Alexander Calzone

HIS 390
Lesson Plan
Theme: Medieval Europe
Grade/Subject Discipline: 10th grade, Global History
Goals: World History: Use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their
understanding of major ideas, eras, themes, developments, and turning
points in world history and examine the broad sweep of history from a
variety of perspectives.
Objectives: The main objective in the class is to introduce course specific
vocabulary, understand concepts like multiple points of view, differentiating
between fact and opinion, and an increase in their depth of thinking.
Materials needed: Printed handouts Calvin and Hobbes comic, New York
Times article, white board markers or chalk, jump drive, and video.
Detailed Lesson:
Warm Up: I would start the class by Introducing the Era we will be covering in
class, the Medieval Era by starting with a matching game of a few key
vocabulary terms to the era.

The exercise would consist of me writing on the board the terms Feudalism,
Inquisition, excommunication, Constantinople, Crusades, and Bubonic
Plague. We would then have students do a matching exercise.
1) Feudalism
2) Inquisition
3)Excommunication
4) Crusades
5) Bubonic Plague
6) Constantinople
1) Expeditions sent by the pope to capture the Holy Land from the Muslim Turks; the empire of
the Turks included Palestine, where Jesus Christ was born; several Crusades between 1096 and
1272 failed to win the Holy Land, but succeeded in stimulating trade.
2) The act of removing a person from membership of the Church because of wrongful actions of
beliefs; kit was thought that an excommunicated person would not be allowed to go to heaven
3) Arrangement between lord, vassal and serf for ownership of land, military service, and
protection the Middle Ages.
4) A court set up by the Roman Catholic Church to investigate heresy and punish the heretics.
5) The capital of the eastern Roman Empire

6) Also called the Black Death was a deadly disease that spread through Europe and killed one
out of every three people

Main Lesson:
After introducing this Vocabulary in a 5-7 min exercise spent on matching exercise I would then
present the fact that the term of Medieval Age and Middle Age are synonymous. This allows the
introduction of specific vocabulary for the subject.
I would hand out the New York Times article discussing the technology of polling stations in the
US during the 2000 elections. I want the students to utilize the PIC skills to gain perspective on
the reading. (These skills were part of the lesson plan in the beginning of the semester) This
reading and discussion would be allotted 25 min
We would then discuss the Source, What the article is about, Why the 2000 election especially
Florida were hot topics and important to the time.
I would then ask the class if anyone sees what vocabulary was used to describe the machines
being used.
Medieval Voting Machines: Discuss how this represents a common understanding of this period
as dark and backward. We would then evaluate if this is a fair comparison or are we subjugating
the period to our own perspectives.

Does the fact that there was no electricity and computers really make it a dark age in which little
happened or is it the perspective developed because of its order in history after the height of the
Roman Empire and before the beginnings of the Italian Renaissance.
The point is not only to get the students to utilize their reading skills, but understanding different
points of view and increasing their depth of thinking, and differentiating between fact and
opinion.
After discussing the many issues and perspectives I would break the students into groups (since
this is the middle of my semester I would have groups that break cliques apart and grouping
students that will work well together) and have them discuss for 5 min whether the
understanding of Medieval as something negative is based in fact or in opinion. The class then
would open to discussion of what conclusion each group came to.
Watch the crash course world history video and discuss how this presentation has altered their
view of medieval history. We will watch first for minutes and spend 6 minutes discussing it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV7CanyzhZg

Wrap Up: 5-8min (for the Warm up and Wrap up I have written a span of time because I can than
spend more time reviewing in the conclusion and allow extra time in case of an issues that
should arise)
After drawing our conclusions I would then begin by handing out to the
students the Calvin and Hobbes comic as a way of drawing upon the main
objectives of my lesson to introduce course specific vocabulary, understand

concepts like multiple points of view, differentiating between fact and

opinion, and an increase in their depth of thinking. Through the article and
how the comic pertains to these ideas like the ability to gain depth of
thinking through reading and how that can seem daunting.
I would finish the class be writing the Matching exercise we started with but
only the definitions to see what they retained and creating a slightly different
and harder exercise. The reestablishing of the vocabulary is done by the
matching and the main objectives covered by the reading/discussing of the
New York Times article.