Ancient buildings

As a component of Stage 2’s science & technology investigations into Buildings & Bridges, we will be learning about ancient structures in the library.


1 The Great Pyramid of Egypt, how it was built – new solid theory, new evidence. JP Houdin. 2011


Why did we stop building pyramids?


Lost temples: Mayan pyramids of Chichen Itza


Athens Acropolis and the Parthenon


Rome, Italy: The Colosseum


The lost city of Pompeii


Ancientvine – Virtual Roman house 3D reconstruction


Stonehenge prehistoric monument


Hadrian’s Wall


Everything you need to know about the Great Wall of China

Building and bridges for Stage 2

Our Stage 2 students are about to commence a Guided Inquiry science & technology unit on “Buildings and bridges” (Built environments strand). It’s part of a two-year cycle, so the first thing I did was go back through the blog to see what online resources I used last time.

Although I was responsible for developing field knowledge last time, the emphasis was on HSIE (Human society & its environment), but some of the Youtube clips on Introducing British colonisation will be very useful.

Some excellent footage of the Queen Victoria Building in Sydney’s CBD:


Queen Victoria Building, Sydney

Interesting to see an outsider’s view of the Sydney Opera House:


Sydney Opera House – Great Attractions (Sydney, Australia)

Supplementing this material will be the Flickr slideshow I created of local bridges two (or three?) cycles ago. How time flies!

Sydney Harbour Bridge
Sydney Harbour Bridge and other bridges

As with last year’s Guided Inquiry units, the brief clips will be discussed and consolidated after considering the students’ “Plus, minus, interesting” matrices, which will encourage/develop some note-taking skills.