Yesterday during my planning period, I went down a serious rabbit hole planning for Seventh Grade History.
The seventh graders study the Medieval Period in history class, and they are currently in Europe. Their text book section was about William the Conqueror and the Normans attacking England and winning.
At the time, the English were speaking Old English, or Anglo-Saxon. The Normans spoke French, and as they took control, the two languages smashed together to make Middle English, the daughter of the English language we all speak.
I was fascinated to read about it. THIS was my favorite article. I love the author’s writing style, (but warning – there are some censored swear words). I printed out a segment of the article (with no swear words) for the kids, but didn’t end up having them read it, because we had read from the text book already. If you’re short on time, but want to check out the article, skip down to the last section titled: “A Linguistic Legacy”.
I was excited to talk about the whole thing in class. And I found a lesson on Teachers Pay Teachers that showed the kids how to write a poem using Middle English and Nonsense words. The kids wrote such fun poems! I loved it!
I read some of it (at 4:30), and it just reminds me how little history I know. I think I need to sit in on your classes!
How cool that they wrote poems using this!
I often thought one of the best things about being a teacher was in doing research for lessons and learning so much myself in the process. Good for you – your students surely benefit from your rabbit hole adventures!