Teaching with GRAPES
Are you an Ancient Civilizations teacher looking to add GRAPES into your curriculum? If so, you are in the right place! In this blog post, we’re going to break down GRAPES in 3 ways; what they are, how they can be helpful, and different resources we’ve used to incorporate them into our lessons. By the end of this post, you’ll be able to start successfully teaching with GRAPES!
What are GRAPES?
Grapes (while also a delicious fruit) are actually an acronym containing all the major pieces of every ancient civilization. Many world history and ancient civilization teachers use GRAPES to help present the information of each civilization or unit they cover. Here are the specific components of G.R.A.P.E.S.:
G – Geography
Where is each civilization located? How do the people living there interact with the environment? How does the environment shape the civilization? This component studies how geography affects the lifestyle and development of a specific civilization through location, climate, interaction, and more.
R – Religion
What is the belief system(s) of each civilization? How do those beliefs shape the culture? What factors might have led them to that belief system? This topic covers how each civilization had their own systems of morals and traditions, where they might have gotten it from, and how they interact according to these rules.
A – Achievements
What are some of the accomplishments or achievements of each civilization? What innovations or inventions have they created? How do these accomplishments affect our lives today? These achievements can include anything from science, math, writing, architecture, and more!
P – Politics
What type of government was used in each civilization? What were some of their laws and how were those laws organized? How are those governments different from the ones today? This area covers the power dynamics of each civilization and how decisions were carried out.
E – Economics
What was the economy of each civilization built around? Was the civilization more of an agricultural or trading society? How did their currency work? This is where you can dive into how resources were distributed, if the specific civilization traded with outside groups, and so on.
S – Society
When it comes to society, many teachers mainly discuss the social structure of the civilization but the study of society can get into much more than a social hierarchy. Who are some of the famous people from that civilization? How is society organized? Why do certain inequities exist? These are all important questions to ask.
Why are GRAPES helpful?
After teaching Ancient Civilizations for so long, you realize there is an enormous amount to cover. It can be overwhelming not only for your students, but for you as a teacher trying to figure out what to focus on and present. It can be a challenge making sure that you not only cover your country’s history, but the rest of the world’s as well. Especially in the United States, world history often takes a back seat.
Using GRAPES makes it easier to focus on the major themes, ideas, and accomplishments each ancient civilization has had throughout history. It gives you a road map on what things to emphasize, especially if you have limited time to cover many topics. It’s also a wonderful tool because it works with any civilization you choose to discuss in your class.
GRAPES Teaching Ideas
GRAPES Posters
As a nice reminder for students all year long, we’ve created these GRAPES Posters that break down the separate parts of civilizations. They provide definitions for each component and come with eye-catching images for your visual learners! Set them up in your classroom where it’s easy to see, and your students will always have an easy reminder if they forget.
One-Pager GRAPES Handout
Along with our posters, we’ve also designed this one-page handout to give to students. It includes each part of GRAPES and their different definitions, so students will always have a resource on hand! Another option is to use the color version as a poster for your classroom and give students a black and white copy.
Ancient Civilization GRAPES Slideshow
Providing definitions and examples is a must to help your students understand each component of GRAPES. With our GRAPES Slideshow and Activity, you go through each separate component but are able to break it down further to give more context. Afterward, there are some helpful questions to complete to check for understanding.
We recommend doing this activity before you start teaching your first civilization (but if you didn’t have a chance to do this, it is never too late!). Once you’ve covered basic skills and gone over prehistoric times, use this activity as a foundation when covering those river valley civilizations. This slideshow helps build a solid foundation you’ll likely return back to throughout the year!
Sorting Challenge
A fun activity your students can work on is this sorting challenge. It goes over all 6 parts of GRAPES, where students have a word bank and need to figure out which words go with each component. Any words left over that don’t fit in any category need to be used to decode a secret message. Of course, the secret message is a joke about grapes! This is a great activity to have your students practice their understanding of GRAPES before you dive into using them in your civilizations.
Create a Civilization Project
One of our favorite projects for Ancient Civilizations is to have students create a civilization of their own. We designed this civilization project to help students better understand the different pieces of a civilization by creating their own with GRAPES! They get to decide what kind of government they want to have, what goods are going to be part of their economy, and so much more. This allows students to understand the choices of each civilization and what factors affected them.
This project is very flexible in terms of when it can be done and the different ways to do it. You can have students work on it right after finishing up GRAPES and introducing what a civilization is, or with an early civilization like Mesopotamia. This can also be a great capstone project for the end of the year to have students apply what they’ve learned from different civilizations to help them make their choices that way.
Teaching Ancient Civilizations
When teaching any ancient civilization, it’s important to find new, fun ways to help students understand the content. If you liked any of our GRAPES activities, you’ll love our GRAPES Ancient Civilizations Bundle! This bundle contains all 5 resources we’ve mentioned in this post in one easy package to help you teach with GRAPES in your classroom!
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!
If you liked this breakdown of teaching with GRAPES in your Ancient Civilization classroom, consider watching the corresponding video here. If you’re interested in our most recent Ancient Civilization activities, check out our post for Mesopotamia 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!
