Tang and Song China - Geographic Setting, Tang Poetry, Civil Service Exam

Calendar Circle + Cultural Care Promise + greet each other with vetted Mandarin greeting 'ni hao'

• Lead routine standing
• Affirm continuity with prior lessons

Show MG-3 map C East Asia. Locate Yellow River and Yangtze River. Locate Chang'an (Tang capital, modern Xi'an), Kaifeng (Song capital), Grand Canal. On MG-2 Band 4: Tang 618-907; Song 960-1279; Li Bai 701-762; Du Fu 712-770. Tell the Tang civil service exam - meritocratic recruitment system unprecedented in the medieval world. Play MG-16 audio 3 (Li Bai's poem in Mandarin followed by English). Read poem aloud in English. Show Tang/Song painting reproduction.

• Notice: Tang poetry is short and concentrated. Each character carries weight.

  model 'Quiet Night Thought' is about a traveler looking at moonlight on the floor of an inn and thinking of home. The traveler is far from family. The poem uses simple images (moonlight, frost-like glow) to carry deep feeling.

  prompt What is Li Bai's poem about?

• Where is Chang'an? What was the Tang civil service exam? Name ONE Tang poet.

Children examine the Tang poem as a primary-source text. Apply TEXT-CLOSE-READ-MAKER routine. They identify Li Bai as the named author (701-762 CE) and the translator credit. They examine Tang/Song painting reproduction from Palace Museum digital archive with painter credit and dating from museum metadata.

M-3-S-CUL-11-A Map

MG-3 map C 24x36-inch laminated map with Yellow River, Yangtze River, Tang-era capital Chang'an (modern Xi'an), Song-era capital Kaifeng, Grand Canal route, Great Wall section, Silk Roads westward heading. Contemporary China borders alongside historical sites.

MG-3 Map

Mounted along one classroom wall as a coordinated set. The four-region framing is INTENTIONAL - it teaches that geography is the precondition for cultural development without becoming geographic determinism. Children locate the same Equator across all four maps to teach KS2 Geog 1.1.A. The contemporary borders on each map (alongside the historical sites) enforce the present-tense protocol - the regions are CURRENT places, not erased pasts.

M-3-S-CUL-11-B Audio Physical / non-image

MG-16 audio 3 - 2-minute clip: Li Bai's 'Quiet Night Thought' read aloud in Mandarin by a native speaker, followed by a vetted G3-accessible English translation (David Hinton or Burton Watson rendering). Children listen for sound-shape of Mandarin AND meaning in English. Source: credentialed translation with attribution.

MG-16 Interactive Physical / non-image

Used at the listening station throughout the unit. Children rotate through the listening table during independent practice. CRITICAL teacher protocol: every audio recording must be sourced WITH PERMISSION from a vetted institutional source (Smithsonian Folkways, PVS, CTTC, or equivalent); never use uncredited YouTube clips. The transcript pairs allow children to follow along visually while listening to ground unfamiliar phonologies.

• Read Li Bai's 'Quiet Night Thought' aloud in pairs. Identify ONE image and ONE feeling in the poem.

  scaffold Sentence frame: 'In Li Bai's poem, I notice the image of ___. This image suggests the feeling of ___.'
• Imagine a Tang civil service exam taker. In pairs, sketch what their study desk might look like and what they might be reading.

  scaffold Picture support; sentence frame

M-3-S-CUL-11-C Illustration

11x17 high-resolution reproduction of one Tang or Song landscape painting from the Palace Museum (Beijing or Taipei) digital archive. Example: 'Travelers Among Mountains and Streams' by Fan Kuan (Song, c. 1000 CE). Painting credit, dating, dimensions in caption. Children examine brushwork, composition, and natural-world subject matter.

• Who is Li Bai?
• What was the Tang civil service exam used for?

• Restate: 'A short poem can carry a whole feeling across a thousand years'
• Preview lesson 12's Tang/Song innovations

• Discuss today's lesson with a caregiver and record 2 sentences.