Investigating the ancient Olympic games: A Case Study

Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.

In a 10-week unit on Ancient Greece, we gave the fourth lesson over to the ancient Olympic Games. The class was a delight: 32 enthusiastic Year 6 children in an urban county primary school.

We knew the children would have concepts of the Olympics gained from the modern games. So, we decided to give the class the challenge of using pictorial clues from the Ancient Greek Olympics - and to identify, interpret and organise the images into a programme for the ancient Olympics. Our aim was for the children to develop both factual (know-that) and procedural (know-how) historical knowledge. We had the best part of a morning: 2 hours and 15 minutes...