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The Lost Palace

Reviews

"I particularly liked the literal translation of Beowulf. The Year 5 Literacy objectives look in some depth at literal meaning, and so this translation tied in very neatly with this. I wanted the children to read the translation carefully and then to write a 'modern-day' translation. They found it extraordinarily difficult to start off with, but once they got the hang of it, they were very proud of their translations."

Translation of Beowulf

Then I heard workers were needed to build a palace. I heard this from many people throughout the kingdom. Many people joined and so the palace was quickly ready. The King called it Hereot. He boasted about his palace and he had a feast,, where treasure was given. out as presents. The Hall towered over the rest of the palace. The palace was ready for anything.

Jonathan, aged 10

 

Translation of Beowulf

 I heard that a palace was to be built.. I heard this from many different people throughout the region. It was soon finished. It had the biggest rooms ever built. It was called Heorot by the King.

The King was so happy with his new palace that he held a big feast. Bells rang and treasure was given as presents. The Hall d over all the other rooms. The Palace was ready for anything, like fire or war. 

Rachael, aged 10

"Another useful task that arose from our work on The Lost Palace was investigating word origins,, and for this, I looked at the translation of Beowulf. The children were asked to identify any Old English words which seemed to correlate with modern English words."

Old and new words

widely - wide

weorc - work

hit - it

wordes - words

naman - name

heah - high

woes - was

ne - nor

lenge - long

oefter - after

Alexandra, aged 10

"This account was written in response to a task I set the children, whereby they had to write from a different viewpoint. The theme running through the 'fictional' account of The Lost Palace was the goats bearing witness to the changes taking place over time, and I wanted my children to try and achieve that through someone or something else's eyes."

The Hill through the Years

250OBC (a villager's point of view)

"I live on the hill, Gefrin. We have just built a henge where all the villagers and myself can go for special occasions. It’s really like our church. We call our village Gefrin because it means Hill of the Goats and lots of them graze on the hill.."

500bC (a direct descendant of the villager)

"Hi, I'm Leah. I live on Gefrin, just on the top in a hillfort. Me and my friends sometimes try and climb the huge pink wall that outlines out fort. We live in roundhouses split onto two sides of the valley on the peaks. Sometimes we have feasts when dad will kill a goat to eat."

100AD (a Roman)

"I went up to Gefrin today to reasonvvith the leader of the hillfort because we Romans think the Britons are a threat to us. The leader there agreed to obey Roman rules and then I went back to tell my leader - he was very pleased with this result."

Tansy, aged 10

(This is about as far as any of the children got with this particular activity, but shows the kind of activity possible).