Articles Exploring Aspects of
Planning and Teaching about the Middle Ages
This unit prosents a series of articles exploring many aspects of planning teaching about the Middle Ages – the early items in the list below cover broader planning issues while the later items deal with individual topics.
Core Article:
Helping KS3 pupils begin to see the Middle Ages
and its peopleas historians see them
This is the most important, overview article, summarising my main arguments for adopting a different approach to teaching about medieval people and life in Y7.
It also explains the objectives, structure and approach I’ve taken in creating the classroom resources 'Medieval Lives'.
Additional Articles
The crucial importance of identifying students’ misconceptions
This article, entitled 'The assumptions that strangle students’ understanding of the Middle Ages', explains why it’s essential to identify misconceptions and plan teaching to challenge them – one of the most important steps in improving students historical learning about all topics and periods.
Sitting on Cats: Helping students recognise that people
in the Middle Ages were as real as us.
How to develop students' understanding of individual people and their similarities and differences with people today – rather than seeing them as alien beings with whom we have nothing in common.
Why is it important to teach medieval history at KS3?
What can teaching about the Middle Ages contribute to our aims for history teaching – and why it’s so important to communicate these aims to students?
Building explicit understanding of historical periods into KS3 planning
Do students study periods – or just the events within them? This article uses the Middle Ages to argue that study of how periods are interpreted helps give coherence to courses, helps students develop essential historical vocabulary and realise that periods are constructs created by historians.
How can KS3 support teaching about the Middle Ages at to GCSE and A level
This article by Dale Banham and myself discusses how to identify and build into KS3 the content that you wish students to revisit with confidence as they continue to study history at GCSE and beyond.
Choosing content to create a more balanced picture of the Middle Ages at KS3
This article discusses the importance of identifying a balanced set of takeaways for familiar topics to avoid the deeply negative portrayals of the Middle Ages that can be the result of too much focus on war, disease and other problems.
Different kinds of knowledge:
What do we want KS3 students to know about the Middle Ages?
A list of different types of knowledge, together with notes about the issues they raise for planning teaching about the Middle Ages at KS3.
What do we want students to learn about medieval sources?
How can you plan to develop students’ knowledge and understanding of sources across KS3, starting with some broad ideas about medieval sources?
Creating an overview resource for KS3 on Medieval Britain
You can’t teach about every major event in depth so what’s the alternative? This article explains how I created a Big Story enquiry covering many major events in the Middle Ages – an outline of 500 years – in just one textbook chapter and a scripted drama.
Were there any women in the Middle Ages, Miss?
Discussions of possible approaches to enquiries into the lives and roles of women in the Middle Ages, together with brief case studies of Nichola de la Haye and Margery Kempe.
Looking beyond the horizon: why we should teach about societies other
than English society in the Middle Ages
This article by Helen Snelson explores the reasons for teaching about other societies and suggests different strategies for doing so.
Understanding Migration in the Middle Ages
An extended version of Martin Spafford's article on migration from 'Exploring and Teaching Medieval History'.
Planning teaching about medieval monarchy at KS3
What should be the takeaways from work on medieval monarchy? What makes a good enquiry question? Plus some thoughts on the history itself.
Planning at KS3: the problem of 1066
Everyone studies the Norman Conquest but there other, perhaps more significant, developments at this time. This article discusses these changes and why it’s important for students to know about them.
Medieval Lives: Helping Y7 look beyond the shadow of the Renaissance
Exploring why over-estimating the significance of the Renaissance makes it easy to underestimate the extent of change during the Middle Ages.
Muck and Misery?
Standards of Living in the Middle Ages
This appeared in Teaching History in 1995. The aim was to bring new teachers up to date with historians’ views and research, using some recently published academic books – and while much more research has been done since then the broad arguments still hold good.
Two Detailed Introductions to Well-Known Sources
The Luttrell Psalter: Introduction for Teachers
The content and background of the Psalter, an introduction to the Luttrell family, Sir Geoffrey’s will and how these sources might be used at KS3 – plus linked websites and resources.
The Paston Letters: Introduction for Teachers
The outline story of the Paston family and their remarkable letters, suggestions for reading, ideas for using the letters in classrooms and supporting PowerPoint slides.
Introductory Reading List
Introductory Reading on the Middle Ages
A list of suggestions for new teachers with little background knowledge of the period. It’s divided into a short starter pack, a second layer of suggestions and finally some of my own favourites.
