St Philip 6th graders in Miss Astwood’s Social Studies class have been learning about ancient Mesopotamia and the culture of people who lived there. Part of the lesson included learning about the scribes and their ancient form of writing called "cuneiform”. Students experienced the difficulties of using this cumbersome form of writing by becoming scribes. Using ancient symbols to write a sentence into a pad of clay, the “scribes” saw how much effort it took just to accomplish their task and how much storage space was needed to record a small amount of information. The task gave the students an appreciation for the struggle ancient peoples had to preserve and pass on their knowledge.
