Welcome to Year 8 History!

My name is Ms Green. History was my first love – then came Psychology, blogging, German, French… What are you passionate about? 

Dear Year 8 Students,

Welcome to my class and my blog. I hope that you will enjoy the stories, adventures and mysteries of history this year.

This blog is a simple navigation aid that will help you to find the next station.

I started writing this blog way back in 2008. It is called “Emit Repoons on a Mission” (see why here) and it is rather like an online railway station with lots of platforms to direct you towards all the reading and research options that you will need to study this subject. There are also lots of activities such as quizzes and crosswords. You can find many topics that we shall be covering this semester under the menu above: “The Middle Ages”.

Sometimes, given my age, I feel like someone from the Middle Ages myself, but of course that is an exaggeration. Compared to you, I am indeed rather advanced in age. I was already 7 years old when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon. When the Berlin Wall fell, I was 27 years old; at that time, I believed naively that the world was about to become a safer, better and more tolerant place. In the year when the first iPhone came onto the market, I was 45. I did not realise then that this type of gadget would make it possible to carry around 20 dictionaries, 100 books, several movies and a thousand songs in my pocket. Although I have resisted many of the temptations of the social media age (such as Facebook), I am certainly a disciple of book downloading on a whim – and of blogging.

Can you figure out from all these hints how old I am?

The first humans land on the moon, 1969

The Berlin Wall falls, 1989

The first i-Phone, 2007

Life was unrecognisably different in the Middle Ages: technological changes developed far more slowly; most people couldn’t read; the concept of voting for your leaders was generally unheard of; and people were far less mobile, both physically and socially. And yet some aspects of life then still seem familiar to us now: there were frightening and unexplained diseases; wars and conflict were common and widespread; there was a huge gulf between the wealthy and the poor; and the common people often faced injustice, oppression and tyranny.

Vikings attack other lands in the 8th and 9th centuries

King John signs the Magna Carta, 1215

Black Death strikes Europe, 1348

I hope that you will enjoy learning about this period of human history in the next five months. Our course includes units based in both Europe and Japan, with a quick visit to the Mongolian Empire thrown in for good measure. We shall get around!

Kind regards from Ms Green

Write a Comment

After our first few classes about the legacies of the Romans and the fall of Western Rome, I would like you to write a short comment in answer to one or more of these questions:

  • What is a legacy that you would like to leave?
  • What is an event in your life that has left an impression on you or influenced you?

Essential Words

  • medieval: A Latin word meaning “Middle Ages”
  • Middle Ages: The time between the ancient period (ending in AD 476) and the modern period (starting roughly in 1500)
  • BC is equivalent to BCE: Before Christ is equivalent to Before the Common Era
  • AD is equivalent to CE: Anno Domini (time since the birth of Christ) is equivalent to the Common Era

Essential Links

My interactive timeline of the Middle Ages

♦ Blog Page: The Fall of the Western Roman Empire

Presentation on the Fall of Western Rome

[embeddoc url=”https://year7historygr.edublogs.org/files/2018/07/Introduction-to-the-Middle-Ages-Semester-2-2018-Year-8-History-Reduced-Size-1sik7xr-1tadtl4.pdf” height=”560px” download=”all” viewer=”google” ]

 

Off to Egypt

A Message from Emit We’re off! Llatiwonk made me do all the safety checks first. Yesterday she even forced me to learn some basic hieroglyphics. It’s not necessary when I have my language chip in my pocket pod, but she thought it would help me to get the feel of the new mission. “I have a knack for languages,” she said, “but even with your language chip you sometimes make the most dreadful mistakes.” Well, it is true, but I wish she wouldn’t remind me of it.

Time to do some advance reading. I refuse to let Llatiwonk tell me everything this time. I’m going to surprise her with my brilliance, my forethought, my sheer genius for archaeological delving…

________________________________________________________

 Your Work for Today:

As you play the Mummy Maker game, try to learn about all the steps of mummification. You may need some clues from Miuty the cat.

 

Don’t worry too much about making a mistake. You can learn from your mistakes, and you can always play the game again.

 

The game tells you what the ancient Egyptians believed that made them mummify bodies with such care and skill. Fill in the blanks below as you read.

Mummy-Maker Game at the BBC Website    

(arrow from animatedclipart.net)                           

Copy this into a blank Word file and fill in the answers. Then paste it into your workbook. Don’t forget to save your work!

 

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN MUMMIFICATION BELIEFS

 

Fill in the blanks below:

 

The ancient Egyptians believed that after you died, your __ travelled to the ______. You would be judged by _____, the Lord of the Underworld. Your ___ and ___ would be reunited if you were judged to have been a ____ person. Then you could live eternally in ______.

 

But your soul had to be able to ______ your body, so the ______ had to look as it had looked when you were alive. That’s why they _______ people.

 

The person who did this skilful but messy job was called an _______.  He had to remove _____ and _____, and wrap the body in such a way as to give it ______ protection.

 

Once you’ve finished this task, you are free to do some web research for your assignment. Don’t forget to list all your websites in a file so that you can give me a bibliography.

Kind regards from Ros.

 

Hello, 7A!

Ros cropped with mosaic bgI think I’ve learned all your names now but you might still have to correct me. 

 Welcome to your first semester of History. We start with the Stone Age and end with the Romans. You could call the course “From Caves to Colosseums” or something like that. 

Here are some pictures to show you some of the topics we’ll be covering:

Cave Painter  Mummy tapping man on shoulderGreece parthenon clipCaesar 5

_______________________________________________________________

Emit Repoons

Emit Repoons, by the way, is an intergalactic archaeologist. Can you figure out what his name means? He’s a wild adventurer with a very smart buddy called Llatiwonk. She has superchips instead of neural pathways but she’s a very nice person in her robotic way.

Don’t forget to save this blog to your FAVOURITES and take home your note to your parents. That’s your only homework!
Kind regards,

Ros

Want to test your knowledge?

 Click here to do Stone Age Quiz

To find out more about Emit Repoons and see a cartoon of his arrival in Egypt, click HERE.

More about the Natufians…

Mortar_and_pestle from Jesus' time (religious book)Do you remember what this is called from yesterday’s video? Which people used large basalt versions of these to grind wild wheat?

After the video yesterday called “Stories from the Stone Age”, you should have been able to ace the Stone Age Quiz above. Now read a little more about the Natufians by going to this site:

Natufian hunter-gatherers link

Write in your workbook a list of the animals they hunted and the foods they gathered. What is another word for gathering?

Eventually people began to domesticate animals as well as plant crops. To find a timeline of animal domestication, go to this site:

Animal domestication link

List the first six animals to be domesticated and the approximate date. Then click on your favourite to find out the evidence about when, how and why they were domesticated by humans.

Dog at tree barb Sheep with lamb from Leigh trimmed_1 These were some of the earliest domesticated animals. The ones in these photos are more modern breeds than the Stone Age ones! (Photos taken by my sister Barb and used with her permission)

 

 

If there’s still time, finish off your front page pictures. You could try finding some pictures of Natufians, sickles, emmer wheat or mortars and pestles!