Mega Greek Online: Session 2

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Symbols & Stars

Tuesday 5th May, 11am

If you want to join the lesson, contact charlie@classicsforall.org.uk for the Zoom code.

Materials you’ll need

Session structure

Part 1 – introduction & hellos

Our mascot for this lesson is the Athena, goddess of wisdom and learning. As we saw last week, her symbol is an owl which is still used today to represent wisdom.

As usual, we’ll start our session by greeting each other with a big ‘khairete!’

Part 2 – That funny Greek alphabet

Last week we learned that many English words come to us from Ancient Greek. Well, did you know that our alphabet is also descended from Ancient Greece too? At first glance it may look entirely different, but look closer and you’ll be able to see similarities. Using our Greek alphabet sheets, we’ll read some names and then write our own. Please email pictures of your Greek names to me after the session and I’ll put them on the Maximum Classics website.

Part 3 –  Worksheet Task: Science Words

Here are some Ancient Greek science words. Can you think of any English words that come from them? Once you’ve found some related English words, you can practice transliterating (i.e. writing the Greek words with Greek letters). You’ll have ten minutes to go through your worksheet. You can work on your own or with a partner (Mum/Dad/brother/sister). Do the easy ones first, and do as many as you can. If you have any questions or need any help, type in the chat box. After ten minutes, we’ll go through the answers.

Part 4 – Quiz : What Did the Greeks Discover?

We’ll split up into teams – Goddesses (Girls) v. Gods (Boys). Can your time correctly guess whether or not a certain scientific discovery was made in Ancient Greece or elsewhere. If it’s your team’s turn to answer, you can type Yes or No into the chat box.

Part 5 – Looking at the stars

The stars in the sky were very important to Ancient Greeks, as they worked out how to use them to navigate and plot courses for their boats. To remember which starts were which, they grouped them into constellations and made up. Here’s a map of some of the constellations and myths. After the lesson’s finished, see if you can spot each constellation on the map.

After-session activities & links

Find the constellations: https://maximumclassics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/mg2-constellations.pdf

Listen to more about the myth of Cygnus: http://classictales.educ.cam.ac.uk/stories/metamorphoses/cygnus/index.html

Watch the Disney film Hercules to see a fun, modern interpretation of the myth.

Session rules

  1. 🤐 Stay on mute! Everyone needs to be on mute, otherwise things could get very noisy! If you want to answer a question, type in the text box.
  2. 💻 Be patient! If the lesson’s Internet connection goes down, I will switch to another network. This may take a couple of minutes but the Zoom room will stay open.
  3. 📝Be prepared! Have all the materials you’ll need (listed above) ready.
  4. 🤓Have fun! Ancient Greece is awesome (but I may be slightly biased).

Quick note

I’ll be recording the session for training and monitoring purposes. However, the video will only be shown within the Classics For All organisation and won’t be made available for wider viewing.