ACARA v9 mapping (learning focus)

• Historical Knowledge: The Middle Ages (c. 500–1500 CE) — social structure, daily life and ruling figures such as Charlemagne; changes in food production and consumption over time.
• Historical Concepts & Skills: chronology, cause and effect, continuity and change, use of primary and secondary sources, constructing evidence‑based explanations.
• Cross‑curriculum: Food and culture (Humanities & Social Sciences), literacy (reading historical texts), and ethical discussion about food production.

Unit overview — Two semesters

1. Semester 1 — Goose, Grain and the Carolingian Table

   Focus: Charlemagne’s agricultural policies and the social importance of geese. Key idea: how rulers shaped food supply and taste.

   • Starter activity: Close reading of the short source excerpt on Charlemagne’s geese. Visualise — draw the scene: flocks like sheep, drovers in fields.
   • Mini‑lecture: Charlemagne’s estates, manorial systems, and why fattened geese were prized (taste, fat for cooking, festive meat, ease of rearing).
   • Class activity: Mapping supply chains — from field to table. Students create a flowchart showing who raised geese, who transported them, and who ate them.
   • Skills focus: Source evaluation — is this a primary or secondary account? What does it tell us about social class and diet?
   • Assessment: Short analytical paragraph (150–200 words) explaining why geese were important in Carolingian society, using evidence.
2. Semester 2 — Sweet Things: Medieval Desserts and Banquets

   Focus: Ingredients and display — the medieval concept of dessert and the spectacle of molded jellies and wafers.

   • Starter tasting (sensory imagining): Read the dessert list (pears, crabapples, peeled walnuts, figs, dates, peaches, grapes, filberts, spices, red sugar plums) and ask students to close their eyes and imagine flavours and textures.
   • Lecture & discussion: How imports (spices, sugar) and preserving methods (drying, candying) shaped medieval sweets; differences between elite and peasant diets.
   • Practical task: Design a medieval banquet plate — students choose ingredients, explain availability and status, and sketch a molded jelly in the shape of a swan or peacock.
   • Historical skills: Corroboration — compare Lacroix’s description with other medieval cookery manuscripts (e.g., MS Forme of Cury extracts provided by teacher).
   • Assessment: Creative research task — a short museum label (120–150 words) describing a banquet prop (e.g., a swan jelly) that explains ingredient origin and cultural meaning.

Teaching steps — one lesson example (50–60 minutes)

1. Hook (5 min): Read aloud the goose passage or the dessert list in a rich, sensory voice. Ask: what tastes or smells come to mind?
2. Context (10 min): Quick mini‑lecture on Charlemagne/Carolingian estates or trade routes for spices and sugar.
3. Activity (25 min): Group source task — students analyse the provided text, annotate for evidence about production, status and taste; produce a single conclusion sentence.
4. Reflection (10 min): Class discussion on continuity/change—do any of these foods still matter today? How and why?

Assessment ideas

• Formative: source annotations, group posters, classroom debates.
• Summative: comparative essay (600–800 words) on medieval diet differences between peasants and elites using Lacroix and at least one other source; or a creative museum exhibit panel.

Resources

• Primary excerpt given (geese, desserts) — use as a reading comprehension & source analysis piece.
• Paul Lacroix, Manners, Customs, and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period — annotated bibliography (below).
• Selected medieval recipes (teacher‑prepared extracts), images of medieval banquets and carved jellies, map of trade routes.

Annotated bibliography (500 words) — Paul Lacroix

Reference: Lacroix, Paul. Manners, Customs, and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period. (Translation/edition details as per classroom copy.)

There is something gloriously theatrical about Lacroix’s pages: he writes as if lifting a silver cover to reveal a spectacle of taste. This book—compiled by a 19th‑century antiquarian with a keen eye for domestic detail—serves as a glossy window into how nineteenth‑century France imagined medieval life. Lacroix gathers descriptions, engravings and excerpts that evoke kitchens, tables and wardrobes; for the teacher looking at medieval food, his chapters on manners and meals are rich in evocative vignettes. The passages selected for our unit (on fattened geese and on elaborate desserts) are the exact kind of source that hooks Year 9 students: accessible, sensory, and resonant with everyday life rather than abstract political events.

Strengths: Lacroix’s narrative is wonderfully descriptive—he gives colour to the mundane, making geese come alive as creatures driven across fields like sheep, and desserts shimmer as molded jellies shaped into swans and peacocks. For classroom use this is gold: students can visualise, dramatise, and produce creative responses (drawings, menus, banquet plans). Lacroix also collates a range of earlier sources and illustrations, which can be used to show how later writers reconstructed the past.

Limitations: Lacroix is not a modern academic historian. His work blends antiquarian romance with selective quoting; he sometimes reads later practices back into earlier centuries and occasionally favours picturesque anecdotes over systematic evidence. As a secondary source the book must be used with caution—teachers should scaffold students’ use by asking them to compare Lacroix’s claims with medieval cookbooks or with recent scholarly summaries of Carolingian economy. Lacroix’s tendency to dramatise can be a pedagogical advantage if framed as interpretation rather than fact.

Classroom use: Begin with Lacroix to spark curiosity—read aloud his dessert description in a decadent tone and ask students to list ingredients and possible sources (local fruit, imported sugar, spices). Follow with a corroboration task: pair Lacroix with a short extract from a medieval recipe collection and a modern secondary source on Charlemagne’s agricultural reforms. Ask students to identify which claims are supported across sources and which are Lacroix’s embellishments.

In short, Lacroix is a splendid storyteller and a useful springboard. He invites students to taste the past imaginatively while prompting critical skills: source evaluation, corroboration and contextualisation. Used alongside primary manuscripts and modern scholarship, his book becomes a delicious teaching tool that marries sensory appeal with historical inquiry.