Curriculum Development
History week, part 1
The Dutch Golden Age
(17th Century)
In 2018 I was teaching a 5th and 6th grade combination class in the Netherlands with project-based learning methods. The theme for that period was art, while we were covering the Dutch Golden Age or the 16th and 17th century with our history classes.
Request/need: More in-depth knowledge about the two history periods we were teaching every year from 4th grade and up.
Goal: Our goal was to combine the history subjects and our art theme with as many other courses we could to immerse them in that period of time. We wanted to combined this with the soft-skills they needed to have learned at the end of the year, when following government curriculum guidance.
Solution: We organized two history weeks per year where we combined spelling, Dutch language, comprehensive reading, writing and art lessons in combination with these history subjects.
Results: Immersion into history and a greater engagement shown for all history lessons the rest of the year (measured through observation).
Medium: Storytelling, movies, letters, presentations, knowledge clips and our history textbook.
For this first week we combined the theme (art) and the history subject (The Dutch Golden Age) by providing an assignment where paintings from the 16th and 17th century were leading in learning about The Dutch Golden Age. On the left you can see the word cloud we used to combine the two for our students.
Below I provide a more in-depth explanation about how we designed this particular curriculum in three steps. All subjects were adjusted to the age of the children, needs of the class, and what was culturally appropriate for the Netherlands.
Knowledge and Concepts
As a first step we provides the students with concepts to further stimulate their thinking about The Dutch Golden Ages. We used a multi-media approach where we would begin the day with a comprehensive reading exercise/story and a discussion about an important event during that period. Such as the Dutch setting foot in East-Asia, the triangle trade, slavery, the rise of the rich, the Dutch states becoming an official republic, etc.
To guide us in selecting what knowledge to provide them with, we used the Dutch canon, a history timeline created specifically for the Dutch education. While also providing movies, child-appropriate knowledge clips and plays about life and important people from that time from schooltv.nl.
Learning Questions
After providing the students with the basic knowledge and concepts, we made 6 groups and introduced a learning question to each group. Every question was linked to a painting from that period of time. This way we were linking the history lessons to the art theme.
The painting tied to the first learning question was: ‘The merry family’, portraying a family having dinner and entertainment in the house. The adults were making a lot of noise, while they were drinking, smoking and eating. What most people don’t know is that almost all the paintings in the golden ages were portraying a moral lesson to be learned. The moral lesson in this painting is literally written on the paper above the fireplace, which translates to English like this: “The way the old sing, the boys squeal”. Questioning what will become of the children when parents don’t give the right example.
The learning question tied to this painting was: What was it like to be a child in the Golden Ages?
And we provided the students with the following sub-questions to help them in their research to answer the question. What were the rules then? Did you go to school? And what did you eat and drink in that time?
End-Product
As a final step the students had to make a presentation with their group, using the research they did, trying to answer the learning question. We didn’t provide them with a format for a presentation, but we did gave them examples of how they could present. They could use different sources of information, for example the internet, books, interviewing family members, museums etc.
Some groups made a poster, some chose a PowerPoint presentation, others would just tell about it and showed self-made drawings and art-products. And this was exactly what we wanted to see, their own creativity intertwined with the newly absorbed knowledge, learning how to do research and being able to learn from different information sources. We were very proud of them and the presentations they produced. Immersing them for one week in this subject really helped us to make the history lessons more interesting and fun for the students. They talked about it all year and we could see the same enthusiasm and interest for history every lesson and especially the second history week.