Virtual Visit 
Myth-busting ancient Egypt

• Virtual Visits are live interactive workshops linking your classroom to an expert in one of the British Museum's learning rooms.
• They have been designed to incorporate a broad range of learning techniques.
• Your students will take an active role throughout the Virtual Visit.
• Virtual Visits acknowledge that learning is not only about knowledge and understanding. It encourages students to be inspired and excited to visit museums, to develop their close observation competency, and to enhance their communication skills to express and share their own thoughts. 
• This workshop does not involve virtual reality, augmented reality or a virtual tour of the galleries.

• The Virtual Visit begins with an introduction to the British Museum and its collection of eight million objects.  
• It centres around a variety of ancient Egyptian objects from the British Museum collection. 
• Students are recruited as British Museum myth-busters and they are issued a to-do list with three areas of ancient Egyptian history to investigate. 
• Students will participate in an 'interview' for the role of myth-buster using the platform Kahoot on their devices. The quiz will aid their understanding of the differences between myths and facts and encourage them to think critically about information presented to them.
• Students are guided through a series of three activities. Two of which are supported using a printed booklet, emailed prior to the Virtual Visit. If students do not have access to a printed version, it can be completed with a piece of paper. 
• Students investigate ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. They match ancient Egyptian objects displaying hieroglyphs with their modern-day equivalents. They will be supported to understand that ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs are not secret codes, but they were one of the scripts used for writing and communicating all kinds of different information. 
• Students investigate ancient Egypt's contact with other civilisations. They look at a timeline with Museum objects, that reflect on the differing ways these civilisations interacted throughout ancient Egypt's history. They are then tasked to look critically and make an informed decision of which objects they would put into a display case, just like a curator at the British Museum.
• Students investigate British Museum objects found in burials. Using an image of a reconstructed luxurious ancient Egyptian tomb, they will consider what kinds of objects people were buried with. They will look closely at funerary objects from the Museum collection to establish that the afterlife was of great importance to the ancient Egyptians and each object served a purpose.
• The session will end by looking at the great pyramid of Giza. 

England, The National Curriculum in England, Key stage 2, History

• The achievements of the earliest civilisations – an overview of where and when the first civilisations appeared and an in-depth study of one of the following: Ancient Sumer; The Indus Valley; Ancient Egypt; The Shang Dynasty of Ancient China.

Northern Ireland, The Northern Ireland Curriculum, Key stage 2, The world around us

• Place
• Change over time

Scotland, Curriculum for Excellence, second level, social studies: people, past events and societies

• I can use primary and secondary sources selectively to research events in the past. 
• I can compare and contrast a society in the past with my own and contribute to a discussion of the similarities and differences. 
• I can discuss why people and events from a particular time in the past were important, placing them within a historical sequence.

Wales, The National Curriculum for Wales, Key stage 2, History

• Chronological awareness
• Historical knowledge and understanding 
• Interpretations of history 
• Historical enquiry 
• Organisation and communication

Afterlife, amulet, book of the dead, canopic jar, civilisation, coffin, fact, god, Hieroglyphs, Hyksos, luxury, luxurious, Kushite, myth, Pharaoh, papyrus, prism, pyramid, Royalty, Rosetta stone, sarcophagus, shabti, sphinx, Sudan, timeline, tomb.

You can discover more ancient Egypt classroom resources, either before or after your Virtual Visit.