Ancient Egyptians

November 29, 2015

Mr. Allen and Mrs. Miller recently combined their seventh grade social studies and language arts classes to create a broadcast news presentation.   The topic of the project was about the Ancient Egyptians and the organization of their society.  The Egyptians were organized into a social pyramid with a pharaoh on top, his aides below him, all the way down to the more common and powerless peasants on the bottom.

 To begin the project, students were placed into groups and each group member had to choose a different level of the social pyramid to focus on.   One group member was chosen to be the news reporter to organize the entire project and introduce the program.   Each class had 8 groups, and each group’s scribe specialist, for example, gathered together to highlight the important details of the text.  All of the priest experts gathered, artisans all came together and so on.  They were then to create a series of questions and responses they could give to their reporter.

Once the summaries were completed and the questions were put together, the groups began to organize their news show. The reporter introduced the program, and went through and “interviewed” each of the various experts about their level of the social pyramid.  The program was filmed using a green screen background, and incorporate the program IMovie, giving students the opportunity to make it appear that the interview was taking place in front of the Egyptian pyramids or at the Cairo Museum.

 After students recorded their presentations, they took some time to edit their projects, adding sound effects, video graphics, and finally were allowed to watch their creations on the big screen in Mr. Allen’s class.   Students also had to edit and type up their summary for Mrs. Miller’s language arts class to finalize the non-fiction project.