Romans word bank for KS2

Most pupils arrive at this unit knowing that the Romans had soldiers and roads, and very little else. The history statement is about the Roman Empire’s impact on Britain, so the words that matter most are the ones that describe change: empire, invade, settle, govern, trade, citizen. Put those on the working wall in the first week, even before pupils meet the stories and objects that bring them to life.

Start with empire and emperor together, because pupils mix them up for the whole term otherwise. An empire is the many lands; an emperor is the one person who rules them. A quick sort, with “Rome”, “Britain” and “Egypt” on one side and “Claudius” and “Hadrian” on the other, fixes the difference in a few minutes.

The Romans are the best topic in KS2 for word roots, because so much of their vocabulary is still in use. Aqueduct comes from the Latin for water (aqua) and to lead (ducere): a channel that leads water. Ask pupils to find other aqua words (aquarium, aquamarine) and other duct words (viaduct, conduct). Year 5 and 6 pupils can keep a “Latin detectives” list across the term; it feeds directly into the prefix and root work in the spelling appendix.

The calendar is another way in. July is named after Julius Caesar and August after the emperor Augustus. Pupils who can say why are already thinking about how an empire leaves marks that last long after it ends, which is the big idea in the curriculum statement.

The nouns on the mat are the things pupils can see in pictures and museum collections: forts, bathhouses, mosaics, coins. Use them for description first. Show a picture of a Roman bathhouse and ask for three sentences, each using one noun and one adjective from the mat. The adjectives are chosen to be precise rather than impressive: cobbled, marble and bustling each tell the reader something real about a Roman town.

The verbs carry the history. Invade, conquer, settle, govern and trade describe what happened in Britain over nearly four hundred years, from the invasion under Claudius in AD 43 to the end of Roman rule in the early 400s. A timeline where every event has to use one of these verbs is a good assessment of whether pupils understand the sequence, not just the dates.

For narrative, the mat suits a diary or letter from a Roman fort. The writing tablets found at Vindolanda, near Hadrian’s Wall, include real letters from around AD 100, among them a birthday invitation from one officer’s wife to another. Reading a translation of that invitation shows pupils that people in Roman Britain wrote about ordinary things, and gives them a model for a letter that is about daily life rather than fighting.

It is easy for a Romans topic to become a list of battles. A mystery told through a Roman town, such as following a lost mosaic tile past a villa and an aqueduct, avoids that and uses far more of the mat. Ask pupils to look at the invasion from both sides as well. Celtic and tribe are on the mat so that pupils can write about the people who already lived in Britain, and Boudica’s rebellion is a good place to discuss why someone might rebel against a powerful empire.

At the end of the topic, give pupils the mat with the meanings covered and ask them to write one sentence about Roman Britain for each topic word. The words they cannot use correctly tell you what to revisit. A second, quicker check is to ask pupils to sort the verbs into “things the Romans did when they arrived” and “things they did once they stayed”; a pupil who puts trade and govern in the second group has understood the shape of the topic.