts, roman numerals and the colloseum. You had to choose 2 from the list and complete the following; 1) what is it? 2) add in a picture of it 3) explain how it works and how was it used? 4) state 3 important facts 5) explain if it would be useful today or ...

Pyramids continued As our wrap up to the teaching around pyramids and technology used, students worked together to build a pyramid using lego. The groups all had differing ways to complete this task, with some restarting at least 3 times. One group allocated certain roles to the members within the team, and another tried to be colour co-ordinated. In the end, successful groups seemed to work from the top down, used more than one lego width for the base, and communicated well with their peers. Hopefully the difficulty with this creation using lego was reflected and linked to the massive task that the Egyptians had to complete the real life pyramids, still remaining in Egypt today.  Roman Empire As a follow on from the Egyptians, the class covered information regarding the Roman Empire, to learn some key terms prior to watching the movie Gladiator. They completed an 8 part story of Romulus and Remus, and then worked through the activities on the slide below. It is important...

Introduction This was the first time for us all together as both a form class and a social studies class, so the first lesson consisted of us getting to know a bit more about each other and me learning names!  Key concepts were outlined, under the acronym CESPEN, using the slide attached below. It is important to understand that for each topic that we cover in the Social Sciences fit under one or more of the key concepts. Students need to know what each of the letters in the acronym mean, and then be able to give their own examples (to show their understanding).  Technology and change Technology and change is the topic that we will be covering this term, and we looked at brainstorming what is technology? Pairs then created a sentence structure which to them explained what technology is, with examples to support their understanding. Completing a paragraph using the SEEL structure individually summed up the explanation of technology. Pyramids Factfile compl...