Understanding the arts
Investigating Mayan masks and their uses
- Exploring techniques for creating masks,
including papier mâché
- Designing and making a Mayan mask for a
particular purpose
- Exploring Mayan artistic skills, such as
stonecarving
and pottery-making
- Developing techniques when working with
clay to create a particular artefact
- Exploring the Bonampak murals and what
they can tell us about Mayan life
- Recreating the Bonampak murals using
pastels and/or a 3D model
Understanding physical development,
health and well-being
Defining what is meant by a ‘healthy
lifestyle’
- Exploring the lifestyle of the Mayans and
assessing how healthy it was
- Comparing modern lifestyles to Mayan
lifestyles to consider which is healthier
- Considering ways of making our lifestyles
healthier
- Tasting and describing healthy Mayan foods
Understanding English, communication and language
Using pictures or artefacts and ruins to generate questionsand establish facts
- Presenting a role-play to show the Spanish discovery ofMayan ruins
- Using the ‘hot seat’ to interview a Spanish conquistador and establish how he
felt on discovering the Mayan ruins
- Writing a diary entry as a Spanish conquistador
- Creating wordsearches to help identify Mayan city states
- Completing sentences using given vocabulary
- Using a storyboard to re-tell the Mayan creation myth
- Exploring the Mayan writing system and comparing it to the
modern alphabet
- Considering the importance of Mayan writing for finding
out about events in the past
- Using a variety of sources, including non-fiction texts and
photos, to gather information
- Sorting sentences into true or false piles to show information
- Holding a class debate about whether the conquest of the
Mayans by the Spanish conquistadors was had a positive or negative effect on
the Mayan people
- Reading fictional accounts of a day in the life of both
Mayan and modern people to compare lifestyles
- Using mind maps and quizzes to consolidate learning about the Mayans
Scientific and
technological
Understanding
Exploring ways of making a
sturdy structure for a
Mayan temple
- Choosing appropriate
materials and tools to make
a model temple
- Exploring ways of designing
a model
- Evaluating a finished
product and identifying
strengths and weaknesses
- Exploring the Mayan
understanding of astrology
and how this formed the
basis for their calendar
Historical, geographical and social
Understanding
Exploring the role of archaeologists and how they
learn about the past
- Identifying what we can and can’t learn from
artefacts ancient civilisations leave behind
- Ordering events chronologically on a timeline
- Identifying Mesoamerica on a world map
- Locating and naming the continents of the world
- Locating and naming the modern-day countries
now situated where the Mayans lived
- Exploring different types of maps and identifying
the various uses of each
- Using maps, including online maps, to identify
areas and features
- Exploring the physical geography of Central
America, including climate, and comparing to the
UK
- Exploring the lifestyle of modern Mayans
- Assessing the impact of the Spanish conquest of
Mayan lands and the effect on the Mayan people
- Understanding the concept of a hierarchy
- Comparing Mayan governmental hierarchies with
how our government is run today
- Exploring the roles and responsibilities of leaders
- Applying the concept of a hierarchy to school life
Mathematical understanding
Using 3D nets to create the structure of a Mayan temple
- Creating 3D nets using accurate measurements
- Using a 3D net to create a model of the Temple of
Murals
- Using data to create graphs to compare climates
- Using graphs to answer questions about data
- Using Venn diagrams to sort information
- Using Mayan numerals to solve mathematical problems
- Comparing the Mayan calendar with our modern