Humanities

Teamwork makes the dream work in Year 7 Humanities

It has been a challenging year for us all, but especially for our Year 7s, who spent a large chunk of their first year of high school online.  To help foster connections and practise teamwork within our Humanities classes, the Year 7 Humanities teachers planned some fun and educational group activities to introduce the students to their next topic of inquiry, Ancient China.

Our first activity was an escape room task, where students had to work in pairs or groups to decode clues relating to facts about Ancient China.  The task was quite challenging, but we were impressed by the students’ brilliant demonstration of resilience and teamwork - two of the school’s values.  In 7D, all groups persisted for the full time given and many groups attempted the final clue multiple times when their first attempts to crack the code did not work.  A huge ‘well done’ to Alicia O, Ella, Kiara and Summer for being the first group in 7D to crack the final code!  Not to mention one of our future group of mathematicians in 7F: Inesh, Krish, Harvey and Michael who solved the final stage of this complex puzzle without the help of a calculator!  How amazing is that?

After reflecting on how they worked as a team and what they perhaps could have done better, the students participated in a group trivia task relating to Ancient China.  In groups of 4 or more, students pooled their general knowledge about Ancient China to answer the questions projected on the board.  In 7E, the groups designated one scribe for the group to whom each member relayed their answers.  Students were quite respectful of the scribe and each other while participating in this task and surprised each other with how much they already knew about Ancient China, like famous inventions from the time and the terracotta warriors.  An extra ‘well done’ to Eric, Nino, Orlando and Roma for getting the most correct answers in 7E!

We also watched Disney’s classic cartoon, ‘Mulan’, and compared the movie to the original ‘Ballad of Mulan’ written by an anonymous Chinese poet between the years 500 and 600 CE.  This generated a lot of insightful discussion about the roles and expectations of women in Ancient times and the emphasis people put on national loyalty and family loyalty.

Sarah Crespo-Liu and Chloe Fang

Humanities Teachers