Unit Reflection: Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt

5/6/2011

• What I learned this unit?
• Egyptian Art and Map
• Learner's Profile

What I learned this unit?

As we approached to the last quarter, we didn't have that much time to focus one topic and others that were associated with it; we had to rush through a bit. As soon as I knew the topic was Ancient Egypt, I thought that short amount of time wasn't enough, since Ancient Egypt was a strong Kingdom, which maintained a lot of histories until today. From my perspective, we focused more on the geography and more of religion, art, cultures instead of big topics such as government, rulers etc. What really interested me was the fact that the Nile River gave a lot of importance to Egyptians. Though Nile is known as the biggest river in the world, I didn't knew, it was an important source to others who lived along the coast. The 6650km long river gave fertile soil, trading relationships, and even food resources for the Egyptians and others to be developed in trading relationships and be open minded in traveling. On the other hand, what I enjoyed in this unit was the architecture. I especially liked this was because I had an opportunity to explain it and the architecture was just incredible. As many archaeologists say, when Mesopotamian built ziggurats, Egyptians constructed Pyramids; both were for same reasons, but there were huge differences. There are endless sentences about Egypt, as like today, famous subjects are more worth to write for.

Egyptian Art and Map

• Art

As I observed Egyptians arts drawn on stones and papyrus, I was stunned due to their creativity. I found that Egyptians were interested in writing and drawing daily lives and hieroglyphics on stones and papyrus. What is good about stones was that, it will stay for a long period but papyrus is portable and light however could be worth nothing when water is poured.

Another reason why I chose art to discuss about was because we had an privilege to draw god and goddess; as my previous blog entry accounted for the importance of my drawing, I chose to explain about it. What really was unique about mine was the difference between others; while other tend to draw about god's vocation, I drew about the opinions of citizens.

" If there is a period of joy, there is a period of sorrow," was the point of my drawing. As today, though a country might be rich, it will always have weakness. Therefore, I found that it would be better drawing about the people's view.

• Map

The map project was fun since it was partner project and everyone loved to draw. This was one of the best moments in humanities where I got to decorate, show my creativity and finish it up with writing some importance of the Nile River. Since it was a decorating project, I had to be organized and a participant, which influenced my organization and participation in a good way.

Learner's Profile: (Thinkers and Communicators)

Thinkers:

This unit required a lot of thinking to do especially when it got to the final visual project where each one of us gets to pick a topic to talk about. According to what I think, I needed to think a lot since I had to think about the importance about Egypt and what could be the best thing to talk about my topic. Even in the Atlantis project, I had to fight for my opinion, so I had to consider a lot of what will make me confident. As a result, those reasons made me think more, and be more knowledgeable.

Communicators:

What I thought that this unit had to do with communication was that, sometimes, we had to be discussing about the ancient Egypt and the present Egypt, the differences similarities. Also, we were discussing about Egypt and their relationships with other countries, making us communicative. To add on, Mrs. Moore let us watch horrible histories video to learn and communicate about the Egypt, to know better. I believe so that those small stuffs (games, jeopardy, quizzes) made us know better about the topic.