News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Visitors to Wes Estvold's sixth grade class enter a kingdom, not a classroom.
That's because his students spend a good portion of their time back in the Middle Ages, reliving history through a learning technique called the "Scottish Storyline."
In the Scottish Storyline method, teachers and students set a scene in a particular time and place and students develop and play out characters and incidents that arise from the setting.
The technique originated in Scotland 20 years ago and was transplanted to the United States in the late 1980s.
Estvold's sixth graders - who study language arts, social studies and science with him - have created a setting by decorating their classroom with construction paper flags, castle walls and figures out of medieval times.
As part of the language-based demands of the storyline, they wrote brief "biography cards" on the characters they created to adorn the classroom walls. They will do more writing as the storyline develops.
The students are also reading "The Midwife's Apprentice," a young adult novel about the period, as they conduct the storyline.
"The key is that everything is integrated into the storyline," Estvold said.
They also had to employ a little engineering science to building their castle wall (which forms the exterior of the classroom). According to Estvold, the students had to determine the area of the wall and calculate the number of paper bricks they would need to cover it.
To start the storyline, Estvold built on knowledge of medieval times that students brought with them from previous schooling and from popular culture.
According to Estvold, considerable work was required to ground student's perceptions of the period in reality, since most children associate castles and knights with dragons and magic.
"I had to work hard to get the fantasy part out of it," he said.
The storyline is composed of a series of episodes that raise key questions the students must address.
On Thursday, October 29, Estvold "left" his classroom, to be replaced by a running character, Sir William, an "acting knight" from the Middle Ages. Sir William asked the students this episode's key question: "Who will live in our kingdom?"
Based on their study of the period, the students listed an array of positions and occupations from the time - from kings to serfs, from men-at-arms to bakers. Each occupation was written on a card and the students drew their place in the kingdom out of Sir William's hat.
That exercise alone taught the sixth graders something about the Middle Ages: They didn't get to trade places with other students; they were stuck with what life handed them.
"If you lived in my time with me," Sir William told the students, "you wouldn't have a choice of what you do. You are born into what you do."
That made an impression on the students, one of whom later told The Nugget that not having choices in what you do, how you live and who you marry "would be miserable."
The students will get to find out more about their "lives" as they write imaginative essays about their characters.
As the storyline continues, the students will act in character to explore daily life and the rules and expectations of their age. They will face problems associated with the time - perhaps a plague of rats - that they must work together and individually (and in character) to solve.
Though most of the students agreed that life is probably better now than then, they still enjoy "acting out" history."
"It's just an incredible way to relive medieval times," Estvold said.
And the students are convinced that they learn more from the storyline than they would from textbooks.
"It's a fun way to learn about the past," one student said.
"When you're having fun, you listen much better," another student noted.
The storyline will run for about three months, Estvold said. At the end, the students will put their acquired knowledge of the Middle Ages to the test in a "culminating activity," where they will share their knowledge with parents and members of the community.
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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