Lesson Links

AskAsia is an American site that provides online resources and lesson plans for Asian and Asian American K-12 education. The site offers lesson plans, maps, and resources. All the lessons are not relevant for BC but there are some good lesson ideas that could be adapted for BC classrooms.

The Lives of Renaissance Women is a BCTF Lesson Aid (1996) unit with 9 activities including handouts. I've used some of these activities and they worked really well in the classroom.

Medieval Europe is a 2 week unit on the Middle Ages in Europe that contains the following: the class builds a Medieval community, lecture and discussions, homework study questions, vocabulary, European map, a lesson on brass rubbing art, and student presentations on one aspect of Medieval life. The 5 groups are manors, towns/guilds, castles, churches and monasteries. Each group will do an oral report that includes drawings, building a three dimensional replica of their subject, inclusion of assigned vocabulary and other interesting facts about their subject. This looks like a good unit so give it a look.

Social Studies Links is a site from a BC teacher that contains links for Social Studies research, maps, bibliographies and essay writing. There are also lesson plans for Humanities 8, and Transitional 8/9.

Virtual Renaissance: A Journey Through Time is a cross-curricular Renaissance unit designed for grade 8 students at Twin Groves Junior High School in Buffalo Grove, Illinois. The abstract for the site reads: "Travel back in time to take on the role of apprentice then master for one of the various guilds that existed during the Renaissance period. Experience, first hand, applying for a guild apprentice card; meet masters who will teach you all that you will need to know to earn the status of journeyman (or woman) on the way to becoming a master in your own right." The unit is cross-curricular and is supposed to last 6-8 weeks, but you can adapt the unit to a Social Studies or Humanities class, and still have a really great unit. The site provides you with a unit plan (with PLOs, etc.), resources links, and handouts. This unit looks like a lot of fun and very educational so stop and take a look.

Webquests

Castle Builder is a Medieval WebQuests which gives students the Task of building a castle in Wales in 1076. The Process has the following steps: Daily Life, Castle Specifications, Castle Research, Layout and Design, and Model. There are links throughout the site to support student research, as well as Extension Activities and Teacher Notes.

 

 

Resources

Annenberg/CPB Exhibits: Middle Ages is a nice site that contains easy to read information on the middle ages. The site briefly covers feudal life, religion, homes, clothing, health, arts & entertainment, and town life. There are also links to related resources.

Annenberg/CPB Exhibits: Renaissance Exhibit contains Out of the Middle Ages, Exploration and Trade, Printing and Thinking, Focus on Florence, and Symmetry, Shape, Size as well as related resources and activities.

David Thompson Socials Online has Work and Resources for Social Studies 8. The Work section probably isn't of that much use because it is a week-by-week section for students, but the resources sections looks strong.

The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci is a simple site that contains 39 good quality images of da Vinci's drawings.

Elizabethan Costuming Page is a very nice page all about Elizabethan costumes from different areas and periods. This page gives you a chance to learn about costumes, makeup, costuming laws, and even contains some patterns if you want to try your hand at making a costume. The site is easy to navigate and accessible to high school students.

Exploring Leonardo is a very nice site that was developed by the Museum of Science in Boston. This site is interactive so students can not only learn about perspective but play around with it, and do other fun activities. The site also highlights problem words or terms, and students can just click on these words and they will be taken directly to the site's glossary. The site is divided into inventions, perspective, righting right to left, and "what, where, when?" When you go to one of these sections at the bottom of the page there are activities that can be done in the classroom. This web page is designed for up to grade 8 so some of the activities are too young, but others could prove useful. On the whole, I really liked this site and it's one of the better interactive sites that I've come across.

A Guide to Medieval and Renaissance Instruments provides pictures and descriptions of a variety of musical instruments. It's easy enough to read and if you ever wanted to know what a "hurdy-gurdy" was then this is the page for you.

Searchable Archive of Online Recipes (SOAR) contains a medieval section with over twenty recipes.

The Scientific Revolution in Pre-modern Europe is a fairly straightforward essay from The History Net. It is an online essays that is divided into 3 main parts with further subsections such as Renaissance Europe and the 'Age of Discovery,' and the Protestant Reformation.

Renaissance Faire Resources are divided into the categories of art, dance, food, general information, language of the faire, literature, music, weaponry, and miscellany. This may be a good place to start if you're considering a Renaissance Faire although some of the resources are not all that helpful.

World Cultures is a site from Washington State University that tries to combine the reading and course materials for two web-based World Cultures courses. The learning module are Tradition and Memory: World Civilizations to 1500 covers general topics such as "What is Culture?" and individual modules on the history and thought of particular cultures and eras. The categories of modules for World Civilizations to 1500 are: The Earliest Traditions, Africa, China, Europe and the European Traditions, Islam, India and Indian Traditions, Japan, and Native Americans. The course is designed for freshmen-level students, but the texts, glossary and learning modules are intended for use by high school students also. The site is fairly easy to navigate and flexible enough that you can look directly at the Anthology of Readings, Glossary, Atlases, and Internet Resources pages. Teachers and students should find the site useful, but the readings are probably too advanced for grade 8 students.

 

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