October’s topic for the fifth and sixth graders was ancient Greece.

As an extension to what we did in class and to promote independent learning as well as research skills, the students had to undertake a homework project. It allowed them to reinvest what they had learned in class as well as deepen their knowledge of one of the greatest civilizations of all time. The students had 24 days to complete their project which was graded as follows: effort 3, presentation 3, content 6, directions followed 3, and quality of English 5, for a total of 20 points. The project had them pretend that they could alter History and do the following:

• Create a 13th task for Herakles to complete and write it as a narrative essay
• Design a new Olympic sport that would have made sense in the context of ancient Greece
• Design a new version of the Trojan Horse and make a model of it
• Create a new god or goddess and make a fact file about him or her
• Write an argumentative speech that tells why you think women should have been allowed to vote in Athens

Below are pictures of what the students brought back.

On Monday 27th of November we visited the embassy of Greece in Hiroo. We were welcomed by a warm staff who accommodated their schedule to give us a little presentation about Greece. We learned things that we hadn’t talked about in class such as the fact that what Greeks seem to enjoy best in their leisure time is to drink coffee, and we learned more about some others we had covered in class such as the origin of the marathon. Thank you very much for your time!