Lesson video

Hello to my fellow historians, and welcome to this first lesson on the unit on Ancient Greece.

My name is Mr. Pedrozza, and I am extremely excited to be teaching you this unit.

When I was in school a long, long time ago, as you can tell by my many wrinkles.

I was absolutely fascinated about learning about this period of history.

There are so many interesting things to learn about the ancient Greeks.

And I can't wait to share everything I know with you, as well as learn some new things myself.

So let's get started by looking at the question you will be answering in this lesson.

So the question that we're going to answer is, how was ancient Greece organised? Let's have a look at the lesson structure.

So we can begin with a star words.

I'm going to share some key vocabulary, then we'll have a look at what Greece actually is, we're going to try to find it on a map.

Then I'll tell you a little bit about Greece's geography.

And then we'll have a look at the Greek city-states.

And then at the very end is the end of lesson quiz.

And the end lesson quiz is always going to be part, it's always going to come at the end of each lesson.

So make sure you do that as it's going to help you to recap all of the learning that you do.

So, let's look at the things that you're going to need.

You're going to need your exercise book or a piece of paper where you can write some notes.

You're going to need a pencil or a pen, and then you're going to also need a ruler.

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

Be quick.

Super speedy course.

Okay let's have a look at the star words.

We've got five words, we've got geography, port, polis, government and democracy.

Let's begin with geography, and geography are the physical features of an area on the earth surface.

The physical features of an area and the surface is referred to as geography.

Then we have port.

A port is a place where ships load and unload cargo.

A place where ships load and unload cargo is known as a port.

Good job.

Next one, we've got a polis, my turn and your turn, polis, polis, good job.

And a polis is a city-state, which is like a small country within a region of Greece.

Then we've got a government.

A government is the type of system by which a community, a state or a nation is governed.

The government is a type of system by which it communities, state or nation is governed, good job.

And last, we got democracy and democracy is a form of government in which power rests with the people, either directly or through elected representatives.

So let's begin by finding Greece.

Now in this unit, we're going to study the history of ancient Greece.

You might think, well, why are we studying about Greece? And the reason for that is that ancient Greece was one of the greatest, it's one of the greatest and most influential civilizations that has been in history.

The ancient Greeks were great thinkers, they were great warriors, they were writers, actors, athletes, artists, architects, and politicians, and their achievements have left a lasting imprint on the world.

This is why ancient Greece is sometimes known as a classical period, or classical antiquity, because of his great achievements, and long lasting influence over the rest of the world.

But do you guys know where Greece is? Here, I'm showing you a map of a continent.

What continent do you think I'm showing you a map of? That's right, is the continent of Europe.

So what countries can you recognise on this continent? Can you recognise the UK? Point to the UK.

If you said the UK is this island here, then you're absolutely right.

Okay, so now that we know that, now we can recognise where the UK is, have a go, where do you think Greece might be? So that's the United Kingdom.

Maybe you maybe even to Greece on holiday.

Okay, ready? Three, two, one.

And Greece is over here.

So if you pointed that Greece on the map, awesome job, well done, well found.

So the red shaded part shows modern Greece.

So let's zoom in you ready? Three, two, one, zoom in.

Now modern Greece, So Greece today is a country in South Eastern Europe.

And it has a population around 10.

9 million people.

And its capital is the City of Athens.

The capital is the City of Athens, good job.

And Athens has a population of approximately 3 million people.

So let's have a look at your very first task on the unit of ancient Greece.

So there you go to complete a sentence, modern Greece is located in South East, what continent is Greece in? Have a think, have a go.

Pause the video and complete this task.

Did you get it right, tell me that you got it right, are you ready, three, two, one, Modern Greece is located in South East Europe, awesome job guys, well done.

Now let's have a look.

Modern Greece is surrounded by three seas.

Is surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea, the Aegean Sea and the Ionian Sea.

Let's try and find them on the map.

So you've got the Mediterranean Sea here, you got the Aegean Sea, and you got the Ionian Sea.

So three seas surround modern Greece.

The mainland of Greece is 80% mountains, and it's surrounded by more than 1000 smaller islands.

So this is a Greek mainland here.

And then you can see around the mainland, there are around 1000 islands.

Now Greece, enjoys hot summers and enjoys mild winters.

So that in ancient times, people actually spend a lot of time outside working and chatting with their neighbours.

So next question, how many seas is modern Greece surrounded by? Is modern Greece surrounded by two seas? Is it surrounded by three seas, is surrounded by four seas, is it surrounded by five? Have a think, how many seas is modern Greece surrounded by.

A, B, C or D? At this point, pause the video and then have a go.

Okay, let's see if you remember how many seas modern Greece is surrounded by.

So how many seas is modern Greece surrounded by? It is surrounded by A, B, or C, D? It's B, it's surrounded by three seas.

So modern Greece is surrounded by three seas, the Mediterranean Sea, the Aegean sea and the Ionian Sea.

Excellent job guys.

Well done.

I'm going to leave this answer up so that you can copy it down, so that way you can check it against your own.

Awesome, good job guys, well done.

Okay, let's continue learning about Greece's geography.

So in ancient Greece, so now we're moving back to ancient Greece.

In ancient Greece, communication and long journeys by land were really difficult, because the mountainous terrain, and the mountainous terrain actually may travel also very difficult.

And it was really difficult to farm on the rocky hillsides.

So fishing and trade became really important part of people's daily lives.

And a very famous ancient Greek philosopher, and writer called Plato, once wrote, "That the Greeks did not live on the land, but around the sea, like frogs on a pond." But due to Greece's mountainous geography, it's really difficult to farm, it was really difficult to travel, it was really difficult to communicate between each other.

And therefore the seas and ports and fishing, and sailing became really important part of their lives.

So let's have a look at this answer.

So what specific feature of Greece's geography made farming, travel and communication difficult? What is it about Greece is geography that made all those things really difficult, back in ancient times? Have a look, pause the video and complete this task.

Okay, let's have a look, ready? So what specific feature of Greece's geography made farming, travel and communication difficult? So the answer is Greece's mountainous terrain, made farming, farming, travel and communication, difficult, meaning that the seas and ports became an important part of everyday life.

So the specific feature that made all those things difficult is the mountainous terrain.

So again, at this point, I'm going to pause the video, you can pause the video too check your answer against mine.

Okay, let's move on.

So now that we know where Greece is, Greece, we know is in South Eastern Europe.

We know a little bit about its geography, we know it's surrounded by three seas, the Mediterranean, the Ionian and the Aegean sea.

We know that it's really mountainous.

How did that impact the development of Greece during ancient times? So let's find out.

So this unique geography of rocky mountains, seas and islands, it meant there was no unified Greek empire.

That meant that it wasn't, Greece wasn't one big country, like it is now.

The people at the time did not refer to themselves as being Greeks.

Instead, they call themselves Hellenes.

And they call the area that they lived in as Hellas.

It was the Romans much later on, who gave the name Greece, to the region.

So in this task, what I want you to do is I want you to use the keywords.

So you got unified, Romans, Hellenes, you got Greece, mountainous and Hellas.

Find out where, what you got to do is you got to figure out where these word are going to go in the sentences.

Once you think you've got it, write the sentences down, and once you've written your sentence down, check them by reading them to yourself.

So at this point, pause the video and then have a go.

Okay, let's check those sentences.

Are you ready? For much of its history, ancient Greece was not a unified empire.

Its mountainous terrain made it difficult to unify the country.

People refer to themselves as Hellenes and they referred to the area they lived in as Hellas.

It was the Romans, which named the area as Greece.

And so we got unified there, we got mountainous.

We got Hellenes, we got Hellas, we got Romans, and then we have Greece.

make sure that for Hellenes, Hellas, Romans and Greece, you have started those words with capital letters, because they are names.

So make sure you do that.

At this point, I'm going to pause the video, so you can check your answer against my own.

Awesome job guys.

Well done, okay, let's move on to next.

As we learned earlier, people in ancient Greece, they lived in smaller communities, they lived in smaller cities known as a polis, or a city-state.

And each city-state ruled itself.

That means that they had their own governments, their own laws, and even their own army.

The city-states were connected by the seas and the ports, and they tended to be located in the valleys between the mountains, or on coastal plains.

So let's have a look at this one, is a true or false question.

People in ancient Greece live in cities states, each one had its own government, laws and army.

Is that true or is that false? True or false? Pause the video and complete that task.

Okay, let's look at the answer to this question.

So people in ancient Greece lived in city-states, each one has his own government, laws and army, is that true, or is that false? It is true.

Okay, so let's find out a little bit more about Greek city-states.

So the ancient Greek city-states had a lot of different types of government, because they all lived independently of each other.

And one of the reasons why they were also independent from each other was because of Greece's geography.

Remember, Greece's geography is really mountainous, it made it really difficult for travel, communication, and so on.

Therefore, each Greek city-state, developed in their own independent way.

So let's find out a bit more about it.

So what kind of governments that Greek city-states have? Well, there could be monarchies, where kings ruled, and they pass the powers on to their heirs.

There could be an oligarchy, where an elite few ruled over the people, there could be a tyranny, where one ruler sees power through strength and force.

Or there could also be a democracy, where people were citizens, and they could vote to choose their own rulers.

Now direct democracy where people voted to choose their own rulers emerged in the city of Athens.

And it lasted for around 100 years, between 500 and 400 BC.

However, I think in democracy, excluded slaves, excluded women, and excluded the poor.

So therefore, it was mainly men, is primarily men who could vote, and those men had to have a certain amount of wealth.

They could not be poor, they could not be slaves.

So it wasn't a very democratic system of government.

Here I have two questions, which I would love to prompt some really high level thinking from you.

So, under which type of government would you have liked to live in if you were back in ancient Greece, and why, why would you want to live under that type of government? And then my next question, this trick question, actually, what do you think is unfair about the different types of government? I think there's something unfair about each of them.

There's something unfair about the monarchy, there's something unfair about the oligarchy, there's something unfair about tyranny.

And there was a little bit, there was something unfair about Athenian democracy.

Remember, in Athenian democracy only men could vote.

Women couldn't vote, poor people couldn't vote, slaves couldn't vote.

So what's unfair about that system? So at this point, what I like to do, pause the video, if you are with someone next you, then you can have a discussion with them.

If you're working on your own, then I would love you to write your own ideas.

And once we come back, I will share my thinking.

So I just pause the video and then have a go.

Okay, let's have a look.

I would love to hear your answers.

And I would love to hear your, I would love to read your thinking.

So, let's have a look, we have the monarchy, where the rulers pass on they pass to their heirs, we had the oligarchy, where an elite few ruled over the people, we had the tyranny, where one person, one strong ruler, was in control and then we had democracy, where people could vote for their representatives, But in a Athene democracy, only if you're a man of a certain amount of wealth.

In my thinking, I think all of the systems of government in ancient Greek city-states, they were all unfair.

And the monarchies, people didn't have much say, in who their rulers were, as power was transferred from the king to their heirs.

There's no system, you couldn't vote for who the king was going to be.

Under an oligarchy, only the rich and the powerful, have any power.

Again, that's not very fair.

And the tyranny, again, the problem here would be that all power is held by one single person, who would have got that power for strength and force and the use of violence.

In my opinion, if I had been alive in ancient Greece, I would have wanted to live in a democracy, because I would have had some power to choose my rulers.

However, if I had been poor, or if I had been a slave, I would not have had any rights.

Also, remember that women didn't have any voting rights either.

So the system was not very fair at all.

But still, I think that type of democracy was still better than monarchy, it was still better than oligarchy, and it was still better than tyranny.

I wonder what you guys made of that.

So let's move on.

So some of the main city-states in ancient Greece were as follows.

So here's a map of some of the key ancient Greek city-states.

So you've got Athens, and Athens is the most famous of the Greek city-states.

Remember, Athens is the current capital of modern Greece.

And Athens was the home of democracy, where people were allowed to vote for their own rulers.

Next one, we have Knossos, so we got Athens here, and then we have Knossos on the island of Crete.

Now, Knossos was the oldest city in the whole of ancient Greece.

And it was located on the island of Crete, not on the Greek main island.

Knossos was the centre of the Minoan civilization.

Next one, we've got Olympia.

We have Athens, we have Knossos, and we have Olympia here.

Now, Olympia was the site of the original Olympic Games, where all of the different Greek city-states would send athletes to compete.

And then lastly, we have Sparta.

We had Athens, Athens is here, we have Knossos on the island of Crete, we have Olympia, and then we have Sparta.

Now, why Sparta famous? Well, Sparta is famous for developing the greatest warriors of all of ancient Greece.

Boys in Sparta would leave their families to begin training as soldiers at the age of seven.

Whoa, imagine being seven, and being trained to be a soldier.

That seems very tough.

Now, let's complete this sentence here.

So we got a sentence here and he have three key words that you can use, you can use the word Greece, rulers or Athens.

Now that Greece and Athens, you got to use capital letters, because they're proper nouns they're names of places.

So at this point, pause the video, and then have a go.

Okay, let's have a look and see what the answer is, ready is the answer.

So the city of Athens is viewed as the home of democracy, where people voted for their own rulers.

It is the capital of Greece today.

But remember, the key point to make about Athenian democracy is that even though it was a better system than the other forms of government like monarchy, oligarchy and tyranny, it wasn't great because you can only vote if you're a man of a certain amount of wealth.

You couldn't vote if you're a woman, if you were poor, or if you're a slave.

Not great at all.

Guys, that is the end of your lesson.

So create work today.

It's now time to complete your end of lesson quiz.

If you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to share any of your work.

And they can do that on Instagram.

They can do it on Facebook, they can go on Twitter, they got to tag @OakNational, and they got to use the hashtag #LearnwithOak.

So please ask your parents or carers to share your work for you.

Awesome job guys, well done.

I hope you enjoyed our first lesson on this unit on ancient Greece.

I'm so excited to be learning about it.

You can probably tell by my massive smile and the way I'm talking in a very good way.

So thank you so much for all of your hard work today.

I hope to see you for our next lesson.

Goodbye my friends.