Europe in the Middle Ages

Standard World History

 

At that same time that I taught the Middle Ages unit to my two Honors World History classes, I also taught the unit to my sixth period standard-level World History Class. This class had 30 students with highly variable attendance. There were two ESL students, and several other students who had IEPs for either behavioral-emotional disorders, learning disabilities in reading and writing, or ADHD. Many of these same students were frequent discipline problems, not only in our classroom but for many teachers, and were often suspended. Thus it was difficult to establish continuity in the classroom, because the tone and mood of the class was highly variable, largely dependent on who was there that day. While my content goals were similar, I adjusted several of the assignments to be more structured and to allow extra time for completion. Note taking during lecture was also structured differently—students had a written guide to help them structure their notes, but I strived to create the same atmosphere of discussion with the students.

Rather than create an entirely new unit plan—which would be facetious as many of the elements are the same—I have included below my outline of general lesson plans. Items that were changed dramatically are in green text, a rationale for that change is often following that.

 

Brief Methodologies

Monday 11/8 Rise of the Franks and Vikings

  1. Warm-up: What do you know about the Middle Ages? What would you like to know?
  2. Give notes to class on the influence of the Franks & CharlemagneÕs empire.
  3. Brief introduction of who the Vikings are, where they lived. Show map on the overhead, Viking ship image
  4. Students will work in class on the Viking worksheet covering their ships, Viking runes, and their discovery of America. The idea is to pique their interest in the Middle Ages.
  5. Have students complete worksheet reviewing important people and their accomplishments as homework. The hope is to review some of the information covered in their notes today, as well as get them to reflect on the Vikings lesson.

 Tuesday 11/9 Feudalism & Manorialism:

  1. Warm-up: What would someone have to give you in order to gain your services as protection?
  2. Notes on Feudalism, Manorialism, Chivalry.
  3. Answer questions on Feudalism & Manorialism. Produce a drawing or diagram illustrating the relationships within Feudalism and Manorialism. How would the code of chivalry be different in modern times? For this lesson, I eliminated the feudalism game and the movie clip from Monty Python. Instead, we discussed feudalism and Manorialism through role-playing much more and focused more on the idea of chivalry. (Later, in my ESL World History class, we did a simulation where we designated a king and gave him a large piece of land (brown paper). The land was then divided up according to the rules of feudalism—it was lots of fun and very effective. In hindsight, it would have worked great with this class).

Wednesday 11/10 The Church

  1. Warm-up: Show a picture of medieval stained glass on the overhead. http://www.dia.org/collections/euroart/stained-glass/index.html. Ask students what is being portrayed? Why would the art and decoration of the churches be so important? Why would the church be so important during medieval times? Ask students if they have seen stained glass before in their churches?
  2. Have the different positions within the church on different cards, along with the different responsibilities. Pass out among the students. Have the students look up the defintion in their books. Then ask students to share what they have found as the class fills in a chart of the hierarchy of the church.
  3. CW: Students will complete a chart of the political, social, and economic role of the church.
  4. Stained glass activity. This class needed to go through the chart as a group so we could brainstorm together and discuss why each element belong in a certain category. Because this was a group effort, it went fairly quickly, so I planned a stained glass activity to fill the rest of the time. This was also an effort to engage the more artistic students, by having them create a work of Òstained glassÓ that told an important story. This project carried over and was used to fill time on days when students finished their classwork early.

Thursday 11/11 No school—Veteran's Day

Friday 11/12 Struggle for Power in England

  1. Warm-up: Who has most of the power in medieval Europe: the church, the monarchs (kings or queens), the local lords, or the working people?
  2. Discuss the journal entry. Give notes on Anglo-Saxons to Magna Carta
  3. Introduce medieval nation projects: Students will work in groups. Each group will choose one country to focus on, England, France, or the Holy Roman Empire, Spain. Students will produce: a timeline of rulers and events between the 300s and 1500s, a short biography on two famous people from that nation, an illustrated summary of what life would be like for someone living in that country. 3 major study questions. This project became much more structured for this class and they were given much more time. Essentially there were more deadlines for each section of the project and we spread it out over three days. They did a wonderful job with it.
  4. Work on project for the rest of class

Monday 11/15 France

  1. Notes on Capetian Kings in France
  2. Students will have time to work on their project for the rest of class. It is due tomorrow.

Tuesday 11/16 Clash over Germany and Italy

  1. Warm-up: Students will look at a visual of the king being excommunicated by Pope Gregory, and listen to an explanation of it.  What does this tell us about relations between monarchs and the papacy?
  2. Notes on the Holy Roman Empire, Struggle between Papacies, Rulers.
  3. Work on Country Projects.

Wednesday 11/17 Crusades and Trade:

  1. Warm-up: Why would a European want to take part in the Crusades?
  2. Class discussion/list-making: Were the Crusades successful? What were the effects of the Crusades?
  3. Notes on trade routes, markets, advances in banking, etc.
  4. CW/HW: Map the areas controlled by Muslims and Christians and Europe and SW Asia, map the routes of the Crusades. And Design a billboard advertising a product that would have been sold along a certain trade route. Think about your audienceˆare you selling it to Europeans or to Asians? What will your product be? Where would this billboard be placed?

Thursday 11/18 Growth of Towns/Plague and culture:

  1. Warm-up: Show the image of Death Riding (overhead). Ask students to reflect on it.
  2. Notes on Guilds, Life in Towns, and the Plague.
  3. Introduce the excerpt from the Canterbury Tales. Have students work with a partner to read and answer questions. Teacher will circulate to help with individual reading issues.
  4. Students should create an illustration from their reading. Students were given a shorter reading at a slightly easier level, but covering the same content and questions.

Friday 11/19 Challenges to Church Power:

  1. Warm-up: Political cartoon analysis as a group.
  2. Notes: Challenges to Church Power, Babylonian Captivity, And Great Schism.
  3. Have students work in pairs to create two political cartoons about this time period, one must involve the church; the other can be about anything we have covered in the entire time period. Students must write an explanation for each cartoon on the back.
  4. Vocabulary that the students need to review is printed on the back of their cartoon analysis sheet—they will complete this for homework.

Monday 11/22 Review:

  1. Warm-up: Questions about the Middle Ages
  2. Pass out review sheet to students. Have students work on the sheets by themselves for 10 minutes, work together for 15.
  3. Explain that if everyone has all the questions answered as I go around asking questions, they will get 5 points extra credit on the test. For each person that doesn't have an answer I will take a point off.

Tuesday 11/23 Test! The test did not include an essay, but it did include more short answer. The short answer questions were very similar to information and ideas we discussed on the review day, in the hopes that they would feel more confident answering the short answer questions.