Ancient Greece: The Minoan Civilization on the Island of Crete

Give your students the opportunity to be archaeologists as they explore the ancient Minoan ruins on the island of Crete.

The first civilization of Ancient Greece were the Minoans on the island of Crete. This civilization reached its height of glory during the Bronze Age by carefully exploiting their both its location and resources. Much of the Minoan history is read as a picture book. We have their frescoes, artifacts, and ruins but little of their writing. So this is fantastic opportunity to expose students to a new way of learning—observation, guided questions, and reflection, followed with immediate confirmation.

This presentation is geared towards letting the students experience being archaeologists as the ruins on Crete are excavated. For the 1st half of the presentation the students are led slide by slide through excavation. Using observation, guided questions, and reflection the students will learn analytical skills. They will compare their observations of the Minoan ruins, artifacts, and frescoes with that of the archaeologists, historians and scholars. I have made available a free excerpt of these discussion questions for you to examine— Minoan Frescoes

The second half of the presentation explores the Minoan culture by looking at their preferences in recreational activities, international economic trade products, and the cataclysm that destroyed their civilization. This presentation lays a solid foundation for your unit on Ancient Greece. It hooks the students and keeps them engaged from beginning to end. There are ample opportunities for dialog, academic reflection, writing, and combining interdisciplinary content from language arts, history, economics, and fine arts.

This product is part of Ancient Greece: the Minoan and Mycenaean Civilizations Bundle

Product format: PowerPoint Show made with Microsoft 10

Features include: slide sorter, laser pointer, digital pen, high lighter, and presenter’s notes. This makes it possible to add or highlight notes directly onto the slides. It is possible to check out these features on the preview, by right clicking on the screen. A tool box will appear so that you can experiment with the various tools. As an added bonus, a Table of Contents with hyperlinks will aid with navigating the power point show over a multi-day presentation. *Your version of Microsoft will determine which of these features is available on your computer, so use the preview to explore these features.

*Due to copyright piracy, all of Ms. Amy’s Lessons are not editable. This means that it is both difficult and time consuming to alter the presentations.

Topics:

The Minoan Civilization

-Geography

-Bronze Age

-Architecture at Knossos

-Religion

-Frescoes

-Minoan Recreational Activities

Minoan Economics during the Bronze Age

-Akrotiri, Site of a Volcanic Cataclysm

Contents:

3 versions of the product

2 PowerPoint Shows

-1 with the history and common core standards

-1 without the standards

-1 PDF version of the PowerPoint Presentation

11 pages of handouts and Minoan myths

-6 page handout of Minoan Myths

-- Queen Pasiphaë and the White Bull

-- Daedalus & Icarus

--Theseus and the Minotaur

-2 handouts that correspond with group reflection questions from the presentation

-2 pages of printed kid friendly internet sites

-1 page printed movie recommendations for the class

171 slides in the presentation

139 Presenter’s notes

-75 photos or illustrations

19 pair and class discussions

9 maps

8 academic vocabulary slides

-archaeology, archaeologist, excavate, excavation, export, husband, import, and transport

3 standards based questions with answers

6 graphic organizers

-Plot Diagram, T chart, 3 columns, brain storm map, Venn diagram, and a cluster map

5 informal (paragraph) writing activities

3 Formal Writing Activities

-1 summary of a myth

-1 Creative writing (myth) on the destruction of the Minoans

-1 reflection concerning governments and international trade

*2 pages of interactive web sites, You Tube videos, related academic DVD’s, and DVD’s on Minoan myths.

Teaching time:

about 3-4 days

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© 2014 Ms. Amy's Lessons. This purchase is for you and your classroom. Duplication for an entire school, an entire school system, or for commercial purposes is strictly forbidden. Please have other teachers purchase their own copy. If you are a school or district interested in purchasing several licenses, please contact me for a district-wide quote.