By Emilee Davis
For the North Star Reporter
The sixth graders of North Attleborough Middle School brought various aspects of ancient Egyptian culture to life.
Every year, the sixth graders at NAMS learn about ancient Egypt and a key element is the annual Egyptian projects. This year was no different, and the students researched and visualized different aspects of ancient Egyptian culture into various projects that they were proud to display.
Each student was given the opportunity to take an aspect of ancient Egyptian culture they were interested in, research it in more detail and come up with a final presentation. For some students it was topics as broad as the social classes of ancient Egypt, for others it was a more specific topic such as a certain ruler or Egyptian god.
Students were given the opportunity to display their research in any way they wanted and let their creativity show. This could be anything from poster boards to travel brochures, to even recreating certain Egyptian structures.
The projects
Students were inspired to take on their topics for many different reasons. For Maggie Signoriello, it was a homework assignment that let her take a deeper dive into two of the female rulers of ancient Egypt and how they impacted the world.
According to Signoriello, “I read about them and I thought they were very interesting, so I thought that’d be fun to do a project on them.”
James Mooney wanted to do a topic that fascinated him specifically because it was broad.
“I thought instead of just picking one person or like a place maybe I could just do like, all the classes and roles,” he said.
Conor Cox decided to do the four Egyptian gods – Re, Osiris, Anubis and Horus, because he wanted to learn something new about ancient Egypt and felt that they were important to the ancient Egyptians.
He said, “The gods interested me because they were the daily dose of happiness almost to the ancient Egyptians.”
Saanvi Guar, on the other hand, chose to do mummification because she learned about it in class and wanted to know even more.
“For mummification, we also learned about it in class, but to me, what got me to do it as a project is how far they took it, like how they were able to first learn about mummification and then use it as a step to get into the afterlife,” Guar said.
Each student also had different ways in which they visualized their research. Since Parker Steel decided to research the pharaoh, Ramses II, he made his very own sarcophagus to bring his project to life.
“I basically just took a cardboard box and painted it and put like yellow stripes on it and put the face on it like the Pharaoh said, like I painted it a little bit,” Steel said.
Kashvi Agrawal did her project on the ancient Egyptian beliefs about the underworld and created a trifold to showcase everything she learned.
“I had a sarcophagus which had a mummy inside and a bunch of like spells and prayers and canopic jars to show beliefs about mummification,” Agrawal said. “I had written different paragraphs of other beliefs that they had about the afterlife that weren’t included in my outline.”
Kanav Mehta learned all about the social structures of Egypt for his project.
“So, for my project, I was able to build a pyramid with each of the rankings describing which area each place would be,” Mehta said. “And I was also able to make pictures for each different section and write paragraphs for each different section.”
Lessons learned
Each student had different takeaways from this project. Teresa Segun was able to learn more about one of the Egyptian queens.
“I learned a little bit more about Hatshepsut like what she did with her life and what I enjoyed the most, was kinda like just putting all the information together,” said Segun.
For David Kostov, he found the modern history of the pyramids just as fascinating as the ancient history. Specifically, he found the Djoser Step Pyramid the most interesting.
“And when you go in the pyramid, there’s a lot of fake hallways that lead you to chambers,” Kostov said. “And I also found another really cool thing. Like the robbers, I don’t know how they just got into the pyramids somehow and they stole all of the jewels because, you know, it’s not only the monuments, it’s also what happened to the monuments. And that was really cool because that’s a part of history with that as well.”
Piper MacLean had always been interested in different beliefs about the afterlife from other cultures and used the project to deepen that knowledge.
“I learned a lot about how they made sure that they did all these things to make sure that they would be able to get through the journey to the afterlife and make sure they were able to get to the final step into the Field of Reeds and how it was just really interesting”, said MacLean. “And I really enjoyed the creative elements of it, and the amount of freedom we got with the project.”
For some students, their biggest takeaway was the specific topic they studied. This was the case for Lila Belluso, who was able to gain extensive knowledge about the Egyptian gods and goddesses and the role they played in ancient Egypt. According to Belluso, “I learned about things like, what kinds of different gods and goddesses represented, what they did, and how they kind of prayed and worshiped them.”
Stella Denis, who made a travel brochure, most enjoyed getting to express her artistry through this project. She stated, “Like the four places that I chose, I learned more about them, and I enjoyed making the cover page and that stuff.”
For Donovan Beith, this project was a fun way to learn about ancient Egypt.
“It was fun for me researching a lot and learning about the social levels so I could know how a lot of them felt and stuff, like how high they were in the social level and what they did”, he said. “And I felt good about the project.”
Ultimately, the ancient Egypt project continues to make an impact for the sixth graders at North Attleborough Middle School as a way to learn and express their creativity. According to MacLean, “I really enjoyed the creative elements of it, and the amount of freedom we got with the project.”
