Greece and Persia Teaching Unit

This teaching unit is available exclusively to teacher members of the Timermaps Premium service.

Please click here for more on the Timemaps Premium service for teachers

**

One unit, two resources

This Premium Unit provides a panoramic overview of the histories of Greece and Persia from just before the famous Persian Wars in 500 BCE, to the final extinguishing of the “Hellenistic” (Greek-style) world by 100 CE.

The unit contains two resources:

a slide show, and
a sequence of map pages.

These enable two different approaches to using the unit with your students – for whole-class presentation or for student project work.

1. Slide Show

The slide show is designed to engage students with attractive, high resolution maps for projection onto a large screen. This makes it ideal for use as a whole-class presentation.

It accompanied by an informative teacher’s commentary, to aid in covering the different points of interest on each map.

It can also be used in student project work, and a student commentary is included.

2. Map Pages

The map pages contain a sequence of map for use in students’ enquiry work. No commentary is required as each map is accompanied by information covering the period with which it deals.

Teachers notes are provided. These include suggested classroom strategies and student activities, for teachers to use or adapt as they see fit.

Flexible use

Both these resources – the slide show and the sequence of map pages – can be slotted in wherever the teacher wishes. For example, they can be used as an introduction to this era of world history, or in a “wrap up” session – or indeed as the primary “textbook” resource for studying this topic.

Learning outcomes

On completing this unit, students should have a broad understanding of the histories of Ancient Greece and Persia, including:

the Greeks and the Persians fought a famous war between 490 and 487 BCE, in which the Greeks succeeded in defeating the match larger Persian forces;

the city of Athens emerged from the war as the leading sea-power in Greece, at head of league of Greek city-states;

Athens was the first democracy in history, and after the Persian Wars became the cultural center of the Greek world – the Golden Age of Athens;

rivalry between the two leading states of Greece, Athens and Sparta, led to the very destructive Peloponnesian Wars, in which Athens was defeated;

but this did not prevent Athens from becoming the place where the foundations of Western philosophy were laid;

after the Peloponnesian Wars no state was able to establish leadership over the Greeks until the semi-Greek kingdom of Macedon did so, around the mid-fourth century;

a little later the young king of Macedon, Alexander the Great, led Greek and Macedonian forces to conquer the huge Persian empire, and even invade India;

although his empire quickly fell apart, several large kingdoms emerged in which a Greek-style (“Hellenistic”) civilization flourished;

these were eventually squeezed out of existence by emerging foreign powers from east and west.

A guarantee to teachers

If, after using this unit with your students, you don’t feel that this it is a valid way of helping your students towards a broad understanding of this topic, please let us know by emailing us at the following address:

feedback@timemaps.com

We will – no quibble – refund your fee and cancel your subscription.