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 Teaching Suggestions - Ancient Egypt
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Here are some teaching ideas and strategies you can use when teaching about Ancient Egypt.
1. Explain to the students that they will be learning about Ancient Egyptian people, their lives and religion and their relationships with animals but before they do that, they will be learning about animals they already know. Ask the students to orally brainstorm their favourite animals. Record their suggestions on the board. Younger students may like to draw pictures of the animals they have suggested. Write the following on the board: wild animals, farm animals, pet animals. Discuss the similarities and differences between the three groups of animals with the students. Ask the students to sort their suggestions into the three categories. Bear in mind that there may be some overlap. Younger students may wish to match their drawings to the categories. Focus on the pet animals category. Discuss with the students the advantages and disadvantages of keeping pets. Ask them to predict how long people may have been keeping animals as pets. Encourage the students to draw a picture of their favourite pet in their exercise book. If they don't have a pet, ask them to draw the animal they would most like as a pet. Then, under their drawing suggest that they note down a few reasons why their pet is special. Ask them to tell the rest of the class what makes their pet special. Choose a couple of the most popular pet animals and ask the students to brainstorm the characteristic qualities that people associate with them. For example, people associate loyalty with dogs whereas cats are thought to be aloof.
2. Tell the students that they will now be focusing on the people and religion of Ancient Egypt and their relationship with animals. Ask the students to orally brainstorm what they already know about Ancient Egyptian life and culture. Use some of the background information for teachers about Life in Ancient Egypt and Mummification, to add to what the students already know. Ask the students to predict what animals would have been present in Ancient Egypt. Use information from the background information for teachers about Animals in Ancient Egypt to help prompt the students' suggestions To help focus the students suggestions ask questions such as: what animals would live in the River Nile? what animals would live in the desert? what animals would be used for farming? Sort the suggested animals into the categories: wild animals, farm animals, pet animals.
3. Tell the class about Egyptian cats using the background information for teachers. Explain that many animals in Ancient Egypt became so well regarded by people that they thought the animals represented different goddesses and gods. Show the students a simplified version of the table called Animals and their associated goddesses and gods of Ancient Egypt. Ask the students to predict what the Ancient Egyptian cat goddess Bastet would have looked like and what qualities she would have possessed. The students should do some library research to find images of the various goddesses and gods. Point out the different animals associated with the different goddesses and gods. Discuss the qualities goddesses and gods shared with their animal. Ask the student to refer back to their drawing of their special pet. Encourage the students to think about a fictitious goddess or god their pet could represent. Suggest to the students that they could draw a picture of their god or goddess with the head of their pet similar to the pictures of Ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses they have already seen. Ask them to note down what qualities their goddess or god would share with its animal.
4. Explain that often pets were so loved in Ancient Egypt that when they died they were preserved in a similar way to humans. Expand on what the students had previously mentioned about mummification. Ask the students to formulate a simple definition for mummification. (Basically, mummification involves following a sequence of steps to dry a dead body. It also includes wrapping the body in bandages.) Explain that the steps we follow to complete an activity are called a procedure. Ask the students to talk about some everyday procedures they are familiar with, such as getting ready for school in the morning. Then, depending upon the level of the students, read or show them the procedural text about How to mummify a dead body. Label the stages and show them some of the language features involved in the text. After the students are familiar with the concepts involved in a procedure, ask them to orally rehearse the steps involved in mummifying a cat with a partner. Put some key words on the board to help them. Divide the students into smaller groups and ask them to draw pictures to illustrate the different stages. Write the text on large pieces of card and glue the students' illustrations to them. Display the finished text in the classroom. With older students divide them into small groups and give them the procedural text Which salt compound best mummifies an apple? Explain to the students that they will be doing an experiment with different types of salt to find out which salt compound is best for dehydrating an apple. Before doing the experiment, reinforce the language features of a procedure. The text's stages could be jumbled up and the students could sequence it. Likewise, the steps in the 'What to do' stage could also be mixed up and the students could rearrange them into their correct sequence. Action words from each sentence could be omitted and the students could fill in the missing blanks. Before the students complete their experiment, explain that they will be recording their results in a results table. Show the student how to read and use the table. (See the information for teachers about procedural recounts). You may wish to leave the final column in the table blank if the students are not yet familiar with the concept of percentages. Ask the students to fill in the table after completing their experiment. Ask them to fill in the blanks in the concluding sentences with their findings. To extend the experimental activity and to provide the students with an opportunity to independently write a procedure and construct a results table, ask them to conduct a similar experiment using unpeeled, whole apples. Compare their findings from this experiment to their previous results.
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