L Gerson's Blog: The Art of Mayan Hieroglyphics

1. Grade level: 4

2. Title of the day’s lesson with a brief description: The Art of Mayan Hieroglyphics

Students will investigate Mayan hieroglyphics and see what detail goes into their writing. They will see that writing can be art in itself. Students will be making up a hieroglyphic of their own name. Students will also continue to analyze and interpret Mayan art.

3. Materials/resources needed:
• Overhead
• Transparencies
• Tape
• Pencils, Crayons, or Markers
• Paper
• Pencils
• Loose leaf lined paper
• Mayan art examples

4. Teacher Preparation:
• Make overheads
o Maya Glyph Block
o How Do the Maya Write Their Numbers?
o The Art of Mayan Hieroglyphics
o Art pictures (Two plaques, vessel, and bowl)
• Precut 4” x 4” drawing paper – one for each student

5. Minnesota Academic Strand(s) and sub-strand(s) addressed by your lesson:
• 4-8 III. World History B. Classical Civilizations and World Religions 1000 BC – 600 AD

6. NCSS Strand(s) and substrand(s) addressed by your lesson:
• I. Culture Middle Grades C. Explain and give examples of how language, literature, the arts, architecture, other artifacts, traditions, beliefs, values, and behaviors contribute to the development and transmission of culture.

7. Goal(s) for today’s lesson:

• Students will understand how the Maya write words and numbers.
• Students will understand the importance of analyzing art.

8. Objective(s) for today’s lesson:
• Students will be able to explain what a hieroglyphic is.
• Students will create their own hieroglyphic to represent their name.
• Students will be able to list three reasons why it’s important to analyze art.

9. Procedures
a. Introductory Experiences: Put the Maya Glyph Block on the overhead. Ask someone to try reading it. Let students talk with a neighbor to try and figure out what they are looking at. Call on a variety of students to guess what it is they are looking at. (5 minutes)

b. Developmental Experiences:
• Keep the Maya Glyph Block on the overhead. Ask students if they know what hieroglyphics are. They are pictorial symbols that are used to represent meaning or sounds. Each of the boxes contains a different hieroglyphic. Each box is called a glyph box. The picture inside the box is a glyph. The second picture has examples of some of their words. (5 minutes)
• Ask someone to come up to the overhead and draw how they think you would read the glyphs. In another color, draw a line from A1 to B1 to A2 to B2, etc. They don’t read in straight columns or rows. They actually read in paired rows. They have different symbols for numbers, the calendar, sounds, and words. (5 minutes)
• Tell students that we will be focusing on the symbols that represent whole words. Put up overhead of “Art of Mayan Hieroglyphics.” Ask students what they notice about the first picture. The first two glyphs each represent a different syllable. Ask students to give some examples of syllables and clap them. Apple – app/le. Apple has two syllables: app and le. When we put the two syllables together, we get a word in the Mayan language. In our alphabet, we put single letters together to make words. We take c-a-t to make cat. Ask students what the difference is between our alphabet and the Mayan one. In our alphabet we take letters and put them together to make words. With Mayan glyphs, they take syllables and put them together to make words. We call this syllabary. Our smallest unit of sound is the individual letters, while their smallest unit of sound is a syllable. Tell students that hieroglyphic represents the word writing. The second picture shows that they also have different ways of writing the same word. The third picture is a hieroglyphic carved in a temple at Palenque, Mexico. (10 minutes)
• Put up overhead of “How Do Mayans Write Their Numbers?” Ask students what they notice about the first two pictures. The Mayan numbers are expressed in dots and strokes, shapes, and symbols. Notice how they have two different ways to write their numbers. They also have picture glyphs. (5 minutes)
• Have students make up a hieroglyphic for their own name. Have it incorporate things they like to do. Do they like basketball and reading? Draw a hieroglyphic that combines the two. I will be looking for neatness and creativity. Have them write their classroom number on it too. (Look at an alphabetized list of the students. They are numbered 1-20.) Have then draw it on 4” x 4” paper. They can use pencil, crayons, or markers. Hang them around the room when students are done. (15 minutes)
• To go with their glyph, have students write a paragraph on how the glyph they invented represents them. Do they feel like they had to leave anything out? Are there any objects they wanted to include, but decided not to? This is a reflection of their glyph. This will be graded on neatness. It will be turned in. (10 minutes)
• When everyone is gone with their paragraph, pull students attention back up to the overhead. [Note: students haven’t had much practice with art interpretation. Try to lead them to drawing conclusions or theories of what the art may be telling them. We started working on this yesterday.] Put up the two plaques overhead. Cover the second plague with a sheet of paper. Ask students to take a close look at this plague. It has hieroglyphics on the back of it. What would the glyphs be telling us? They could tell us the story of the plaque or even who owns it. What do you think the plague represents? What is the expression on the face? What might this tell us? The plague could represent a God or someone’s family member. It could even represent a glyph. It could mean love, happiness, or anything. The solemn face may tell us to stay serious or it may just even be how the artist decided to depict it. (5 minutes)
• Now cover the plague that was just discussed with the piece of paper so all we can see is the bottom plague. What do you notice about this one? What may this one be telling us? It looks like a headless body. It may be telling us that looks aren’t everything since there isn’t a head. What are the holes for? This plaque was actually part of a belt worn by a ruler. They often had the king’s portrait and a hieroglyphic text. (5 minutes)
• Now put the overhead of the vessel and bowl on the board. Cover up the bowl with a piece of paper. What do you see about this vessel? It looks like it has a lid with the serpent as the handle. There are glyphs on the vessel as well. What could the colors be telling us? The green eyes of the serpent could mean that he’s a very mean creature and is protecting whatever is inside the vessel. The black and red could symbolize life and death or even wealth and poor. It could represent two similar or opposite things. What could this be used for? It could be used for storing food or important objects. What would you store in this vessel? You could store jewelry, beads, or anything important that you could fit inside it. (5 minutes)
• Now cover up the vessel to focus eyes on the bowl. What do you notice about the bowl? There are serpents on the bowl. It looks like the design was carved out from the bowl. Why do you think they used these two colors? One of the colors would have been from the material the bowl was made from. The dark brown may have been the only color available or the color to bring out the pictures better. What do you think they used the bowl for? It may have been used for eating or storing objects or even decoration. I think this bowl may have been used for decoration from all the detail. It may have a story with it that gets passed down from generation to generation. (5 minutes)

c. Culminating Experiences:
• Remind students that how the Maya write is very different than how we do. Ask students what Mayan’s writing is called and explain it. How is it different from our writing? Ask students what they think of hieroglyphics. Have they ever thought of writing as art before? Look at all the hieroglyphics around the room. Hieroglyphics are drawings and that is art. What pieces of artwork did we look at? What did we learn from them? (5 minutes)

10. Assessment(s) used during lesson
• Many questions will be asked throughout the lesson to a variety of students. No one will speak twice until everyone has spoken once.
• Students will be creating their own hieroglyphic.

Resources
- "About Maya Hieroglyphic Writing." Maya Hieroglyphic Writing. FAMSI. 18 Mar. 2008 .
- "Maya." 18 Mar. 2008 .
- "Mayan Religion." 11 Feb. 2007. 18 Mar. 2008 .
- Sarcone, Gianni A., and Marie-Jo Waeber. "How Did the Mayas Represent Numbers?"
Archimedes' Lab. 18 Mar. 2008 .
- “The Origins of Writing.” 28 Apr. 2008. <>

Maya Glyph Block