Monday, April 22, 2013

Common Core Interactive Journals: The Middle Ages


For the past month, my students have been learning about life during the Middle Ages.  This is a great way to integrate the Common Core informational text standards into reading.  Honestly, I think that I have been having just as much fun as the students.  

On this day (picture that is above), we learned about the different parts of a manor where the nobles and peasants lived.  Students took colorful notes and created their own diagrams.  This integrated Common Core Standard RI.5 that deals with text features and text organization.  Throughout the unit, students applied what they learned about text features with their own notetaking.



Most of our unit focused on the daily life of peasants.  They worked on the land of the nobles and lived a very difficult life.  Most of the time, kings and queens are the object of attention during units about the Middle Ages and not people in the lower classes of society. Peasants made up 90% of the population during this time period.  Students did role playing and acted out the daily life of peasants by threshing wheat.  Each student was given wheat to thresh (beat) against the desk until grains popped out.  Just like during the Middle Ages, students had to give the noble (me) the pieces of wheat that was collected so that it could be handed to the miller (wheat grinder).

The students were able to see replicas of coins and an authentic coin that would have been used at that time.  The authentic coin is on the far left.

More coming soon....

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