(Alinda: Part 6 – Culminating activities of our Year 8 Medieval Europe GI classes)
Medieval Day
Last Friday we had a whole day of activities for all of Year 8 in the School Hall. Students had decorated the walls and added to this during the morning with the work they produced.
First a ‘Forum of Experts’ were interviewed by one of the teachers who happened to be the Head of Humanities who has a great deal of historical knowledge.
Following this the students organized themselves into groups of 10 or 11 and a teacher supervised each group with an activity that led into a brief oral assessment task. The students had to consider a headline that would point others to their specialty area and when this was finished the teachers led students to talk about their headline and how this fitted into their knowledge area and then the whole topic.
After recess games were organized with due care to hygiene and safety!
Apple bobbing was very popular but as each round needed to have the bowls cleaned and refilled this activity was interspersed with rounds of jousting!
Lunch was inside on picnic rugs with food to share and some had cooked appropriate food.
A visiting historical troupe came after lunch with medieval armour and weapons. After a demonstration and talk the students – and teachers – tried on armour and held weapons. A few students found themselves in the stocks and others found out how uncomfortable and heavy chain armour really is!
Completing the unit was just the beginning of the next spiral of action research. On Friday at the Medieval day (culminating activity) one of the teachers told me she had a list of things to improve on this Medieval Day for next year and the three surveys I took at different stages also play a part in evaluating and preparing for next year.
Five Minutes of images and video:
