‘The Canterbury Tales’ and The Social Environment.

Aim: To understand what society was like 600 years ago.

Citizenship Criteria

This lesson allows you to cover thefollowing citizenship criteria:

3a Using imagination to consider other peoples experiences. Origins of British Identity.

Starter:Read the 14thC description of The Miller from Chaucer’s ‘The Canterbury Tales’ and draw and label the character on a piece of plain paper.

Next compare your ideas about the character with a modern version of the description to see how much you understood.

What were ‘The Canterbury Tales’? Listen to or read the introduction to Chaucer’s famous masterpiece.

Task 1 – What was society like in the late 1300s in England?

In groups of four read the sample characters from ‘The Canterbury Tales’ who represented types of people from 14thC society in EnglandAs you read about each person try to think of as modern equivalent in our society to match the character from the 14thC.Make a chart for the characters you have been given like the one below.

Description Table:

The Merchantis always talkingabout hisProfits and has a really showyexpensive hatand gown

A market ofstreet traderselling fakedesigner goods orPirate videos.Possibly a secondhand car dealerwith lots of ‘bling’

Trading: buying andselling, butslightly outsidethe law.Wearing veryexpensiveClothes.

The Merchant

Why you thinkthis

A Modernequivalent

What thecharacter didin 14thCsociety

Character

Task 2 – Make your own version of ‘The Canterbury Tales’ called ‘The Ashford International Tales’

Make a series of short descriptions representing types of people like those in ‘The Canterbury Tales’ but from modern day. Imagine these people have gathered in the departure lounge at the Eurostar terminal

Task 2 continued…

Consider: How are they dressed? What work do they do? How do they spend their free time? What are they like towards other people? What vehicle do they use? Each part should be a separate paragraphUse the original descriptions as models

Plenary – The Reading

Present your group of characters to the class by reading them out.