Today, Year 4 celebrated the rise of the Roman Empire in true fashion.  Armed with shields, swords and Roman legion attire, the excitement from the students entering school was palpable.

To begin with, the Year group were greeted with Roman army commands: Consiste! (Halt!), Laxate (at ease), silentiurm! (Silence!) and Sin/ Dex (Left/ Right!), which would come in hand later on in the day.

Next, both classes were thrown into the melee and had to use their best codebreaking skills in order to crack a hidden message written by the emperor himself, Julius Caesar.  The hidden message revealed one of Caesar’s greates quotes to date:

“It is better to create than to learn!  Creating is the essence of life.”  Julius Caesar

After exploring this quote and thinking deeper into what Caesar’s quote means, creating is exactly what the students did next.  After having designed mosaics the day before, the students were tasked with creating a Roman mosaic.  This proved lots of fun and the results are already looking promising.

The grand finale, however, had to be experiencing what it was like to march like a Roman.  Led by Mr Wise’s booming commands, Classes’ 9 and 10 both marched up and down the hall, to embed their understanding of Roman commands.  Next, the students practised forming the defence shape, which is the ‘testudo’, or the tortoise.  This proved an effective barrier against incoming missiles aimed by the teachers, as you can witness in the video below.

All in all, the children had an excellent morning immersing themselves in the Roman life and learning first hand how the Roman army worked.

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