Okay, picture me — notebooks, legal pad, half a croissant, and a head full of castles and courtly love. This is a school plan that sings like a marginal note: ACARA v9 aligned across English, History (HASS), Languages (French), Science and Environmental Philosophy, all stitched together for a curious 14-year-old who wants to be a legal librarian (yes, very specific, very Ally). The spine of the year is medieval England after 1066 — the Conquest and the cultural remix that followed — and we read across languages (Middle English, Anglo-Norman French, Latin in translation), genres (romance, chronicle, lai, hagiography) and practices (guild life, tournaments, castle-building).
Unit 1: After the Conquest — Reinventing Fiction & History. Read selections (in parallel text/translation) from Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace, and adapted Chrétien de Troyes. Focus: historiography vs. myth, translatio, and the birth of the romance. Skills: source evaluation, comparative reading, thesis writing. Assessment: a 1000-word essay that argues whether a given text is history, myth, or politically useful fiction.
Unit 2: Chivalry, Tournaments & Guilds. Explore primary-source descriptions of tournaments, guild charters, and Alan Lee/David Day castle illustrations. Cross-curriculum: medieval civic life (HASS), vocabulary in French (terminology of chivalry, métiers), and a short creative legal brief (for a mock guild dispute). Assessment: a portfolio including a translated guild charter excerpt and a mock arbitration note (practical library law vibes).
Unit 3: Arthurian & Marie de France. Read selected lais and Perceval/Gawain extracts (adaptations where needed), study Malory’s methods and the Gawain poet’s style. Discuss interiority, gender, and the elevation of heterosexual love as a social force. Compare medieval French storytelling methods to insular traditions. Assessment: comparative oral presentation in English and a 500-word reflection in French.
Unit 4: Science, Ecology & Philosophy. Follow the program of primary-source science readings: one source every 6–8 weeks (Copernicus excerpt, Galileo dialogue adaptation, Bacon’s Novum Organum summary, and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring). Tie to environmental philosophy (Aldo Leopold, Lovelock’s Gaia, Spinoza) and medieval agrarian ecologies. Assessment: analytical journal entries and a final interdisciplinary essay linking a medieval environmental practice to modern ecological thought.
Languages & Culture: Weekly French immersion using Larousse college dictionary, Lingopie, and children’s illustrated French Arthurian books. Tasks: vocabulary notebooks, translated captions for Macaulay’s Castle diagrams, and a bilingual annotated bibliography — perfect library-skill practice.
Methods & Skills: paleography-lite (reading facsimiles), citation & archival skills, critical historiography, close literary reading, experimental science reporting, and public-speaking. Resources include secondary readings (Southern, Frankopan, DK timelines), films (Ladyhawke), and hands-on projects (model tournament rules, landscape design study). It’s rigorous. It’s curious. It reads like a case file, and you — future legal librarian — will organize the evidence, file the argument, and always cite your sources. Très bien. Case closed (for now).