Hello, and welcome to this lesson.

My name is Mrs. Tipping and I'm really looking forward to learning with you today all about Bronze and Iron Age Britain and how life changed during that time.

So shall we get started? Let's go.

By the end of today's lesson, you'll be able to explain how the making and use of bronze changed life in Britain.

Before we start, I'd like to introduce you to some keywords and we'll be using these keywords during the lesson.

So it might be a good idea to write them down.

The keywords we'll be using today are hoard, agriculture, wildwood, and surplus.

I'm going to say those again, and I'd like you to repeat them after me.

Hoard, agriculture, wildwood, surplus.

Good job.

Let's think in more detail about what these keywords mean.

Here are some definitions for each of our keywords.

A hoard is a buried store of goods.

Agriculture is the process of farming.

Wildwood is a naturally growing forest area.

A surplus is the amount left over of something when you have more than you need.

Pause the video here to make a note of the keywords, and when you're ready to continue, press play.

These are the learning cycles that we'll be working through together in today's lesson.

In the first learning cycle, we'll explore how bronze was used in the Bronze Age.

During the Bronze Age, humans began to make and use bronze.

Bronze is made by melding the two metals, copper and tin.

A bronze could be used to make lots of different things.

Let's take a look at the images below.

What do you think these images show? Well, bronze could make bronze tools, pots and jewellery, so it's used to make lots of different things.

Bronze is harder and lasts longer than wood or stone, and the bronze tools could be made sharper than tools made of wood or stone.

So why do you think the objects below would be better when made from bronze rather than stone or wood? Got a bronze sword, a bronze spearhead and a bronze axe head.

Have a discussion with your partner.

Why do you think these objects would be better made from bronze? Well, bronze was useful for making things like swords, spearheads, and axe heads because they need to be strong and long lasting.

And it also meant that they could be sharper, which meant it was useful for both fighting and for farming.

So it was better to have those objects made out of bronze rather than stone or wood.

Let's pause and check for our understanding.

Which two reasons explain why bronze was better than stone for making tools.

Bronze lasts a long time.

Bronze is strong.

Bronze breaks easily.

Bronze is shiny.

So take a moment to pause the video and restart when you're ready to continue.

If you said that bronze lasts a long time and bronze is strong, those are the two reasons why bronze was better than stone for making tools.

Archaeologists have also found examples of jewellery from the Bronze Age.

Jewellery made in the Bronze Age wasn't always made from bronze, though.

It was often made from gold.

Take a look at this lovely gold necklace here in this image.

So they did find examples of jewellery made from bronze, but it wasn't always.

Let's take a moment to pause and check for our understanding.

All jewellery in the Bronze Age was made from bronze.

Is that true or false? Take a moment to think.

If you said that it's false, you're absolutely right.

How do we justify your answer? Look at these two statements.

Which one helps to justify our answer? Often jewellery was made from gold.

Often jewellery was made from tin.

Which of those helps to justify your answer? Take a moment to have a discussion with your partner and when you're ready to continue, press play.

If you said that often jewellery was made from gold, you are absolutely right.

Well done.

Archaeologists have discovered many hoards of bronze artefacts from the Bronze Age around Britain.

A hoard is a collection of goods that have been buried or stored.

Take a look at that image there of the Bronze Age hoard.

Hmm, I wonder what those things are.

Hoards show us the types of things people used bronze for during the Bronze Age.

So let's have a look at this image here.

Hmm, at the top there, we've got some swords, we've got some spearheads, some jewellery, and some axe heads.

Lots of fascinating items from this Bronze Age hoard.

Why did people bury hoards of bronze items? It's a bit of a mystery.

I wonder, what do you think? Well, perhaps they didn't need the things anymore, so it's just buried rubbish.

Hmm, maybe it was a religious ceremony.

They might have been saving them to melt down and reuse the metal in the future.

Or maybe they were hiding the objects.

What do you think? Can you think of any other reasons? Pause the video and take a moment to have a discussion with your partner.

Why do you think that people buried hoards of bronze items? What did you think? Did you come up with some other ideas? Hmm, it is a mystery.

Let's pause for our first learning task.

I'd like you to label this photograph of a bronze hoard.

So looking at these words at the bottom, spearhead, jewellery, sword, axe head, where do they go? Which part of the image should we label? So pause the video now and take some time to match the right word to the correct image in the Bronze Age hoard.

When you're ready, press play to restart the video.

How did that go? Shall we take a look at where the labels need to go? Okay, so hopefully you saw that the top had swords, and then we have spearheads, jewellery and axe heads down at the bottom.

Those are the labels for the photograph of this Bronze Age hoard.

Well done if you got those labels in the correct place.

We're now ready to move on to the second part of this lesson.

We're going to have a look at how life changed in the Bronze Age.

In the Stone Age, axes were made from sharpened stone.

People held them in the palm of their hands.

Take a look at that image there of a Stone Age axe.

Imagine that in the palm of your hand.

I wonder what it would be like to hold.

A Bronze Age axe would've been made with a bronze axe head.

It was attached to a wooden handle to make it easier to hold.

Having a look at that Bronze Age axe in that image there does look a lot easier to hold than the Stone Age axe, doesn't it? Bronze tools were much stronger and sharper than the stone tools that had been used before.

This meant that larger areas of wildwood could be cleared for agriculture and more crops could be planted.

So peoples could use their sharper tools to cut down bigger areas of wildwood, and that made more space for agriculture and allowed people to grow more food because more of those crops could be planted.

Let's pause here and let's try and fill in the missing words to finish the sentences below and check for our understanding.

The words are so, and, because.

And the sentences, they go like this: The wildwood could be cut down, blank, bronze tools were strong.

Hmm, what goes in that gap? The wildwood was cut down, blank, that farmers had more space.

Hmm? The farmers were able to grow more crops, blank, farm more animals.

So you can only use the word once, which word goes into which gap? Pause the video here and restart when you're ready to continue.

How did that go? Did you manage to fill the words in? Let's have a look.

So the wildwood could be cut down because bronze tools were strong.

The wildwood was cut down so that farmers had more space and the farmers were able to grow more crops and farm more animals.

Well done if you managed to get the right word in the right space to finish these sentences off.

During the Bronze Age, farmers could use tools to make more space for agriculture.

This provided food for more people.

So the population, the number of people, it grew, it got larger.

As the population grew, more people were needed to farm the land to make sure there was enough food for everyone.

Having a look at that image there, barley.

Barley is a type of crop that would've been planted during this time for agriculture.

Let's take a moment to pause and check our understanding.

What happened to the population in Britain during the Bronze Age? It became smaller.

It stayed the same.

It grew bigger.

Can you remember what happened to the population? Take a moment to think.

If you said that it grew bigger, that's absolutely right.

Well done.

Fantastic.

Can you explain to a partner why the population became bigger? Pause the video here for a moment and restart when you're ready to continue.

How did your discussion go? If you talked about the fact that there was more space, so there was more food and that meant that the population got bigger, then that's absolutely right.

Well done.

More crops meant people had a surplus of food they could trade or store in case of a disaster.

People began to travel further to trade their surplus.

People could trade their surplus for goods that they could not find where they lived, like tin, jade, amber, or precious metals.

So the barley, the crop that they grew, when there was lots of extra of that barley, they could trade it for other items that they didn't have.

Let's pause here.

Can you fill in the missing word? The words are trade, cook, and build.

Having surplus crops changed life in Britain because people began to, blank, goods.

What goes in that space? Have a think.

Is it trade, cook, or build? If you said trade, that's absolutely right.

And remember that trading goods is either to sell, buy, or exchange like a swap.

So there's extra crops that changed life in Britain because they were able to trade them for other goods.

That brings us to the first part of our learning task.

I would like you to write a label for this object so that it can be displayed in a museum.

Can you complete these sentences? This is a: It is made from: It was used by: It was used for: So grab yourself a pen and some paper and write this label out for this object.

You could even draw this object if you'd like.

And once you've had time to write out that label, restart this video when you're ready to continue.

How did that go? Did you manage to write a label for this object so that it can go into a museum? Well, your answer could look a bit like this.

This is a Bronze Age axe.

It is made from a bronze axe head and wooden handle.

It was used by farmers.

It was used for chopping down the wildwood to create space for agriculture.

Well done if you wrote out a label similar to that.

Good job.

The second part of this learning task, I would like you to have a discussion with your partner.

How did bronze change life in Britain? I'd like you to try and use some of these words to help you: Tools, stronger, wildwood, space, agriculture, population, surplus, trade.

So pause this video here and take some time to have a discussion with your partner and see if you can include those words below in your discussion, and restart the video when you're ready to continue.

How did that go? Did you have a good discussion? Well, your discussion might have gone a little bit like this.

Bronze changed life in Britain because it led to the population growing.

With more space for agriculture, more people could be fed and they even started to trade their surplus food.

Yes! They used stronger bronze tools to clear lots of the wildwood for farming.

They could trade their surplus food for precious metals and tin ore.

Well done if your discussion included something like this.

Before we finish this lesson, let's summarise what we've learned about how bronze changed life in Britain.

We've certainly learned a lot.

Bronze was harder, longer lasting, and could be made sharper than wood or stone tools.

With the new sharper tools, larger areas of wildwood could be cleared for agriculture and more crops could be planted.

And any surplus, so any extra of those crops, could be traded or stored in case of a disaster.

So remember, trading was exchanging those goods for things that they didn't have.

The population grew as the land could support more people, so they were also needing more people for increased levels of farming, so they needed more people to help farm.

Hoards found around Britain show how bronze was used for many objects.

Can you remember what was found in those hoards? Those amazing arrowheads and swords and jewellery.

Thank you for joining me in this lesson and I really look forward to seeing you in the next one.

See you next time.