The Iris Project

Greek in Schools

We have been teaching ancient Greek in east Oxford primary schools since 2010. The project had an initial pilot year  in 2010/11 to see if  Greek would enhance and enrich the children’s learning of English and other connected subjects. Working with children in year sixes, we set out to demonstrate that learning ancient Greek as part of the KS2 curriculum provides a fascinating insight into the development of the language we use every day; we aimed to introduce pupils to a hugely influential culture and explain how this culture and its language has shaped the English language and our world today.

Here is the feedback we received about the Greek project in its pilot year at Bayards Hill School:

"This was an excellent project, very interesting and enjoyable"
"Having the lesson plans sent in advance was very helpful"
"The powerpoints were excellent and really clear and useful"
"The children really enjoyed the transliteration aspect, and it really appealed to some of the class who might usually be hard to engage."
"The artefact day was excellent"

Due to the success of the initial year of the project, we have expanded the Greek this year to a further school and we are continuing to collect data and feedback on the classes.

We believe that learning Greek can promote the learning of languages, as children are learning an entirely new alphabet. This conceptual challenge develops their experience of languages, and harnesses their acquisitional skills and linguistic prowess.

It also connects with other aspects of the school curriculum, from history and geography, through to science and maths, and also drama, art and sport. The curriculum we are teaching will include introductions to ancient Greek philosophy, theatre, democracy and much more. We believe that teaching ancient Greek will act as a wonderful bridge between these various aspects of the curriculum, and thus enhance and enrich the school curriculum in all areas.

You can find our lesson plans, worksheets and other resources for the Greek project on our resources pages.

The ancient Greek initiative is a new approach to education; using ancient Greek to enhance and enrich the school curriculum and literacy, aims to support the curriculum for children at primary level and to enhance their achievements in many subject areas and especially literacy at key stage two.