Year 5 – Daedalus and Icarus
Project Overview
This half term the children have learnt about Ancient Greece. We have looked at the Greek myth ‘Daedalus and Icarus’. The story is about a young boy named Icarus and his father, Daedalus. They are sent to make a labyrinth for King Minos. He is a powerful and cruel leader who wants to hide the Minotaur in the maze. When they have finished building the maze, they realise they will never be allowed to return home as they are the only ones who know the secrets of the maze. One day, Daedalus surprises Icarus with some wings he has made from wax and bird feathers. They begin the journey home. However, Icarus ignores his fathers pleas and fly’s to close too the sun resulting in him plummeting to his death. The children thoroughly enjoyed reading this myth and were very surprised when they came into school and saw that Icarus’ remains had made their way into our classroom! The children had to become detectives and even wrote their own police reports based on the evidence they found. Following on from this, we planned, wrote and edited our own stories based upon this legendary myth.
What The Student Says
“I loved the myth and really thought Icarus and his dad would be stuck in the tower forever.”
“I found birds feathers in class and this helped me work out that Icarus had fallen to his death.”
“We used clipboards and police tape. It felt like it was so real.”
What skills were developed?
The children have:
- Developed their communication and language skills
- Developed their oracy skills through multiple opportunities for discussion and sharing work
- Developed their understanding of dialogue and using inverted commas
- Shown good understanding of story features, particularly focusing on how to built up tension and resolve a problem
What The Teacher Says
“I have loved teaching this unit of work to the children. They have had a great attitude throughout and have made lots of great links to the learning they have been doing in History lessons too. They all should be very proud of the wonderful stories they have planned and written. Through using many hooks such as our crime scene, we were able to immerse the children fully in the topic and generate lots of great vocabulary to help the children in their writing.”
Year 5 Teacher