Ancient Civilizations Museum

 There is no greater feeling, for teachers or students, than to experience the culmination of weeks of hard work. Especially when that hard work was interrupted, and interrupted again, with school closures and COVID scares.

This is the story of my fourth grade class's ancient civilization museum and how we triumphed over the 2020/2021 school year. 

Backing up a little, last year I taught fourth grade in a small IB school in Germany. We were in school up until around January when the cases in my area rose dramatically and then swung up and down for the rest of the year. Based on the case numbers in our region, we would be learning from home for a few weeks, and then back in school. For almost a month all grades except fourth grade (the graduating year in German primary schools) and twelfth grade were online. That meant we were using an almost empty school building.

Student morale was down and we all needed a little joy. 

Around this time we were about to start our unit, "How We Organize Ourselves" which focused on looking into the shared cultural aspects of past civilizations. I decided that since the school building was hardly being used, we should break out of our classroom and commandeer the cafeteria to create an ancient civilizations museum! 

These books I found to be particularly helpful with our intruduction to the different civilizations. 

I began the unit by giving the students a brief overview, or little taste, of different civilizations. We read a short synopsis for each one, looked at where the civilization was located on the globe, and watched short, engaging youtube clips. During this week our learning was taking place online through Google Classroom. 

Then, case levels dropped and we were able to come back to school. Keeping in mind what we had seen about each civilization, I had the students vote and then group themselves into research groups.

We ended up with 4 different groups: Ancient Egypt, Ancient Rome, Ancient China, and Ancient Latin America. 

Next, we familiarized ourselves with what museums are like. Many students were able to share personal experiences they had in museums and there are a number of great interactive exhibits online and even some youtube walkthroughs of different museums. I made sure the students paid careful attention to how items were displayed and how information was presented to guests. In the discussion we had after our explorations, the students made great observations about how artifacts are presented and realized that they preferred museums that incorporated interactive exhibits over ones where you just looked at things.

Youtube ProWalks Walking Tours of the Egyptian Museum

This is a simple video walkthrough of the old Egyptian museum. We watched this up on the projector as a class. I skipped to different parts throughout it and had students write down thier observations and thoughts. 

Google Arts and Culture

This link takes you to the amazing Google Arts and Culture site. There are a bunch of different museum walkthroughs here. I had the students pick a museum and then go through it independently on thier Chromebooks. 

We readily jumped into researching our civilizations!

I pulled as many books as I could from the library. In addition to all of the nonfiction books I could find, I picked up a bunch of fiction books about the civilizations as well. I encourage my students to immerse themselves in what we are studying and reading these books during Daily 5 or at home gives them an even deeper understanding of the civilizations.

Some great book resources are:

-Any DK Kids books

-You Wouldn't Want to Be.... series

-A True Book series

-Magic Tree House and Magic Tree House Fact Tracker series

-Flat Stanley Worldwide Adventures series

-The Time Warp Trio series

We also accessed some reliable internet sources:

DK Find Out!

Ducksters.com

National Geographic Kids

Mr. Donn's Site for Kids and Teachers

History for Kids

To organize all this information, I designed a file folder that scaffolded the students in their note-taking and gave them a basic framework for what they would need to include in their museum exhibits.

As part of their museum exhibits, I planned for the students to make the "artifacts" that they would be showing. To give them an idea of how to go about doing this, I designed the first artifact for each group and collected the supplies that they would need to create them. 

For ancient Rome I provided information and picture examples about the specially painted shields, called scutum, the Roman army used. These shields could be held side to side and acros the top of a group of soldiers in order to fully protect them. They were painted with different designs depending on the unit of soldiers. Using cardboard and paint, the students created their own scutum. The information was used to scaffold the students in writing a short, informational pararaph about the scutum. This would be displayed with the shields in the exhibit to help visitors learn about the artifacts.  

Ancient Egypt's artifact was inspired by King Tut's golden mask. I printed out life-sized black and white photos of the students' faces and then allowed them to create their own golden masks using paints, glitter glue, and shiny, gold paper. They used photos of King Tut's mask as their creative inspiration and later wrote their own paragraph. 

For ancient China, we looked at pictures and read a short blurb about Chinese porcelain. The kids then painted white paper cups and paper plates with blue patterns inspired by the photos. 

Ancient Latin America learned about stone-carved Mayan glyphs and then created them with yarn, glue, and gray paint on construction paper. 

Once the students understood how we were going to go about making the artifacts and then writing up the information about them, I had them refer back to their notes folders and discuss as a group how they were going to make their other exhibit pieces. I had collected craft supplies from all over and made sure the students were familiar with what was available. We had paint, colored paper, cardboard, poster board, salt dough, and fabric scraps.

Watching the students determine which artifacts to create and split up the workload was fascinating.

Some groups made a plan and then all group members worked together. Other groups splintered into partner pairs and worked on individual artifacts. In the ancient Rome group, one child decided that he was interested in ancient Roman counterfeit coins. He created the coin artifacts himself and then wrote up the paragraph on his own. Of course, there was the occasional incidence of goofing around, but for the most part, the students stayed focused on what they were creating.

This project offered students a lot of choice and ownership of their work (all I was checking for was accurate research, a physical artifact, and a matching paragraph) and that showed in the high level of engagement.  

But then...tragedy struck! At the end of one school day, as we created and painted our artifacts, we were informed that starting the next day we would be learning online indefinitely. We had to put down our paintbrushes, and pack up our materials. Luckily, no other classes would be in the building and we could leave up our bulletin boards and museum walls. Our artifacts would also be safe on the cafeteria tables. 

We went to online learning for quite a while. Our project was put on pause and we made the decision to work on another unit of inquiry until we came back to school in person. Thankfully, we were able to come back the last weeks before the summer break and we quickly reconvened and put the final touches on our museum! 

After finishing all of the exhibits, each group decided what jobs they would carry out when the museum was open. We had security at the door, ticket takers at the front desk, docents monitoring the exhibits and answering questions, and even survey takers near the exit to receive feedback from the visitors.

We invited students, teachers, and administrators from first grade all the way up to twelfth grade to come and experience our museum. 

The ancient China exhibit displayed their map, timeline, porcelain, salt dough Great Wall of China, and their emperor’s chair. These students also has some connections to China and brought in an example of traditional Chinese clothing and a water calligraphy set. The presenters in the ancient China exhibit guided visitors in how to use the set and supervised their use of this interactive artifact.

The ancient China group displayed their map, timeline, golden masks, Nile River diorama, canopic jars, heiroglyph writing, and some Egyptian jewelry. For their interactive piece, this group brought in a pyramids puzzle for guests to try as they came through the museum. This group also brought in connections from home. One student has visited Egypt a few years before and brought postcards, pictures, and little statues ther her family had bought. 

The ancient Rome group exhibited their map, timeline, a model aqueduct, their Roman shields, counterfeit coins, and a chart of roman numerals. A few of these members had also been to visit Italy before and they brought in pictures from their travels. One student even brought in a Roman inspired bust!

Within the ancient Latin America group, they showed their map, timeline, Aztec masks, Mayan gods, Aztec pyramids, and Mayan glyphs. For thier interactive exhibit, they created a guessing game where guests tried to math drawn pictures of the Mayan gods with thier name and description. One of the students in this group used to live in Mexico City, so he had many pictures and souvenirs from Mexico to share with museum visitors. 

We exhibited for three blocks over the course of two days. After each block, we circled up to read our feedback and discuss what went well and what could be improved for next time. When the day came to take down our exhibits, there were a lot of feelings.

These grand projects are incredibly powerful for students!

Not only do they allow authentic opportunities for research and writing, but they give students practice with collaboration, problem solving, and presentation skills. I watched my normally shy students, and my English language learners, beam with pride as they confidently explained artifacts to high schoolers. This project was dynamic enough that all the students were able to find a moment to shine. 

Making Friendly Letter Writing Fun and Engaging!

As education, and the skills that students need in our modern and technological world shift and change, writing, and all communcation skills, remain vital for elementary aged children to learn. 

I LOVE teaching writing! 

I think that writing, when done right, is an incredibly engaging and enjoyable activity for students and an excellent diagnostic tool and measure of student growth and understanding for teachers. If you'd like to see how I usually set up the writing center in my classroom (and also see a few must have resources) CLICK HERE to check out one of my previous posts. 

One type of writing that I always teach my students is friendly letter writing.

I love how friedly letters can be incorporated so easily in all topics. Students love how letters can reach an authentic audience and even on occasion, recieve real-life responses. One year that I was teaching second grade in Guatemala, during a unit on ocean conservation, my students wrote letters to a local restaurant that was serving shark fin soup. This idea was brought to me by a student after they ate there with thier family and noticed the dish on the menu. 

Having an authentic audience is a super engaging hook for students. 

A different year, when I was teaching in Germany, there was a senior living home near the school. Before our winter break the students wrote letters to the senior citizens to brighten up thier holidays! They were incredibly appreciative and many even wrote replies. My students loved receiving mail and the knowledge that they were making an impact on the community with their letter writing. 

Typically, before starting the writing process, I introduce mentor texts about letter writing as read alouds. There are so many great picture books out there that model how friendly letters are used and provide examples of letter format. A few of my favorites are below:

Some other great options are:

Sincerely Emerson 

By Emerson Weber 

This book is great for writing thank you notes or within a unit about community helpers. It also would tie-in nicely with a pen pal project.

Click, Clack, Moo Cows That Type

By Doreen Cronin

This is a classic story for younger students. It includes very simple letter format and is highly engaging and funny!

Dear Mrs. LaRue Letters from Obedience School

By Mark Teague

This story is great for older elementary students. The written voice in this book is very strong and it provides a opportunity to talk about reliable narrators. 

Dear Dragon

By Josh Funk

This book would be perfect to introduce students to pen pal letter writing. There are some great examples of how to share information about yourself and how to ask questions about another person.  

Once students are familiar with how letters are used and how they generally look, I like to do at least one lesson on the basic pieces of a letter. The formatting is what makes a letter a letter! 

Once students are ready to write, I find that using fun writing templates adds an imaginative feel to the experience. It's almost like playing dress up, but with writing! I've created a few templates, that I introduce to the students early on in the year, and then leave out in my writing center for them to use during Daily 5 or writer's workshop. 

CLICK HERE to check them out in my TeachersPayTeachers store. 

These templates often help reluctant writers get started and a great way to jump-start some letter writing ideas!