Start with a Question

One of the challenges of being a middle school history teacher is that adolescents are a little too old for the simple story-telling and artsy projects of elementary school, and they're too young for real in-depth research on complex topics like in high school.  Where is the middle ground for middle schoolers? Role Play! A colleague and I recently put our heads together and created a unit that required students to take on a role from feudal Europe.  They had to learn about the privileges and responsibilities that went with that role,  They had to fulfill those responsibilities and then as the simulation continued we threw some curve balls at them.  They found that the socio-economic system of feudalism developed in medieval Europe because it was the most realistic way for people at the time to solve problems and survive under the harsh circumstances. Recently, we presented about our successful experiment at the Blue Ribbon Blueprint for Excellenc...