Introduction to Ancient History

Introduction to Ancient History

The main goal of this lesson is to introduce ancient history and assess student’s prior knowledge of this subject

Start with the warm-up task, which asks students to think about where, when, and who ancient history studies. An information chart that can be used for class notes will answer these questions on the next slide.

Following the warm-up, an informational slide goes through the BC/BCE, AD/CE dating system for history. This slide explains how historical dating works, provides a visual timeline, and has an optional video link (2 ½ min) for further explanation.

Next, a quick task is given where students must examine 6 images and guess which ancient civilization is shown in each.   An optional paper version of this task is included, but simply projecting it on the PowerPoint should work fine. Answers for this task will be found on the next slide.

After this, a timeline shows some of the earliest civilizations in ancient history. Using the timeline, two assessment questions are then asked. These questions will help assess students’ ability to use the BC/BCE and AD/CE dating system and the timeline. Answers follow each question and are highlighted in green.

Activity – Guess the Civilization Worksheet

For an activity, a worksheet is provided that will assess students’ prior knowledge of ancient history. Even without much knowledge of ancient history, students should be able to do well on this worksheet if they use the images and process of elimination.

• The worksheet is divided into 4 parts, location, leaders, architecture, and cultural achievements.
• For each section, students match the civilization to the correct location, leader, piece of architecture, and cultural achievement
• The 6 civilizations students choose from are: Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, Greece, and Rome
• If you would like, you could also have students work in groups, use a textbook, or the internet for help

A completed Key for this worksheet is provided

The worksheet has a digital version as well. Students can use apps such as Lumin PDF or Dochubto completeand submit the fillable PDF file.  

View a video tutorial on how to integrate these digital PDFs into Google Classroom here!

For an optional conclusion, students are asked to rate their prior knowledge of ancient history on a scale of 1-10 and briefly explain this rating.