The history of the development of the Western world's alphabets is long and colorful.
Subject Areas
Art and Culture
Archaeology
Visual Arts
Foreign Language
Greek
Latin
Other
History and Social Studies
World History - Ancient World
Literature and Language Arts
World
Time Required
Phoenician Lesson: 3 class periods, four class periods if both activities are used. Greek Lesson: 4 class periods; 5 or more periods if the extension activity is used. Roman lesson: 3 class periods Capstone Lesson: 2 class periods, three or more class periods if both activities are used.
How did our alphabet develop?
Where did the Greeks, Phoenicians, and Romans live?
How did the alphabet pass from one to the other, and how did it change in the
process?
What letters of the alphabet have been preserved through all the changes of
peoples and places?
How did the alphabet get to us, who are so far away from the Mediterranean?
Learning Objectives:
After completing this lesson, students will be able to:
Show on a map that the
ancient Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans lived in the Mediterranean area.
Tell about the development of the alphabet and that we are still using
the Roman alphabet.
Tell some other things we inherited from the peoples of this region.
Prepare a booklet on the development of a particular letter and write
a short paragraph on the future of the alphabet.
Use this lesson to review the history of the alphabet with your students and
to talk with the students about how this old alphabet came to us.
Show the map of the Mediterranean
again, and begin by reminding them about the Phoenicians, who first developed
the alphabet so that they could write home from far away. Remind them that the
Phoenicians were great traders and city builders. Show them the Phoenician
alphabet page again. Now that they have seen the evolution of the alphabet,
they will be able to appreciate how the alphabet has changed over the years.
Then remind them again about the Greeks, who learned the alphabet from the
Phoenicians and wrote so many books. Remind them that the Greeks were very inventive.
Besides writing so many books, they invented and first practiced democracy.
Show the Phoencian-Greek
Alphabet page and remind them about the letters they can recognize.
You can show your students a few examples of Greek Architecture from the
following photo collection: Go to Maecenas
and select the General
Contents page.
Now show the Roman
Map again. Remind your students that the Greeks handed on the alphabet to
the Romans, who eventually ruled the whole Mediterranean area they can see on
the map, and Europe as well. Also remind them that Latin was an important language
for a very long time throughout the whole area they see on the map. Because of
this English, Spanish, Italian, French and several other languages are based on
Latin, and all of these languages use the alphabet the Romans invented.
You can show your students some pictures of ancient Roman architecture,
if it seems appropriate. Return to Maecenas
and select the General
Contents page.
Scroll down to Rome. Choose the Colosseum
and select Colosseum
1. Return to Rome. Choose The
Arch of Constantine and select The
Arch of Constantine 1. The first photo shows the Roman arena called
the Colosseum and the second shows the Arch of Constantine in front of that
same arena. In general, this is an excellent photo collection, of which
many pictures will be useful. Look, if you have time, at the Tiber and its
bridges, or the pictures of the Cloaca Maxima (the great sewer). The latter,
in particular, will give your students some idea of the size of ancient
Rome, which at its height had a population of over a million people.
Finally, show the Development
of the Alphabet Page. Look at a few particular letters and ask your students
how they changed over time. If you choose A you will see some changes over
time; if you choose T, for instance, you will see hardly any changes in over 3,000
years. Although we have discussed the three main parties
in this lesson, you might point out to your students that other peoples worked
on the alphabet as well.
Two capstone activities for The Alphabet is Historic Curriculum
Unit
Beautiful Letters Activity:
Show the Development of the Alphabet
Page. Ask the children to design a booklet showing the historical development
of a particular letter.
Give each student a small booklet with 6 to 8 pages of blank paper. The
students should choose a letter and decorate the cover of their booklets with
whatever form or forms of the letter they like. Have them draw historical
letters on each inside page. If a student chooses the letter "A", for
instance, s/he could put a large Phoenician A on the first inside page, a
Greek Alpha on the second page, a Roman A on the third page, and his or her
own A on the last page. (Maybe they would also like to include a decorated
A from a medieval manuscript, or a fancy A from somewhere else. The fonts
supplied on your computer provide many fancy letters!)
Second, ask the students to write a sentence or two on the bottom of each
page, mentioning who used this letter first, and then next, and so on down
through history, right up to themselves.
Finally, the students could decorate the pages with something characteristic
of each culture. Perhaps they would like to put photos of themselves on the
last page. In this way, even if there is not much change in the letter itself,
the changing times will be represented on the pages.
Future of the Alphabet Activity:
Ask your students to think about the fact that they are using such old letters
to write English. Ask them to write a few sentences about what they think will
happen in the future. Will people continue to use this old alphabet or will
the alphabet eventually change? If the students could change the alphabet themselves,
how would they change it?
Assessment
Ask your students to trace the path of the alphabet from the Phoenicians to
themselves. Ask them if they can say a few things about the Phoenicians, the
Greeks and the Romans. Ask them to show you the Roman Empire on the map. Can
your students tell you approximately how old the Roman alphabet is? How did
the Roman alphabet make its way to us?
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