Ruthless Romans

We begun our new History topic by being given a mosaic to piece back together, which would give us clues as to which period of History we were going to be exploring.  We used the clues in the source to work out that it was the Romans.  We then became History detectives to complete our enquiry maps about what we could infer from the source of evidence.  We had some super hypotheses:

"I think the man with the red coming out his helmet is in charge because his uniform looks grander than the others"

"Perhaps they are about to fight an enemy and try and conquer their land"

"It is possibly Britain they are trying to invade because they would have had to travel by boat across the water from Italy"

"I know the Romans had a big empire, so maybe this was what they did to make it so big"

Line of enquiry- ‘Where do the Ancient Romans fit in to the bigger picture?’

We worked in groups to explore the chronology of the Ancient Roman civilization.  We placed different periods of History onto the correct place on the timeline, including periods we have studied before.  We then tried to work out where the Ancient Romans would fit in on the timeline.  As a group we had to consider:

•        What else was going on at the time of the Ancient Roman era?

•        Did the Ancient Roman period last long?  Is it a significant period of history? 

•        What came before it?  What came after? 

•        Can you hypothesise why it might have come to an end?

•        What other observations can you make about the timeline?

Line of enquiry- Why did the Romans invade Britain?

We worked in pairs to look closely at different sources connected to our line of enquiry of why the Romans wanted to invade Britain.  We came up with some super hypotheses.   We then completed a diamond ranking of what we considered the most valid reason for invading might be.  

In today's History lesson, we became tribal leaders of Britain and investigated whether we would have lost our crown or been allowed to keep it after the Romans invaded. It helped us to realise that the Romans didn't invade and conquer Britain in one fell swoop but that their invasion happened over forty years.  Laila ended up being chieftain of the last tribe standing.

Who knew History could be so funny?

'Why do you think different interpretations of Boudicca exist?'

This was the question we had to consider when we found out all about Boudicca.  First of all, we looked at a statue of her and decided what clues there were from the statue that could tell us a bit more about her.  We then read a primary source of Boudicca which Cassius Dio (a Roman writer) had written about her around one hundred years after her reign.   We had to draw our own interpretations of what we thought she would look like from this description.  We then looked at different paintings and pictures of Boudicca and this led us to discuss why there are so many different interpretations of her.  We thought about how there might be bias about Boudicca depending on who you asked.....the Celts or the Romans!

Boudicca came to visit our class.........except she wasn't as fierce as the Romans had made out.  In fact, she couldn't stop giggling!

Digging deeper

After exploring difference sources about Boudicca, we reflected on how some of these sources might show bias, depending on if they were created by a Celt or a Roman.