Term 3
Big Idea
Why do we learn about ancient civilisations? Who were the Ancient Egyptians and how do we know about them? As budding historians, we will travel back in time and develop our knowledge and understanding of how their lives were different to ours and their legacy today. When studying history, we are looking in the mirror at ourselves – looking both backwards and forwards. History helps us understand who we are as society now, how we got here, and what we learnt along the way. When looking at ancient history, Ancient Egypt has some of the most incredible, compelling, exciting puzzles and mysteries that can be found in studying how humanity began forming civilisations.
Congratulations!
What are hieroglyphs?
The ancient Egyptians invented one of the earliest known writing systems used from around 3000 BC.
The symbols they used were called hieroglyphs, which comes from a Greek word meaning ‘sacred carving’.
The ancient Egyptians believed that hieroglyphs had been invented by the gods.
The Rosetta stone was discovered in 1799 AD. It is a three-foot high stone containing hieroglyphs, everyday ancient Egyptian language and a Greek translation. Since Greek was understood, the hieroglyphs could then be translated into modern European languages, so the Rosetta stone was the key to the hieroglyphic code.
We carved our name into clay in hieroglyphics!
English
In English, we read our stories aloud to our friends to peer-review! It was great to hear everyone's ideas as ours were all so different.
Maths
In maths we have been looking at informal methods for multiplication, we found using basing 10 very helpful. We drew our grids and then partitioned our tens and ones!
Congratulations!
Topic
In topic, we walked into the classroom and were welcomed as priests! We didn’t know what this meant, but then we wrote out instructions on how to mummify a body. This means to preserve a body! Obviously, in class we could not do that so we practised on a tomato. We followed our instructions step by step and we will recheck them in 70 days.
“I am taking the organs out.”
“Was this really what they would do?”
“This is disgusting but fun.”
“I need to add the nitrate to preserve it.”
Maths
Last week in maths we were looking at multiplying by 10 and 100, this week we have moved onto dividing by 10 and 100. We have realised that when we divide the number always gets smaller and we have been looking at the place value of each digit. We played a game as pairs and then worked independently on some questions.
Writing – Creating our own stories
This week we have planned our own time slip stories based on our key text, ‘The Time Slip Scarab’. We have focused on using descriptive vocabulary and developing our sentences further. Please have a read of some of our stories. If you would like to see your child’s story, please let us know and we can photocopy it for you.
“Can I change my time slip to the Romans?”
“I’ve thought of a good similie, the ancient mummified cat stood in front of his eyes like a dusty memory!”
Congratulations!
Topic - Egyptian Artefacts
In topic, we investigated Egyptian artefacts. We got sent a scroll from a local historian that asked us to find out more. We wrote about what they were used for, what they were made out of and where they were found.
We then chose one artefact to delve deeper into and found out more information about it.
Topic - The River Nile
Our topic is about Egypt and we looked at the longest River which is the Nile. We looked at why it was important to Egyptians and what it was used for.
“Wow! I didn’t realise how much the river Nile was used.”
“I didn’t realise it was so long!”
“I found it interesting that it helped farming.”
“I did not realise alligators would be in the Nile, but it is good to know that Egyptians use it for fishing.”