On the Origins of the Medieval Knight: Understanding their Historical Significance

Overview: This resource is designed for students studying Medieval Europe through a variety of activities students will be able to identify how knights emerged as an influential element of 12th century Medieval society. They will also learn about the broader social context of Medieval society by examining feudalism and the three orders.

They will do this by utilising their historical skills by evaluating events in terms of their historical significance, identifying cause and consequence, as well as change and continuity, completing source analysis tasks and creating historical arguments based on evidence. This resource also includes formative and summative assessment you can set in class and use for reporting purposes.

This resource includes over sixty pages of content including:

• A 6 page lesson plan for five one hour lessons with clear step by step instructions, references to scholarly material and strategies used within the lesson and links to the US, UK & Australian curriculums,

• Additional ‘teacher note pages’ which outline the pedagogical choices made for each activity,

• APK (introductory activities) for each lesson that are in both projected and printable format, such as quizzes, fill in the gap tasks and more!

• A 5 page detailed information sheet that examines the origins of knights from the Iron Ages all the way up to the 12th century, with a 2 page comprehension & analysis worksheet.

• A 2 page information sheet on feudalism and how it relates to knights, and an associated compass task activity to get students up out of their chairs and engaged in the class,

• Collaborative Learning Card Activity that you can use for any lesson, breaking down new information in an engaging way,

• Detailed answer sheets for EVERY activity, this includes paragraph exemplar responses, short answer responses and timeline activities,

• A historical significance timeline task, which encourages students to not only take a historical perspective but to practice justifying such a perspective with evidence, includes an extension task for your accelerated learners,

• An in depth primary source activity, using the ORI method of The Teacher’s Squire,

• A fun wordsearch and crossword for key vocabulary learnt over all of the lessons (with answer sheets),

• One Formative Assessment Task with a feedback sheet AND One Summative Assessment Task with a feedback sheet, so you can be able to show a students progress easily in your reporting,

• Information sheets for Historical Thinking concepts, HITS & GANAG.