Grade 7 Medieval Unit

         Seventh graders have begun their discovery of art and culture in the Medieval era by watching an edited version of "Knight's Tale" that takes viewers into the 1370's in England and France. The movie story line centers on class separation where a poor servant could "change his stars" only by impersonating a jousting champion of noble birth. Grade 7 students will now make their own "Patent of Nobility" to mirror the forged document featured in the film that allowed the hero to pose as someone of high rank. 
         Students have correctly compared the Patent to birth certificates, social security cards, driver's licenses or passports (to name a view documents)  that establish identity in modern times.   The making of a Patent will allow students to use some visual layout skills; problem solving; elements of space, line, color; and skill-building with new materials and methods---all steps will allow comparisons and contrasts between long-ago and now.
        First, it's necessary to adopt a fictitious personna----identity theft for the sake of learning how "naming" was done almost 650 years ago. We will investigate jobs, place names, topographic names, office names and descriptive names as a source of choosing one for our document.

The following link is useful for researching a variety of historical name sources:   http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/nonhuman.shtml

This next website (although I don't normally recommend Wikipedia) is full of resource images of illuminated initials:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Illuminated_manuscript_initials
      Copy and paste the addresses into your browser window if you don't get a "hot link".
       Here's an ancient illuminated capital letter we'll use as a model for calligraphy on our Patents:
                                       
     Then, here's an original Medieval document of identity with a sign of heraldry and an official seal, some elements we'll see in our own Patents: 
                              

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