29 May 2025 / 9 Wind
Ideas for project work
Aztec mosaics poster, designed by a pupil!
Of course you’re the experts at project and follow-up work, but here are some ideas tried by other schools you may not have thought of (don’t forget to look as well at the ‘Ideas for...’ pages in our main Resources section, AND check out our Links pages, both left)...
• On recent visits to Redriff Primary in Rotherhithe, SE London, Richard Lane and Louise Lynch have arranged for a few Year 6 children to conduct an interview with us, based on questions they had thought of and prepared in advance - ranging from how Mexicolore began to specific points about the Aztecs. The results fed in to their school newspaper...
• Hazel Moss and colleagues at Fynamore Primary School in Calne, Wiltshire, impressed us greatly by the range of creative and effective project activities they devised for their Year 5/6 pupils on the Aztecs. These included: a personal birthday chart based on Aztec calendar signs, an ‘Aztec Advertiser’ (home-made newspaper), a timeline, Aztec Society chart, Aztec temple investigation (maths work based on numbers of coloured-in blocks forming patterns in the temples), ‘What do I know about the Aztecs?’ linked to ‘What do I want to find out about the Aztecs?’, and a ‘written sources’ sheet focusing analysis of primary source documents on ‘whose point of view?’: this included sections on ‘what is described’, ‘from whose point of view?’ and ‘I think this because...’
• Keith Gutteridge and colleagues at Notre Dame Junior School in Lingfield, Surrey, invited parents in to tour and admire the ‘Aztec Museum’ their Year 5 pupils had created in two classrooms. Full of research carried out by the pupils themselves (weekend homework), the displays came alive much more simply by being exhibited on tables instead of on classroom walls. See more images in our ‘School Displays’ pages.
• At Birch Hill Primary School in Bracknell, Tricia Cook, colleagues and Years 3 and 4 pupils worked together to produce a beautiful framed mosaic figure of the school’s badger logo, inspired by their term’s work Aztec turquoise mosaics. Alongside it is a more predictable but equally finely made mosaic mask of Quetzalcóatl at Bishop Stamer CE Primary School, Stoke-on-Trent.
• At Oak Farm Junior School, Hillingdon, Suzanne West, Cath O’Leary and Year 5 pupils took the story of the discovery of corn (from the ‘Jump!’ History Book on the Aztecs published by Two-Can), divided the main picture up into 32 square tiles...
... and then painted a mural of it, each square the responsibility of 2-3 children. Great result! Always try to look to see if we’ve done a review of a source book like this (we have - follow the link below - it has good and bad points...)
• At Denmead Junior School in Hampshire, Cath Luxton and colleagues organised a mock trial for Cortés (they tried Moctezuma too!) in school - much creative English writing grew out of the carefully organised trial in which children acted the parts of Cortés, Moctezuma and Doña Marina; during the activity the children were encouraged to study evidence from both sides of the Conquest divide, in a real ‘community of enquiry’ initiative... The jury was formed by over 30 parents and governors! (What’s more at Denmead they’re involved in building links with a primary school in Mexico, through the ‘Philosophy for Children’ movement, linked in the UK to SAPERE.)
• At Canterbury School, Greenboro, North Carolina, USA, the Mexican teacher Laura Hernández organised an archaeological ‘dig’ in the school playground sandbox, having buried some of the ‘Aztec’ artefacts made by the pupils (flint knives, pottery flutes, jewellery, miniature temples, masks...) in the sand. The budding archaeologists had of course to record their finds as they were unearthed...
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Aztec mosaics poster, designed by a pupil!
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