Lesson video

Hello and welcome to another lesson in our history of language unit.

My name is Mr. Young and it's lovely to be with you here today as we complete another lesson, this time looking at reading an Anglo-Saxon text.

So as always, we are going to have a learning outcome to accompany our lesson journey today.

So hopefully by the end of today's lesson, everybody should be able to use reading skills to comprehend an Anglo-Saxon text.

And as always, we are going to be accompanied by some keywords that we will revisit throughout today's lesson.

So let's take a quick look at what they are today.

Anglo-Saxons, Old English, translate, forbidden, and paradise.

So today's lesson will follow the following sequence.

So in our very first learning cycle, we are going to look at the Anglo-Saxons and in particular look at the development of Old English.

Then we are going to take a look at Latin and Old English in our second learning cycle and look at the, look at the similarities between the two.

And finally, we are going to put our knowledge to good use in our third learning cycle by trying to understand an Anglo-Saxon text.

So let's get started with the first part of today's lesson.

So let's begin the first part of today's lesson with a quick discussion question.

So what do you think Old English might mean? Pause the video, have a quick discussion, and then do push play when you are ready to continue.

Okay, so that's some great conversations, a really enthusiastic start to the lesson.

So really well done.

And I particularly like those conversations that focused on the old part of Old English, like perhaps this is a language that was once spoken on these shores.

So before the Anglo-Saxons, people in Britain spoke many different languages, and these included Old Norse, Latin, and Old Brittonic.

These are kind of ancient languages.

However, the Anglo-Saxons arrived in the fifth century, and they brought their own Germanic languages to Britain.

Over time, they absorbed many words from these existing languages to form something new, Old English.

So many modern English words that we use today are very similar to their Old English counterparts.

And we're gonna look at just how similar some of those can be now.

So the Old English word "huss" is very similar to our word for "house." Again, the Old English word "mona," is very similar to "moon," and they both mean the same thing.

What I'd really like you to do now is to use your own predictive reading skills to think about what these Old English words can mean in modern English.

And those words are "boc," "lif," and "sunne." So your discussion question is, what do you think the Old English words above might mean? And do they look similar to any modern English words? Pause the video, have a quick discussion, and then we will look at the correct answers after you push play.

Some really excellent discussions there taking place and really well done to those of you who were able to identify what these words mean in modern English.

So "boc" means book, "lif" means life, and "sunne" means sun.

So as we can see, there are real similarities between Old English words and their modern English equivalents.

So the Anglo-Saxons had a big influence on the development of English as they wrote many of their stories down.

Some of these from the basis of English literature today.

So a quick discussion question for you.

So have you come across any texts before that have been written in Old English? Pause the video, have a quick discussion, and do push play when you are ready to continue.

Okay, some really nice discussions taking place and well done to those of you who were potentially able to identify some of these Anglo-Saxon texts.

So our first one is "Beowulf," a very, very famous Anglo-Saxon text written in Old English.

And this text is an epic poem in which the hero, Beowulf, defeats monsters like the Grendel.

And our second text is "The Exeter Book." So "The Exeter Book" is a famous book of poetry containing many epic poems such as "The Wanderer." So our first check for understanding for today so true or false? The Anglo-Saxons conquered England and immediately created Old English? True or false? Superb work if you are able to identify that it is in fact false.

So let's think about justifying that answer.

Why is it false? So is it A, Old English developed over time as the Anglo-Saxons' Germanic languages absorbed words from existing languages? Or is it B, the Anglo-Saxons had to wait for people who spoke other languages to return to their homelands.

Pause the video, complete the task, and push play when you are ready to see the correct answer.

Fantastic work to all of those, all of those of you who said A, Old English developed over time as Anglo-Saxons' Germanic languages absorbed words from existing languages spoken in Britain.

Excellent work if you managed to get that one correct.

So now we are going to focus a little bit more on writing about the Anglo-Saxons and Old English.

And in particular we are going to use noun appositives to do that.

So a noun appositive is a phrase that gives a piece of extra information about a noun, and it can be great for giving more detail about historical events or avoiding misconceptions.

So let's take a look at how we might structure a noun appositive.

So firstly we have a noun.

Then we have a noun appositive, and then we have a verb.

So let's look at an example of that in action.

So we can say, "My car is parked outside my house," which is a perfectly acceptable sentence.

However, we might want to add a bit more detail or perhaps avoid a misconception.

So we can add a noun appositive, in this case, a red convertible.

So the full sentence would read, "My car, a red convertible, is parked outside." And we can do the same with historical pieces of information.

So in this case, we could say something like "'The Exeter Book' is one of the earliest recorded books in Old English," which is a perfectly acceptable sentence.

However we may wish to add a little bit more detail to that sentence with a noun appositive.

So we can add "a collection of epic poetry." So our noun appositive sentence becomes "'The Exeter Book', a collection of epic poetry, is one of the earliest recorded books in Old English." So let's have a quick check for understanding about noun appositives.

So true or false, a noun appositive follows a noun.

Excellent work if you identified that as true.

So let's justify our answer now.

Is it A, it gives further detail about a noun and avoids misconceptions? Or is it B, it names characters if they haven't previously been named? Pause the video, complete the task, and push play when you're ready to continue with today's lesson.

Fantastic work to all of the, all those of you who identified A as the correct answer this time around.

It gives further detail about a noun and avoids misconceptions.

So we have a second check for understanding.

So which of the following does not contain a noun appositive? Is it A, the author William Shakespeare uses metaphor effectively in Juliet's soliloquy? Is it B, the book I read last night was exciting? Or C, the gothic, a genre of literature, gained popularity in the 19th century.

Pause the video, complete the task, and push play when you are ready to see the correct answer.

Again, really excellent work to those of you who identified B as the sentence that does not contain a noun appositive.

Really great work if you identified that one, well done.

So now we're going to move on to our application task.

And your task is to add a noun appositive to the sentences below to give more detail.

So your sentence starters are as follows.

The Anglo-Saxons, tribes that influenced Old English with their own Germanic languages.

Old English, a language, was an earlier version of modern English that we speak today.

And finally, "Beowulf," an epic, is one of the earliest known texts written in Old English.

So your task is to write out these sentences and add a noun appositive to give a bit more detail and make them just a little bit better.

So do pause the video, complete the task, and push play when you are ready to continue with today's lesson.

Okay, fantastic work on that task, and I'd be really impressed if anybody was able to get anything similar to those sentences on the board that you can see now.

So the Anglo-Saxons, tribes that arrived in England in the fifth century, influenced Old English with their own Germanic languages.

Old English, a language spoken widely in Anglo-Saxon Britain, was an earlier version of modern English that we speak today.

"Beowulf," an epic story of an Anglo-Saxon hero, is one of the earliest known texts written in Old English.

Superb work if you are able to get something like that in your own work.

So great work on that first learning cycle that we've just completed.

Now we're going to move on to our second learning cycle of today's lesson, which is looking at Latin and Old English and specifically the kind of interplay between the two of them.

So let's look at the impact that Latin has had on the development of Old English.

So when missionaries first brought Christianity to Britain in the second century, they brought the Latin Bible with them.

As the popularity of Christianity grew, so did the influence of Latin, and it affected the early development of Old English in several different ways.

So let's look in a bit more detail at those specific ways that Latin impacted Old English.

So firstly, it impacted English in its church services, so services were still conducted in Latin.

And words from these services began to be absorbed into Old English.

Secondly, religious texts.

So the Bible was translated into Old English and lots of words retained their Latin origins.

So were very similar in Old English.

And finally, education also had an impact and that was because schools taught in Latin.

So many words from this language were adopted by Old English.

So as you can see, Old English is heavily influenced by Latin for lots of different reasons.

So very first check for understanding.

Choose two answers that explain why Latin was influential in the development of Old English.

Is it A, Latin continued to be used in church services? Is it B, Latin was used as the language of politics? Is it C, Latin was used by the royal families of the day? Or is it D, Latin was the language used in schools? Pause the video, complete the task, and do push play when you would like to see the correct answers.

So great work on that task and really well done to all of you who selected A and D as the correct answers.

Latin continued to be used in church services and was also used in schools and this was really influential in the development of Old English.

Great work if you managed to identify those.

Really well done.

So now we're going to have a bit more of a specific look at the influence that the Bible and Latin had on the development of Old English.

So the Bible was so influential, that many of its Latin words influenced Old English and as a result, the modern English that we speak today.

So we are going to see that in action and really look at those similarities across time.

So our first word is the word for "mother," or at least the modern English word for "mother," which we can see is very similar to both the Old English and Latin versions of that word.

And again, if we look at a second word, "nox" in Latin, "niht" in Old English, and that is "knight" in modern English, once again showing those similarities across those three languages.

So I've got a quick task for you now, which is to have a discussion and to look at the Latin and Old English versions of modern English words and what do you think they are likely to be looking at their Old English and Latin equivalents.

So pause the video, have a quick discussion, and do push play when you are ready to see the correct answers.

Some really nice discussions there and great job and well done to those of you who are able to identify "father" as the first word and "day" as the second, words, which once again, are very similar to both their Old English and Latin versions of those words.

Well done if got that right.

So this is also true across words associated with religion or it's particularly true with words associated with religion.

So once again, we see lots of similarities in words in modern English, Old English, and Latin that are associated with religion.

So let's look at some of those words now.

So we've got the word "maths," the word "church," the word "sacrament" and the word "god." So a quick check for understanding then.

True or false, Latin influenced Old English words associated with religion? Pause the video, have a go, and then do push play when you would like to see the correct answer.

Well done if you identified that as true.

So let's make this a little bit more complex by trying to justify that answer.

So how can we justify that answer? Is it A, words like "mass" and "church" are very similar to their Old English and Latin versions? Or is it B, religious leaders of the day forced people to use Latin words for religious things? Pause the video, complete the task, and do push play when you would like to see the correct answer.

Excellent work if you are able to identify it as A, words like "mass" and "church" are very similar to their Old English and Latin versions.

Well done if you were able to get that one correct.

So our practise task for this second learning cycle is to use the sentence starters below to explain why the Latin Bible influenced the development of Old English.

So you have several sentence starters and they are, the Bible influenced Old English because, Latin wasn't spoken by many but, Latin continued to be used in church services so.

Pause the video, complete the task, and do push play when you would like to see some feedback for this task.

So let's have a look at how we could have approached that practise task.

So firstly, the Bible influenced Old English because it was translated into Old English with many words keeping their Latin origins.

Great work if you've got something similar to that one.

So number two, Latin wasn't spoken by many, but it was used by monks who taught in schools, which increased its influence.

Again, great job if you've got something similar to, for that task.

And finally, Latin continued to be used in church services, so the words used in these services were adopted into Old English.

Great work there if you managed to get anything similar to those example answers.

Well done.

So a big well done for all of your hard work on this lesson so far.

We have now reached our third and final learning cycle in which we are going to be understanding an Anglo-Saxon text.

So let's get started.

So we are going to look at an Anglo-Saxon text written in Old English.

In particular, we are going to try and use the knowledge that we have developed in this lesson to try and decode that text and work out what it's all about.

So before we do that, a quick discussion question for you.

If you are trying to understand a text in a language you are not familiar with, what might you look for to help you understand it? Pause the video, have a quick discussion, and do push play when you are ready to continue with the next part of the lesson.

Some great discussions there taking place.

I was really impressed with all of those groups that spoke about the similarities that might be there across different languages, potentially, similarities in words in more than one language.

So some of the things that we can look for and some of the things that we can do if we are trying to understand a text in a language we don't understand, might be to look for words that are similar to ones in my own language.

And that's something we are going to see in this Old English text today.

We might also look for cultural references that we might recognise or understand, and finally we might look for grammatical structures that seem familiar to us.

These might help us understand the text better, for example, if it is structured as speech or a question, for example.

So a quick check for understanding, which of the below best explains what I can do to understand a text better in Old English? Is it A, I can look for similar words, cultural references, and familiar grammatical structures? Is it B, it is impossible to understand a text in Old English if you don't speak it? Or is it C, I can look for words that are identical to those in modern English.

As always, pause the video, complete the task, and do push play when you would like to see the correct answer.

Great job on that task and excellent work if you were able to identify A as the correct answer.

We would look for similar words, cultural references, and familiar grammatical terms to help us understand something in Old English.

So let's now take a look at some very specific Old English words that will be relevant to understanding today's text.

So my Old English is not particularly good, so I'm not going to read those words.

However, I do have a discussion task for you which is on the board now.

I would like you to look at those Old English words and have a quick discussion about, do they look like any words that we have in modern English that we speak today? Pause the video, have a quick discussion, and then do push play when you would like to see the correct answers.

So some great conversations there to what is a very, very challenging question and well done if you were able to identify any of these words.

So we've got words like "tree," "woman," "forbid," "serpent," and "heaven." All words that look very, very similar to their Old English equivalents.

Okay, now we are going to look in a lot more detail at an Anglo-Saxon text and we are gonna see if we can try and decode this text.

So here is our Anglo-Saxon text in Old English.

It looks very challenging at first because it has lots of words we don't understand and lots of letters and grammatical constructions that seem very strange to us.

However, we can begin to decode this text by doing a couple of things.

So as I'm reading this text, a few things are standing out to me.

So firstly, I'm noticing that this text includes the Old English word for "god" quite a lot.

So I'm starting to think that this might be a religious text of some description.

Again, I'm familiar with the word "paradisum," which means heaven.

So again, we might get this idea that the text relates to heaven and may be associated with religion in some way.

And finally looking at the words that I have just learned in Old English, the story makes lots of references to snakes and trees as well as something forbidden.

So a quick discussion task, given those clues on the right hand side, does this text remind you of any stories that you might know? Pause the video, have a quick discussion, and push play when you would like to continue.

Okay, let's look at an English translation to see if you were right.

Also, the serpent was more cunning than all the other animals that God created on earth.

And the serpent said to the woman, "Why did God forbid you from eating from any tree within paradise?" The woman replied, "We eat from the trees in paradise, but God commanded us not to eat from the tree that is in the middle of heaven, lest we die." Then the serpent said to the woman, "You will not die at all even though you eat from that tree." So fantastic work if you were able to identify that this passage is part of the biblical story of Adam and Eve from the book of "Genesis." In this part of the story, the serpent tricks Eve to take a fruit she has been forbidden to eat.

But crucially, by looking for familiar words and cultural references, we can start to understand this story.

We can take a really challenging text in Old English and using those skills and techniques, we can start to understand it just a little bit better.

Okay, our final practise task for today is a discussion-based task.

So using the discussion grid below, I would like you to answer the question, why is it important to understand where our language came from? And in particular, you have two very key things that will help you in these discussions.

Your first thing is to explain your idea.

So we've got a sentence starter there to help you, which is it is important to understand where our language came from to better understand, see links, enrich our.

And your second part of this discussion grid is to develop your idea even further.

So once again, you've been given some sentence starters which include, by better knowing the origins of our language we can, it becomes, our knowledge.

So do pause the video, complete the task, and do push play when you are ready, when you are ready to see some feedback for this practise task.

Okay, some fantastic work on that task.

I'm really impressed by what I'm hearing and what I'm seeing and really well done.

And great job if you are identifying any of the following things in your discussions.

So firstly, it is important to understand where our language came from to enrich our understanding of the varied and diverse origins of the language we continue to speak to this day.

And to develop that idea, by better knowing the origins of our language, we can make clear connections across time and see the historical events like the Anglo-Saxon invasion that have influenced our language.

Great work if you managed to get similar ideas to those on the board in front of you.

Well done.

Okay, so we have reached the end of today's lesson and we are on today's summary slide for the lesson, reading an Anglo-Saxon text.

So let's look back on what we have learned today and what our key learning points have been in this lesson.

So firstly, that the Anglo-Saxons inhabited England from the fifth century.

The Anglo-Saxons included people from Germanic tribes who migrated from mainland Europe.

The Anglo-Saxons were very important in developing Old English.

And whilst a lot of words have changed over the years, modern words linked to the church are similar to Old English.

So that's a summary of our learning today.

It's been a great pleasure to be with you on this learning journey and I very much hope that you complete today's exit quiz to show your understanding of what you have learned today.

And I look forward to teaching you again on another lesson in this series, A History of Language.

Thank you very much and goodbye.