Description

Maya Guided Reading Scripts (5 Plays, 6 speakers each)

1.      Where? And When?

2.      Evidence

3.      Achievements

4.      Gods

5.      Popol Vuh

Maya Guided Reading Scripts. Five short scripts (about 5 mins reading time) , 6 speakers each – plus quiz (20 questions … and answers!) plus suggested themes for discussion.

Duration per script (plus quiz plus discussion) – around 20 mins.

Great supplementary resource to Maya Assembly – for use within the classroom.

Maya Guided Reading Scripts. Sample Texts:

Play 1 Where? When?

Narrator:             So, a great time of achievement. (Pauses) What went wrong?

Maya 1:               You mean, our virtual collapse?

Historian:            750 to 900 AD.

Maya 2:               Well, that’s when it started. It continued in the Post Classic era,

Historian:            900 to 1550 AD.

Maya 3:               Huh! The rise of the Aztecs!

Narrator:             But what happened to you lot?

Maya 1:               Well, we didn’t really help ourselves

Maya 2:               We were always fighting!

Narrator:             What? Yourselves?

Maya 3:               Fraid so!

Maya 1:               And there was only so much farmland left

Maya 2:               After all our building work.

Archaeologist:    Fabulous sites!

Maya 3:               But not enough food to go round.

Narrator:             But you didn’t die out altogether.

Maya 1:               Oh no! Look, here we are today!

Quiz

1.      How would you describe where in America the Maya lived?

2.      Name two of the central states.

3.      What stretches of water were to either side?

4.      Where did most of the Maya live?

5.      What was the term used to cover these ‘middle American’ people?

6.      Name three other civilisations.

7.      When was the Pre-Classic Period?

Discussion Themes

1.      Discuss the different ways of finding out about people and things from the past.

2.      Discuss possible alternative explanations as to why the Maya civilisation went into decline.