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The Indus Valley Civilisation

Key Questions

Teaching Resources

Where was the Indus Valley Civilisation?

Start with the words "Indus Valley Civilisation" displayed. What does each word mean?

Use dictionary.com. to look up the meaning of the words. This site is a complete American English dictionary (think civilisation with a "z"!!) . It is easy to use, brief, clear and easy enough for years 5 and 6 to understand.

Use this on line atlas to locate the river Indus by putting a word into the atlas search facility. It can be rather slow to access.

How would we go about getting there? Use this travel website to find a flight and book a hotel. Use the Lonely Planet website to locate travel information.

Download a black and white map of the Indus Valley showing the locations of the major cities.

What do the streets and buildings tell us about life in the Mohenjo-Daro?

There is a terrific slide show that features buildings and streets in Indus cities here. The following slides seem suitable to use with a projector for discussions about the purposes of the buildings.

Click here to download a simple explanation of the architecture of Mohenjo Daro including the plan for a typical house shown in part below.

What do pictures of artefacts tell us about life in Mohenjo-Daro?

There were hundreds of small figurines found in Mohenjo-Daro, to view them on the Harrapa website click on a link below.

Show some of the figurines on the screen and ask pupils to suggest questions they would like answered about them. Some examples might be..What do they think the figurines show? What clues do they give about life in the Indus valley? Are they toys? If so what evidence is there? What do they tell us about the animals they had experience of? What do they tell us about what people wore? How might they have been made and by whom?

You might also try sorting or cataloguing the figurines. This can be done effectively on screen by inserting the photos into Easiteach.

Cross Curricular and General Resources

Literacy

Life in the Indus Valley Download a Word document story about a girl living in an Indus Valley town. It is well written and covers a range of facets of life including housing, transport, Mohenjo Daro and seals. It could be used as a Literacy hour text and is provided at two different reading levels. There are also teaching ideas relating to this text available by clicking on the following links: upper reading level lower reading level .

Harrapa website

Probably the most comprehensive web resource available on the Indus Valley.

Archeology in the primary classroom

An excellent article by Rhona Dick on how an archeological approach was adopted to the unit on the Indus Valley.

BBC news story

Report on the recent discovery of ancient gold in India, perhaps dating from the Indus Valley Civilisation.