Context

Understand how our knowledge of the past is constructed from a range of sources. Participate in discussions, presentations, performances, role play, improvisations and debates. Learn to use a sketchbook.

Teaching Outcomes:

• To explore the uses of bronze vessels.
• To improvise a Shang ceremony using bronze vessels.
• To create imaginative sketches of people using bronze vessels in the Shang Dynasty.

Children will:

• Explore what we know from different types of evidence.
• Act out how a Shang Dynasty ceremony might have happened.
• Do an imaginative sketch of a Shang Dynasty ceremony.

• Story of how bronze objects were used
• Evidence of inscriptions and excavations
• Framework for an improvisation
• Some images of bronzes being used in the Shang Dynasty

You do not need any particular resources for this session.

Information about the earliest Chinese inscriptions on bronze vessels from historyofinformation.com
Part of the Shijing from wengu.tartarie.com
Zhou Dynasty bronze with translated inscription from britishmuseum.org
Tips on how to improvise from dangoldstein.com