Lesson video

Hello there, my friends, and welcome to the 10th and the final lesson on the scene of Ancient Greece.

My name is Mr. Pedroza.

And in this lesson, we're going to put all of the knowledge that we have accrued, that we accumulated across the unit, and we're going to write it in an essay.

How exciting? So this is what we're going to do.

We going to write an essay and the title of this essay is going to be what were the great achievements of the Ancient Greece or the ancient Greeks? Let's not look at the lesson structure.

So we'll begin with the star words, this is one key star word.

And then we get to write an introduction.

We're going to draw a plan and table.

Then I will give you some information that you can fill your planning table with.

And then we're going to write a conclusion and then it's going to be your end of lesson quiz.

And your end up lesson quiz, is going to recap a lot of the knowledge throughout the unit.

So things that you're going to need, you're going to need your exercise book or paper, you need a pencil or your pen, and then you definitely going to need a ruler so that you draw your table.

So if you haven't got those things, go and get them now.

What's your job? Now, let's have a look at the Key star words, and the Key star word say, is just essay, and an essay is a short piece of writing that gives the writers ideas, feelings and opinions on a particular subject.

Now, let's have a look at how we can write an introduction.

First of all, let's talk about an essay.

So, we just said an long piece of writing about a particular topic.

We're going to be writing an essay about the ancient Greeks using all of the knowledge that we have learned so far.

So the things we're going to need, we're going to need to write an introduction, we're going to draw a table, we're going to fill in the planning grid, and then we're going to write a conclusion.

So, in our introduction we're going to tell the reader what question we're going to answer.

And the question that we get to answer is what were the great achievements of the ancient Greeks? And this section is really important because it has to catch the reader's attention.

And therefore we have to make sure our introduction is quite informative, that means it tells the reader something, but it also has to be eye catching; it makes the reader want to continue reading.

So in this section, we're going to outline some of the great achievements accomplished by the ancient Greeks.

And three examples I have are the following; So it could be A, you could say the ancient Greeks are considered to be one of the most influential civilizations in history, from democracy to philosophy, drama to mathematics, the ideas remain influential to this day.

In this essay, I will outline some of the great achievements.

So in the introduction I told the reader that some of the influences from ancient Greeks have been democracy, have been philosophy, drama, mathematics, and then I told them at the end, what I'm going to do in the essay.

I'll say, I will outline some of their great achievements.

So that could be an introduction that you might want to use.

We could use this one.

So the influence of the ancient Greek is all around us, spread by the conquest of Alexander the Great and the Roman Empire, their ideas spread throughout much of the known world.

In this essay, I will showcase their great achievements and explain how these remain influential to this day.

So again, in this one, I'm given a little bit of information about how Greek civilization and its culture was spread.

So, I said it was spread by the Congress of Alexander the Great, but also by the later Roman Empire.

I didn't say what kind of achievements they accomplished.

So may be, I could expand on the introduction, but again, that's one that you could use.

C, says most governments around the world claim to practise some form of democracy, where power is given to the people.

But where did this idea originate from and how did it come to influence the world? In this essay, I will discuss the great achievements by the ancient Greeks, which have had a lasting impact on human development.

What I like about that introduction is that I ask a question of the reader, I'm asking the question, and questions are a good way to get people hooked on.

So I want to know how democracy came to influence the entire world.

I want to know a little bit about how it originated.

So if I want to know those things, I'm going to continue to read and understand.

So that's an introduction that you could use.

So there are three examples of introductions that you might use at the beginning of your essay, but those are the three options.

You can choose the one you like the most and copy it.

You can make pie bits of from each one and you can put it into one, or you can just come up with your own introduction.

So it's up to you.

So what I'm going to do now, is I'm going to make this really big.

I'm going to leave it out for you so that you can copy an introduction, or you can get some inspiration from it.

So at this point pause the video, and then write your introduction.

Okay, I'm wondering which one you chosen.

I would love to see your essays, and I'm going to tell you how to try them at the end of lesson.

So, let's throw our planning table.

And in this table, we are going to be using, we're going to use this table to make a plan.

And we're going to put some keynotes and some key words for each section.

So, this is what you need to do.

You need to split your table into three columns, key information should be the largest column because that's where we get to put our key information and our most important information.

And then for each column, that should be around eight to 10 lines, eight 10 rows, okay? So, at this point, what I want you to do, is I want you to get a ruler and I want you to split your table into three columns and remember that each bit should have at least eight 10 lines for you to write on.

So again, at this point, pause the video and drew your table.

Okay, let's move on to filling our table.

So, let's begin with the first paragraph.

So we're going to split our essay into paragraphs because paragraphs make it easier for the reader to read your work, they are more likely to read your work if it's presented in a manageable way.

And paragraphs are exactly the way that we're going to do that.

And in the first paragraph, we are going to deal with the origins of the ancient Greece.

So on that very left hand side, you're going to write what are the origins of the ancient Greeks.

It's really important to give people some semblance of how the ancient Greeks came to be and who were they.

Let's have like the key vocabulary.

So on the right, you can write Mediterranean, Ionian, Aegean, which are the names of the sea surrounded Greece, remember we only need capital letters because I've named some places and you got mountainous, communication and city-state.

But let me give you the key information.

I'm going to read it to you.

So Greece is in South East Europe, people refer to themselves as "Hellenes" and the region as "Hellas." The mainland is 80% mountains, Greece's geography made communication, farming and travel difficult.

Greece was organised into small city-states.

And then government types included monarchy, oligarchy, tyranny, and democracy.

And in the section, when we come to write it out, there should be a paragraph about how Greece's geography, how have been really mountainous made that really difficult for people to communicate, to travel.

And therefore, people set up city-states, with their own governments, their own laws and their own armies.

So at this point, what I'm going to do, I'm going to say, you should pause the video, and copy this information down into your table.

Okay, let's move onto the next section.

So in paragraph two, we're going to write about democracy, which is one of the most influential legacies of ancient Greece.

So the title is how is democracy developed.

The key vocabulary are Athenian, sorry, democratic, constitution, cleisthenes, demokratia and citizen.

The key information is as follows; So, in 594 BCE, the Athenian ruler, Solon, introduced democratic reforms. He cancelled all that and allow people to own the land they worked.

In 508 BCE, Cleisthenes introduced further reforms. He created three branches of democratic government, the ekklesia, the boule, and the dikasteria.

Where the ekklesia was the assembly, they were in charge of writing the laws, the boule was the council, they were in charge of running the government, and the dikasteria was the courts, they were in charge of handling lawsuits and trials.

Only men who had completed their military training could vote.

So remember that Athenian democracy wasn't exactly equal because women couldn't vote, the poor couldn't vote, only men could vote.

Men who had completed the military training.

But those were the beginnings of democracy itself.

So that's why it's important.

So again, at this point, pause the video and copy that information there.

Okay, let's move on to paragraph three.

And in paragraph three, we're going to talk about the great Greek philosophies.

So title is what I did ancient Greek philosophers have.

So the key vocabulary, it's going to be Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, make sure you use capsulizes for all three of them.

You got questioning, dialogue and debate.

So the key information is Socrates, so from 469 to 399 BCE, that's when he was alive, he was the father of Western philosophy.

He developed the Socratic method based on constant questioning.

Plato 427 to 348 BCE, he documented much of Socrates work, he promoted dialogue and debate.

They got Aristotle 384 to 322 BCE.

He was a student of Plato and he taught Alexander the Great, you want to conquer much of the known world, spreading Greek ideas and influence around.

So in this essay, you're going to have to mention how the Greek philosophers began to move the world away from myth and superstition to one based on logic and reasoning.

In the case of Socrates, you're going to have to say that his ideas was so radical and such a threat to the elite, to the powerful that he was tried, and he was sentenced to death.

And all of their ideas from Socrates and Plato, Aristotle, they're still influential to this time.

So at some point, pause the video and copy the information now.

Great work my friends.

I know there's a lot of information, but we're going to keep going so that we can write an awesome essay.

So paragraph four.

This one is going to talk about the Greek influence on maths, architecture, and science.

So the title is how do the ancient Greeks influence maths, architecture and science.

The key vocabulary geometry, Pythagoras from the capital letter; it's a name of a person, architecture, the Parthenon and Hippocrates.

One is the name of a place, second one is the name of person, medicine and science.

So, let's have a look at the key information.

So Plato, believe that geometry was the key to understanding the world.

Pythagoras developed the Pythagoras theorem, which is to find the length of sides of right angles.

Greeks implemented the knowledge of maths into architecture.

Hippocrates taught that diseases had natural causes and some of them have natural remedies.

Aristotle classified animals and develop the field of science.

So in regards to architecture, in this part of the essay, you can have to talk about how the Greek style of architecture with the columns is still copied and has been replicated in many buildings around the world.

And remember that I showed you a picture of the US Supreme Court building, which is very much in the style of Greek architecture.

The Greek architecture is very popular around the world and has been replicated in many parts.

So again, at this point, pause the video and copy that information now.

Okay, let's move on to paragraph five.

And paragraph five is all about.

I can't get it up.

Paragraph five is all about the impact that Greeks had on drama, literature and sport.

Key vocabulary is alphabet, Dionysus, tragedies, Odyssey, Illiad, Herodotus and Thucydides.

Got that right.

Now can information.

The Greek alphabet is the basis for much of the English alphabet.

Drama originated as part of the festival to the god Dionysus.

Two genres with developed, tragedies and comedy.

The poet Homer wrote two epic poems, the Odessey and the Illiad, Herodotus and Thucydides developed the field of history.

I'm just marking because Thucydides has been the bane of my life.

Tricky word spell, tricky what side? And the last one, the first Olympic games were held in 776 BCE in Olympia.

Now, in regards to drama, you can have to mention that much of what we watch now in regards to films and TV, is based on original Greek ideas.

In terms of Homer, Homer's work, the Illiad and the Odyssey, it's still read and discussed today, nearly 2,800 years after it was first written.

So that's how influential it is.

Herodotus and Thucydides develop the field of history, making the subject more scientific, we have a greater focus on research.

So that's the impact on history.

In your essay, you also going to have to mention that the original Olympics, they ended some time between 393 and 394 AD.

They were revived around 1500 years later by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, with the first modern games being held in Athens in 1896 AD.

And the Olympic games, which are now held every four years, another visible sign of ancient Greek influence on the modern world.

So again, at this point, I want you to pause video and copy that information now.

Okay, let's move on to the last paragraph.

In this paragraph, we're going to talk about ancient Greeks inventions and how we know so much about them.

Key vocabulary is cartography, persian, battle, military, and Romans.

Now, ancient Greeks are credited as inventing the water mill.

And then the alarm clock and for developing cartography, which is map making.

Reasons why we know so much about the ancient Greeks include Alexander the Great, he spread Greek culture and events rather than wealth, for his 10 years of conquest.

Alexander the Great also conquered the Persian Empire, remember that he never lost a battle, zero defeats.

He used ingenious military tactics, which are still studied to this day.

And then the Romans, they conquered Greece in 146 BCE.

The Romans were heavily influenced by the ancient Greeks, and they adopted a lot of their culture, a lot of the customs, and remember a lot of that gods.

A lot of ancient Greek Roman gods, alleged ancient Roman gods had origins in ancient Greek gods as well.

So you should talk a little bit about that as well.

Then at this point, pause the video and get that information now.

Okay my friends, let's move onto the last section.

And in this last section, what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you some key tips for how to write a really great essay.

And then I'm going to show you how I turned the notes into paragraphs, and then at the very end, we'll have some conclusions that you could use to finish up our essays.

So the steps to success are as follows, there's four of them.

You got to write in full sentences, because this is more professional, essays are always written in full sentences.

And it's going to allow you to include more, much more detail than if you were to write in bullet points.

Number two is you going to write, you're going to include key information and key vocabulary, that could be names of places, names of battles, which we looked at when we studied Alexander the Great, it could be key dates.

All of those things are really important, when you write an historic, an essay on history.

Dates, names, places really, really important.

Number three, leave a line between each paragraph.

The reason for that is just because it makes it a lot easier to read.

You might have seen some work that has no paragraphs at all.

That is really, really difficult to read.

It's also not enjoyable.

You want your reader to want to read your essay.

And the best way to do that is to present that by having paragraphs between each section.

And then the last one is you could imagine that you're explaining this topic about ancient Greeks to someone who's never learned it before.

You guys are not the experts on ancient Greece, because you have done all of these lessons.

So you got to use that.

You got to use that to your advantage and the way that you're going to do that in an essay, is you're going to give them as much information as you remember about this topic.

So be the experts.

So the steps to success, write in full sentences, include key information and key vocabulary, dates, names of places, names of battles, names of people, that's key information.

Leave a line between each paragraph, it makes it a lot more presentable, it makes it a lot easier to read.

And then number four, imagine you are explain to someone who's never heard about ancient Greece.

So you can give them as much information as you can acting as the experts that you have become.

So that's the types that we've discussed.

Now, this is the way that I turn some of my notes into short paragraphs.

So, this is the first section, which is about what are the origins of the ancient Greeks.

Let me read the three and then I'll explain what I did.

So, Modern Greece is a country in South Eastern Europe.

It has a population of around 10.

7 million people and its capital is Athens.

Before the Conquest of the region by the Romans, the people in this region called themselves "Hellenes", referring to where they lived as "Hellas." For much of its history, ancient Greece was not a unified country.

Instead it was collection of city-states, each one with their own government, laws and army.

This was mainly due to Greece geography, with 80% of the mainland being mountainous.

So you can see that I only use around half of the information and I haven't yet finished.

So, modern Greece, the reason why I highlight these two is just because I wanted to show my mistake.

I wanted to show that you got to begin with capital letters if it's names of places, but also if it comes at beginning of a sentence.

So remember that you got to use punctuation as well.

So capital letters for names of places or for proper nouns.

Like how I split my writing into paragraphs, makes it a lot easier, makes it really easy to read, makes it easy to digest.

Again, I've given you some of the key information.

So I told you that modern Greece is a country in South Eastern Europe.

I told you that people used to call themselves Hellenes, and the region is called Hellas.

I could have said a little bit more about modern Greece.

I could have said that surrounded by the Mediterranean, the Ionian and the Aegean, but I can still do that later on because I was going to tell my reader that the reason why ancient Greece was split into city-states was due to the geography.

So I started there in that, by saying 80% of the mainland is mountainous.

After that, I was going to say that that made it difficult for communication, for firemen to travel, and therefore ancient Greece came to rely upon the seas for trade and for communication.

So that's what I was going to say in the next section.

But you can see that that's a really good start because I written it into paragraphs, I got lots of information down and I'm writing it into full sentences.

So, that's how you turn the notes that you made into full sentences and into paragraphs.

So, I'm going to leave this off just for you to have look, you can make paragraphs, you can copy some of this information now, but I would rather, you try to have a go on your own.

So, let's a look at the last section, which is about writing our conclusion.

Now, in the conclusion you're going to summarise your main arguments for why the ancient Greeks were a great civilization.

And in this essay, this could be a rundown of some of the great achievements by the Greeks.

You could just list the things that they did.

You could have mention some of the things that have had the most lasting impact such as democracy, drama and the Olympics, because those are things that are still really influential to this day, specially democracy, the Olympics as well.

Now, let's have a look at the three options.

You can choose the one that you like, you can copy it, or you can adapt it to make your own.

So, you could say the Ancient Greeks have had a lasting impact on world.

I hope this essay has convinced you as to why they are considered to be one of the greatest civilizations in history.

Okay, another one.

The influence of the Ancient Greeks cannot be underestimated.

Their culture, ideas, and inventions have stood the test of time and continue to influence the modern world.

This is why I believe the ancient Greece were one of the greatest civilizations in history.

I liked that bit about stood.

Their culture, ideas, and inventions have stood the test of time.

Whoever write that, I like that mm-hmm hmm.

And then the last one, could be the ancient Greeks are one of the greatest civilizations in human history, from democracy to philosophy, from maths to architecture, their ideas have influenced humanity for over 2,500 years.

This is truly the hallmark of a great civilization.

I found I really liked that one, when I write my essay, because I'm going to have to go writing to this, I think I'm going to choose conclusion say, but guys, you can choose any of them or you can mix them up, you can take a bit from each one and make into your own, or you can just try and yourself and have a go at creating your own one.

So I'm going to leave this one up for you to choose.

And guys, that is the end of the lesson, and there's the end of the unit.

It's now time, or your one last time to complete your end of lesson quiz.

And if you like to, if you like to share your assays that you're going to write, then please ask your parent or carer to share them.

They can do an Instagram, they can be on Facebook, they can do a Titter.

They're going to tag @OakNational and they could use the #LearnwithOak.

So, when you write your essay, please, please, please do share it.

But you got to ask your parent or carer to do that for you.

I hope you really enjoyed this unit.

I think the ancient Greeks are one of the most interested in civilizations to have ever lived.

And I hope I managed to teach you some new things, I definitely learned some new things along the way.

So I hope you really enjoyed the unit.

And thank you so much for all of your hard work.

And I shall see you in another lesson maybe.

Goodbye my friends.