Mesopotamia Activities
Mesopotamia Lesson Plans
If you’re an Ancient Civilizations teacher and need some teaching ideas for Ancient Mesopotamia, you’re in the right place! Below we’ve compiled our top free and paid Mesopotamia activities that we’ve had success with in our units. We want to help you succeed, whether you use these as a unit outline or to supplement your existing unit!
Ancient Mesopotamia Activities
Mesopotamia Unit Introductory Activity
If you’re looking for an easy way to start your unit about Ancient Mesopotamia, this is the resource for you! This two-sided activity sheet guides students through some country research about Mesopotamia and the country of Iraq (the modern-day country where most of Mesopotamia existed) and peaks their curiosity about things they will learn during your unit.
Nacirema Reading
This free reading passage will help students examine how they might unconsciously judge others. Written in the 1950s, it takes American culture and examines it from an outside perspective. This is a great tool to teach students that we’re just as strange as any other culture. Nacirema is American spelled backwards, but don’t reveal that until you are discussing this with your students! This is the trickiest part of the activity, as students might want to spoil it, reducing its effect a bit. To combat this, try to wait until you’ve done this activity in every class, and reveal the next day! You can find the full text here, and an adapted version here.
Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent Overview
If you’re in need of a GRAPES lesson for Mesopotamia, this Mesopotamia and Fertile Crescent Overview Slideshow is perfect! It provides details about the Fertile Crescent, Sumerians, Akkadians, the Epic of Gilgamesh, Hammurabi’s Code, and so much more! This no-prep and editable Google Slideshow includes 34 professional slides, in addition to both printable and digital note sheets. Teaching about Mesopotamia can be difficult, but this organized slideshow walks students through these topics step-by-step. Even better, the text is 100% editable, so you can adjust any information to align the slideshow to your needs!
Introductory Vocabulary Activities
There are lots of different options that you can use to implement vocabulary with your students. Quizlet is always a fun option, flashcards, vocabulary games, there’s just so many! We’ve compiled 8 no-prep vocabulary activities for Google Drive in this resource! These activities are not only fun and engaging, but feature proven strategies to help your students build their vocabulary.
Mesopotamia Word Wall
Along with the vocab activities above, word walls are a great vocabulary tool! We have a resource that includes 30 Mesopotamia vocab words ready to print and display on a bulletin board. They’re also helpful for your visual learners, as pictures or images are included on each card. And even better, there’s a 100% editable Google Slideshow included with all of the words and images!
Never used an ancient civilization word wall before? This blog post will teach you how to set up, organize, and use them effectively in your classroom!
If you’re interested in both the vocabulary activities resource and word wall, we made a bundle just for you! They work great together as the words used in each resource are the same.
Life in Sumer: Mesopotamia Stations
When teaching about Mesopotamia, it’s often prioritized to learn about Sumer and it’s different cultural aspects. In our Mesopotamian unit, we wanted to provide a more robust understanding of Sumer and created this station activity. This activity takes students through six parts of life in Sumer: city-states, architecture, food/agriculture, social hierarchy, writing, and religion. It gets the kids to move around and get out of their normal routines to experience each aspect.
Mesopotamia Bell Ringers
If you’re looking to improve your classroom management and help students review material, these bell ringers are perfect! This set includes 20 Mesopotamia Bell Ringers for Google Drive that are 100% editable and ready to use. These warm-up prompts cover a variety of topics that come up in a Mesopotamia unit while also building helpful skills! Topics covered in this resource include the Fertile Crescent, Hammurabi’s Code, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and so much more!
Mesopotamia Madness
Another game that could be used after Life in Sumer is a resource we’ve created called Mesopotamia Madness! Students are given 16 Mesopotamian inventions, and must decide which one is the most important in all of human history. They will fill out an invention bracket (like March Madness), and try to get as close to the winner’s bracket as possible. This engaging resource includes a reading of each invention and helps students practice their debate and analysis skills. We love this activity because it really makes what can be a difficult topic for students relevant and understandable!
Hammurabi’s Code
As one of the oldest law codes in the world, Hammurabi’s Code is a staple of a Mesopotamia unit. There are lots of resources we could suggest, but there are two we personally like to use. First, we highly recommend this free resource from the Stanford Historical Education Group! It includes a PowerPoint and PDF student handouts that go through topics like economics and social structure. The second is a digital analysis resource we’ve created, as we needed a digital option for remote teaching. It includes a Google Slideshow, Google Docs analysis sheet, and a master list of laws that are more detailed than the SHEG resource!
Mesopotamia Job Fair
When it comes to teaching, at least for us, we try to focus more on skills than the content. One skill we’re passionate about is job-related skills, so we’ve created this job fair activity. Rather than a traditional reading about Mesopotamian leaders, each leader gets a resume students have to analyze. From there, they decide who to hire for specific positions, such as who would make a better school principal. This activity helps students learn more about these leaders and career skills as they choose who to hire for different jobs!
Ancient Mesopotamia Timeline Activity
If you’re looking to make your Mesopotamia Unit more hands-on and engaging, this printable Mesopotamia Timeline is the resource you need! In this interactive timeline project, students construct a timeline that features reading passages, maps, and images. The information included in these features covers the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Phoenicians, and Persians. Not only will this activity give students the chance to physically build a timeline, but it will also become a learning tool that they can refer back to throughout the unit!
Mesopotamia Activity Sheet
We’ve created a basic, fun worksheet that provides engaging puzzles for students while also being low-key. It’s an easy thing to have ready in case you need an emergency sub plan or students finish classwork early! So if you need something on hand for that “just-in-case” situation, you can find it here.
Mesopotamia Test
At the end of your unit, you can assess your students using this Mesopotamia Test and Study Guide. The test is perfectly aligned to the other resources mentioned in this activity guide, 100% editable and available in 2 different formats: Google Forms (self-grading) and Google Docs. The day before the test, have a review day with the provided study guide, and then give the exam in whichever format works best for you!
Royal Game of Ur
Have you wanted to teach your students about the world’s first board game? Then our Mesopotamian Royal Game of Ur is exactly what you need! It’s closely aligned to the official game but can be used on paper or Google Slideshow! We created this version after our favorite website stopped working, and you won’t have to deal with random websites or ads! This activity is perfect for a fun Friday, half day, or whenever you have some additional class time!
Mesopotamia Printable Bookmarks
These printable Mesopotamia Bookmarks are a fun addition to your Mesopotamia unit! This set includes four different designs that feature images and clipart that are related to Mesopotamia. The bookmarks are 100% black and white so that students can color in the images or personalize them as they wish! These coloring bookmarks make a great prize, short early finisher activity, or can even help students save time when using their textbooks!
Mesopotamia Daily Agenda Slide Templates
Need a way to stay more organized during your Ancient Mesopotamia Unit? These Mesopotamia Daily Agenda Slides Templates will help you save time and better immerse your students in the unit! These slides for Google Drive are editable and each template features a photograph of Mesopotamia in the background, as well as Mesopotamia clipart. They can be used to share your daily agenda, bell ringers, and more!
Never used agenda slides, or looking for more options? Check out our recent blog post for more info on daily agenda slides!
Mesopotamia Unit
When teaching Mesopotamia, it’s always important to have activities that engage students and make the content more enjoyable. If you liked any of our Mesopotamia activities, you’ll love our Mesopotamia Unit Activity Bundle! This epic bundle contains 15 resources to start your unit off right! This set of Mesopotamia activities will save time and make sure you have everything you’ll need for your unit! We’ve had great success with these resources, and our students had a blast!
As of 2024, we now have all of our Ancient Civilizations unit bundles available on our own website, which you can check out here. We believe the organization to be even better than how you can receive the files on TPT, and it also helps if your school district blocks Google Drive files from TPT!
Looking for ideas and inspiration when planning your Mesopotamia unit? If so, this free Mesopotamia resource guide can help! It showcases each of our Mesopotamia resources to help you decide which options will be best for your students. For more details about how we put fit these resources together and how long we spend on each activity, you can also download our free Mesopotamia unit plan!
If you liked this list of 11 Mesopotamia Activities for Middle School, consider watching the corresponding video here!
Are you looking for some new teaching ideas to engage your students in your social studies class? If so, you’ll love our FREE guide: 5 Creative Projects to Ignite Student Engagement in Your Social Studies Class. These activities have both printable and digital options and can work for any social studies subject!
