Common Core Interactive Journals: The Middle Ages Part 2

I love using lots of color during note taking.  This is especially helpful when students take notes in their Common Core Interactive Reading journals.  The goal of the note taking today was Common Core Standard RI.1 which  wants students to cite evidence from the text and infer and Standard RI.2 which involved determining the main idea of the text.  After students took notes, I asked them questions to assess comprehension.

During our unit, students "created their own books".  As I explained different aspects about daily life, customs during the Middle Ages, etc., students wrote down what they heard and included diagrams, charts, and other illustrations.  By creating their own books through organized note taking, students are able to apply higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy and learn about the Common Core Standards at an even deeper level.

During this activity, students learned about how difficult life was for the peasants.  I found a bucket years ago at a craft store and drilled holes in the sides of it.  The paper represents water.  The peasants paid rent to live on the land of the nobles, and the peasants had to do daily work for them too.  Unfair but true, the peasants had to pay the nobles a fee for EVERYTHING including the ability to get water from the well.  As a result the peasants rationed out their water-at the expense of bathing too!

We acted out this process of water rationing like the peasants.  

This is real wool.  Peasants knitted to create sweaters and made their own cloth from it.  They also made their own cheese.  Students were able to handle these artifacts to make the Common Core thematic unit feel as realistic as possible.