Teacher's Notes

British Library learning aims to inspire young people to do their own research creatively. This topic is cross-curricular. It can be used in many potential learning contexts -for example by students studying medieval history, or as art and design activity.

Activity One: What is a pattern and where do we find them?

This activity is to enable students to think about many different kinds of patterns and develop a relevant vocabulary for describing them. This includes the characteristics of pattern (repeating, symmetrical, series) and different types of pattern (cultural, social, naturally occurring, man made, mathematical, language, visual).

  • Let the students look at the series of images on patterns. This activity might work well in groups
  •  Ask each student what kind of pattern they are looking at and make a big list of their ideas.
  • Tip: Start them off with comparing opposite patterns e.g natural or man made
           e.g symmetrical or asymmetrical
           e.g  repeating or chaotic
  • Some images will contain a lot of layered ideas of pattern. e.g behavioural, movement, religious, cultural.

Activity Two : Investigating a medieval pattern book

This activity gives students a chance to become image detectives. We all automatically decode patterns in our head. This enables students to slow down the decoding process and look in depth at a pattern. They can then discover what the patterns tell them and how the pattern's meaning changes depending on its context.

  • For this activity you can split the students into up to 7 groups and give them a medieval pattern to look at.
  • Each group can go through the questions and note down their different thoughts.
  • At the end, each group can report back to the class what they found from their pattern.

Ideas for further creative activities

  • Students could make their own pattern book - collecting patterns from natural objects, textiles, everyday objects, newspapers, magazines, books.
  • Using the medieval patterns as inspiration, students could create their own pattern alphabet, or medieval style illuminated page.
  • Take a trip outside your classroom. How many different patterns can the students spot. They might notice patterns on roads, houses, trees, gardens, people, textures, sounds.