The Middle Ages Part 1
"It's damned hard...confining myself to concepts familiar to a creature of the Dark ages. Not that one age is darker than another." John Gardner - Grendel
Out one era and into another. One of the biggest lessons that I want to leave my students with is contained in the quote from Grendel, above. "Not that one age is darker than another". There are reasons that the Middle Ages are called the Dark Ages - but they were (as is usually the case) not as different from us as we'd like to think - and this unit (along with Part 2 and Chaucer and The Canterbury Tales is designed to show them just that.
I wish we had the chance to do more Jigsaw-Style Group Works - where students from one group - leave their initial group to confer with others and then come back to their initial group. In doing so, it allows the entire class to collaborate. It's a technique that is perfect for this lesson - filled with historical primary documents from the Middle Ages. The students have read the modern historical background on The Middle Ages from their text book - in this lesson they will see texts from that actual time and try to put it all together in a meaningful way. For more on Group Works - go to this page.
One of the most important (fun, and well-remembered classes of the year). A lesson on Ballads - the ones from the Middle Ages, from our own lives - and they intertwine. We listen to songs, act out ballads, and hear a story that reaches across the years in my classroom. A student (or two) will perform - and we will listen to the ballads as they were meant to be - as songs.