Recently, on May 3rd, 2019, the grade 4 students hosted their 2nd annual Medieval Times event. This year's festival was designed as an interactive exploration of the era where visitors were invited to take part in various activities to learn about life in the Middle Ages. Some of the exciting opportunities offered at the festival included: a castle facade and photo-opportunity created by the Royals & Nobility group; a giant chess board, puzzles, and other medieval-era games crafted by the Arts & Recreation group; a functioning scale model of a catapult made by the Inventors group; a stained-glass and calligraphy-making station by the Clergy group; a coat-of-arms making station by the Knights group, and a medieval market where guests could spend tokens they'd earned throughout the festival to buy medieval food and drinks from the peasants group.

The event was the culmination of their Medieval Times unit of study where students explored how a person's place in society affected their way of life. Students were challenged to consider how life in medieval times may have been similar to or different from life in modern times today. They also explored how medieval people's beliefs, conflicts, fears, rights, and duties may have caused them to live and act the way they did. To showcase their learning, each grade 4 student did independent research to write their own nonfiction books about a chosen Medieval Times topic. Students then compiled their learning by working in small groups to create informative posters and interactive projects to share at the medieval festival. All-in-all it was an outstanding example of student inquiry by the 4th-grade learning community!

The grade 4 teaching team is very proud of their 4th-grade students' hard work, and also expressed their sincere gratitude to all those who assisted in planning and preparing for the event. Of course,m the event wouldn't have been nearly such a success without all the other grade level students and parent guests who came and participated in the fun medieval festivities. So, as they said in the middle ages- grammarcy (meaning 'thanks to you') and huzzah!