Year 8 History Studies Ancient Egypt
Year 8 have been enjoying their recent unit, ‘Ancient Egypt’. They have been learning about the social stratification of Egyptian society, beliefs and practices and warfare. Year 8’s major assessment this year is on Tutankhamun to mark the 100 years since the discovery of his tomb in 1922. Students have been making an exhibition booklet choosing ten items from his tomb that best represent the ten major themes they have been studying.
One of the key learning strategies has been to make the unit ‘hands on’. Class 8.2 had a great deal of fun mummifying one of their classmates - Janae B. They followed the key steps of mummification from extracting the brain through the nose, to putting key organs in canopic jars and placing the death mask on the body. Wrapping the ‘mummy’ always arouses the most excitement and we are fortunate the covid toilet paper shortages have eased up!
8.2 also enjoyed creating a cartouche of their own name in hieroglyphics. A cartouche is an oval shaped frame that encloses the name of an Egyptian royal. Students were able to translate their names into hieroglyphics using a web translator and then carve their names into air drying clay. Students were also able to make some Egyptian artefacts using ‘Eye of Horus’ and ‘Ankh’ cutters and molds of Egyptian gods and mummies using air drying clay. We thank the History Club, as these molds/cutters were purchased from prize money the club won in the Anzac Day Schools Award in 2020.
Now Year 8 is proceeding on to learning about Ancient China.
Fran Musico-Rullo - HSIE Teacher
