What did you do in this unit? In this unit, we went through Medieval Europe and the illnesses, complications, and change they went through in order to flourish as a stable society in the end. We did a lot of different activities and games in order for us to expand our knowledge of the fall of the Roman empire (and what came after it) and Medieval Europe. Some activities we did include:
- Different feudal levels (Level 1, Level 2, etc.): In the different levels, we had a general base of several questions that we had to answer for each level. We started off every level by doing the question activities in our notebooks and from the questions, we were able to gain most of our understanding of the chapter. We would do other activities in class at the same time that reinforced our knowledge of the chapter and questions. For example, to learn more about the Roman Catholic church, we made stained glass windows in class. This was supposed to help us understand more about the cathedrals and the stained glass windows they had because our stained glass windows were supposed to tell a story from the bible, like the church’s had. Another thing we did to support our reading from the text was making our coat of arms. The coat of arms was a small drawing that we did at the beginning of the unit, and we used it to mark where we were in the levels throughout the unit. It helped us learn more about Medieval Europe and the unit because instead of just having a marker with our names on it, we made a coat of arms that represented us in some way, like what people in medieval Europe had usually on their flags or shields to represent their countries. Basically everything that we did in this unit had some unique relation to what we were learning, even if we didn’t realise it at first.
- Board games: From the board games, we had to answer questions about all throughout the unit which was really helpful in refreshing our memory and discovering fun facts about the the unit. It really exposed if we really knew the information about the unit or if we’d just forgotten everything. The board game was just a really nice reminder of everything we learned in whole unit. It was also able to put the information in a fun format so it was probably easier for us to recieve the information in the form of a board game instead of just reading the textbook to check our knowledge. We were supposed to make a board game that was able to convey our knowledge of everything that we picked up throughout the unit. The board games made learning about the whole unit more fun, and I think a lot of students enjoyed playing each other’s games.
What did you learn in this unit? Make sure you include how Medieval Europe relates to the key concept of Time, Place and Space. In the unit, we had the key concept of time, place, and space. We were supposed to focus on this concept throughout the unit and figure out how it related to everything that we learned in the unit. I think throughout the unit, and throughout history, a main idea that’s constantly brought up, is the idea that events only occur because of the exact time, place, and space, it occured in. Things like past events shape the future because everything in history is somehow interconnected. Some things don’t happen unless some other event happens that triggers the problem or event in history. There are multiple examples alone just in this unit, take the fall of Rome for example. The fall of Rome occurred around the 330s CE, when the then emperor Constantine moved the capital to Constantinople. One of the causes of this was the lack of political stability in Europe at the time. Rome did not have a good way of transferring power during this time and that was the start of a lot of fights over power, eventually contributing to the fall of the western part of the Roman empire. If a system like Feudalism (which came right after the fall of Rome) had been around during these times, would the Roman empire have lasted? We’ll never know for sure, because feudalism was only invented after the fall of Rome because of the lack of political transfer of power. If Rome had never fallen and people weren’t desperate to find a good way to change power into the hands of another, would feudalism have been made? The time, place, and space that an event occurs in shapes the future of society and history.
What are some of the challenges you faced during this unit? How did you solve them? Some challenges I faced during the unit was the lack of time management. Since we had so many challenge assignments and required assignments, we had to make sure we were able to do all that we needed to while still doing a good job on our work which was probably by far the hardest part of the whole unit. It was hard to figure out if we needed to do a little bit more so that we were able to finish on time, or if we could leave that part until tomorrow to finish. Being able to find a balance of having enough work while not going over or under was hard to do and I think in some ways, we still do struggle with balancing every assignment that we have to do. I tried to make sure I didn’t leave everything until the last moment by doing a little bit of work here and there throughout the week and setting due dates for myself, saying when I have to finish this part of the assignment or this question, etc. I guess this also ties in with how well I undertook the activities in the unit. I think I did okay with organizing my time to be able to finish the assignments on time. There’s always room for improvement and sometimes I might’ve had to stay up late to finish assignments, but I was always able to do enough beforehand to finish on the due date. I should’ve probably done a better job at doing my work, not just at the last minute, but I really thought it was part of the fun of doing the questions. Strangely enough, this was also my favorite part of the unit. I really enjoyed answering the questions in our notebooks because to me, it felt like I was able to truly understand the meaning of the text/chapters and I wasn’t just skimming over it like I usually do. Also by making us write everything out in our notebooks gave me less reason to procrastinate which I was greatful for since it’s a bad habit of mine. I could just sit down with the actual copy of the textbook and my notebook and work. Everything that we needed to know was just in our textbook, and there was really no reason to search things up on the internet. The words in the textbook took much more meaning when I had the time to really think about them in order to answer the questions. So, answering questions was my favorite part of the unit because I felt like I could really understand the text and I enjoyed the moment of clarity and satisfaction that came with finally seeing how 2 events came together or were related.
What changes would you make to this unit? I wouldn’t change much about this unit, it was done well and overall, it was really fun. The activities and questions came together to form a strangely nice mix of learning and appreciating the unit through games. I think however, we could talk about the questions more and the chapter more in class to understand the unit better because I’m still kind of blurry on specific some parts of the unit (mostly due to my less than subpar geographical knowledge, but that’s besides the point). We did talk about the chapters we read a lot in class, and I think that was why we were able to do so well. Sometimes you can’t just read from the textbook and you have to actually have a discussion in class in order to retain the information, so overall, I think I really wouldn’t change anything about this unit.