Welcome to Medieval Times

Grade Fours everywhere long for the day when they get to learn about medieval times. Since the recent social studies curriculum change, the Medieval Times unit has been changed to Early Societies, so we will eventually get into ancient civilizations as well. But since they were all dying to learn about kings, knights, and battles, we thought it was best to start off with medieval times. When you think about it, there is A LOT to cover in the Early Societies unit. My grade partners and I decided it would be best to make it a research based unit and give it a strong literacy focus where the kids would study features of non-fiction texts and synthesize their research into a summary paragraph.

Our “mini learning goals” that were more specific to what we were doing that day.

I did this on our beautiful new Smart Board…so handy!

Our colour coded timeline will help the students understand when these early societies existed throughout time

We started by learning about the social structure of the Middle Ages. It’s important to understand how society worked in order to understand other aspects of medieval life.

Again, the work of my  wonderful grade partner

The social studies curriculum has a strong focus on the inquiry process, so this is our question we will return to as we continue to learn about early societies (I can’t take credit for this; it is yet again the work of my fantastic grade partner).

As you know, I teach a Grade 3/4 split and I haven’t found it too hard as of yet to deliver both curriculums. It’s pretty easy to teach math and literacy to both grades because the expectations are similar. A different teacher teaches my Grade Three science, so science is easy to teach; the Grade Threes just listen in and learn the Grade Four content. Here’s where it gets tricky: social studies.

The Grade Threes are learning the Living and Working in Ontario unit, so what I’ve done is I’ve divided up the day. The Grade Four medieval times content is being taught through our literacy block (the Grade Threes LOVE that they get to learn about it a year earlier), and the Grade Three Ontario unit is taught in the afternoon. Does it mean my Grade Fours have to hear Grade Three content again? Yes. However, since we are aiming to make these units researched-based, eventually we will get to a point where the Grade Fours can work on their own projects while I work with the Grade Threes. Furthermore, there will be moments when we can mesh our early societies research with our Ontario research. For example, next week we will be learning about jobs in both the Middle Ages and in Ontario. We will be able to return to our inquiry question and consider how early practices have evolved or disappeared over time.

Next week, I’ll talk more about what my Grade Threes are doing. I have a fun plan lined up for them on Monday.

Enjoy the weekend!