A Thousand Stories…

History for me is a love story. I hope you grow to love it too.

Dear 7B,

I love teaching History because it is full of stories. Sometimes I almost forget that I’m doing this as a job. I have a group of bright-faced students in front of me, asking me questions and hearing my stories. The students begin to tell me things that they’ve found out themselves or they ask me questions I can’t answer. Somewhere along the way, they begin to teach me too.  

What, I get paid for this?

In Year 7 History you learn about the human story, how we started out as hunters and gatherers and gradually changed into farmers and herders, then began to build settlements and cities, learned to write and became, over the millennia, technological whizzes and the most powerful species on the planet. Not all of those changes were positive. Some of them were environmentally destructive; many led to suffering and human cost. But the story is still a fascinating one.

This is what I look like. Sort of. Without the wrinkles and other unnecessary details.

I hope that you enjoy hearing this story and developing your skills as a historian, story-teller, writer and technological whizz. I hope you enjoy being part of our school and getting to know each other too. Don’t forget to ask me if you get lost!

Kind regards,

Ms Green

Below there is a little quiz for you to try. See how clever you are at guessing the details. At the end, you will get a little report with explanations to help you understand why your answer was right (or wrong).

The Quizlet below allows you to learn and revise the words you will encounter at the start of the course in Year 7 History. After you have cycled through the digital cards, you can click on “Scatter” and play a simple matching game. The other option is “Space Race”, which is dangerously addictive.

Incidentally, the Quizlet website allows you to make your own digital flashcards, just like the ones below, so that you learn the vocabulary for a language, science or any other topic. You can set up your own account, provided you have an email address. This could help you as you navigate your way through everything you have to learn at high school!

Quizlet sign up

Your final task: Write a short comment in which you describe an important event in your personal history. How have you coped with your first few days at high school? Were you anxious beforehand? What helped you to settle in? Have you been lost yet? Don’t forget, no family names and nothing that could personally identify you. 

Night of Notables 2012

Below is a tiny gallery of your wonderful work from Tuesday night. I will add more soon. In the meantime, it would be lovely if you could all create a sub-wiki in which you comment on the night, the project, what you enjoyed, what you found difficult and the work of others that you admired.

Kind regards and admiration from Ms Green

Click here to create your sub-wiki

Gus’s costume made everyone want to play the next level.
By all accounts Brooke’s macaroons were delectable. Sob.
Bao’s poster for A. A. Milne showed part of the 100-acre wood.
Nick’s “question box” was a paint palette in the colours of a starry, starry night.

 

Nick created his own painting of those golden sunflowers.
Ali designed a palette of a different kind, demonstrating the vibrant colours of her own creative mind and of her notable artist, Georgia O’Keefe.
Ben’s drawing of H. G. Wells’ invisible man

The Last Days of Pompeii and Herculaneum

 

In Pompeii, the ghosts of the past speak to us still.

 

 

 

The plaster models in the ruins of Pompeii allow us to picture the last moments of the people and the animals: we can still see the slave tearing at his leg irons, the dog writhing in pain, the people clasped together in love and despair.

Their graffiti also tells us something about their lives before they suffered that inferno of pumice and gas rolling over their city:

Lovers are like bees in that they live a honeyed life.
Atimetus has got me pregnant.
I hope your piles irritate you so that they burn like they’ve never burned before.
Nobody is gallant unless he has loved.
If anyone does not believe in Venus, he should gaze at my girlfriend.

Below are more fascinating details about Vesuvius and Pompeii:

Pompeii - VesuviusThe bread of the rich contained yeast and therefore was soft and fluffy. The bread of the poor was unleavened (containing no yeast) and was therefore flat and hard, a little like pita bread. You see, inequality permeates even the most basic aspects of life.

Pompeii - mosaicPeople used dice in Pompeii and they were not above cheating. Loaded dice have been found in the city; they had been weighted to fall on some numbers more often.

Pompeii - paved streetMost of the people who died in Pompeii survived for the first 22 hours or so, but were killed by the intense heat and buried by the series of pyroclastic surges between 6.30 and 7.30am on August 25th, 79AD (almost 24 hours after the first explosion from Vesuvius).

Pompeii with VesuviusThe ash, pumice and sand reached a height of 4 metres, burying the buildings so effectively that after several years had passed, people began to forget where the city had once stood. It was only in 1744 that a farmer who was digging his land touched a statue with his shovel, accidentally discovering the most important archaeological site ever found.

Pompeii - columnsEven though 2,000 people died, it is estimated that 10,000 people survived. They were the ones who fled from the city well before the pyroclastic surges began in the early hours of 25th August.

Pompeii courtyardPliny the Younger, who wrote the sole surviving eye-witness account of the eruption, had this type of volcanic event named after him. A “Plinian” eruption is one characterised by repeated explosions.

This video formed part of the Melbourne Museum’s exhibition on Pompeii in 2009. I watched it there in 3D and had the feeling that I was about to be hit by a piece of pumice or covered in volcanic ash. It was unnerving but unforgettable. I felt relieved to be safely in the future world. 

Use the recommended sites below to find out more about Pompeii and Herculaneum. Write a comment in which you

(a) inform others of what you have discovered. Make sure you save your comment in a Word file as well.

(b) comment on the graffiti above. What does it tell us about the people who lived in ancient Pompeii?

How Stuff Works: What would happen if Vesuvius erupted today? This link also includes a number of slides showing the site of Pompeii today.

Pliny – a Primary Source: Don’t try to read this whole document, but skim through it. This account shows you how people reacted at the time.

An Account from the Smithsonian

Excellent photos of Pompeii along with an artist’s reconstruction