Europe's Middle Ages

The 9th unit in my World History curriculum covers Europe’s Middle Ages, with engaging lesson plans on feudalism, the Black Death, Crusades, and more for a thorough overview of Medieval Europe.

This is a great unit for your middle or high school history students. With a variety of activities for each day in the unit, students will always be engaged and thinking critically.

The entire unit can be downloaded here with resources and lesson plans for every day or you can join Students of History and access to everything online with a subscription.

The unit begins by connecting back to the “Barbarians” students were introduced to at the end of the Ancient Rome unit. A PowerPoint (along with flipped classroom video and Google Slides options) covers Charlemagne, the Franks, and the transition to Medieval Europe. Following this, students analyze a set of amazing primary sources on Charlemagne.

Feudalism and the manor system is the focus of the next lesson. A PowerPoint (plus guides notes/video/Slides) helps students to understand how the manor system worked and how feudalism developed in the Middle Ages. Students then complete a reading activity or Google Doc before finishing the lesson off with a primary source poem analysis or interactive notebook page .

Your students will love the next lesson which has them analyzing primary source images from the Middle Ages to create a "Medieval Meme" Project that you can use to decorate the classroom afterwards.

The next lesson focuses on the development of Europe's nations. A PowerPoint (with notes/video/Slides) covers England, France, Spain, and Russia's formation. To help reinforce the key concepts, students complete a Magna Carta reading activity plus a fun Medieval Coat of Arms project.

Next up is a lesson about the role of the Catholic Church's in Medieval society. There's a video and reading activity along with a couple interactive notebook page options to process the key ideas.

The Crusades are the focus of the next lesson plan. Again there is a detailed and visually-engaging PowerPoint (plus notes/video/Slides) that cover the major Crusades for the Holy Land. Following this students can work together or individually on a reading, timeline, and mapping activity to learn about the different Crusades and their impact.

Lesson 7 delves into a little epidemic called the Black Death. A short interactive Black Death Play Script serves as an engaging warm up before students take on a reading on the Black Plague to see how much damage this disease caused in European societies. Following this, students work in groups on a "slowing the spread" lesson comparing the plague to COVID-19. 

The last lesson in this unit touches on the development of England and France as two separate states. An interactive PowerPoint is available to go through together with students before moving on to several video selections and a Joan of Arc Reading and obituary project.

Throughout the unit, students can also work on a variety of engaging digital interactive notebook activities or the unit guide packet. There are dozens of great videos linked to use in your lessons along with readings you can share from our online textbook.

The unit concludes with a complete unit guide packet plus review games, videos, and activities before moving on to an editable unit test, with a Google Forms version also available for easy grading.

You can download the unit here and have all these resources saved right to your desktop. You can also join Students of History with a World History subscription to access everything online. Subscriptions grant you immediate access to the ENTIRE World History curriculum. That’s 24 complete units full of engaging resources and lessons. 

If you’re unsure which option is better for you, you can read more about the differences between TpT purchases and subscriptions here. 

Thanks so much for checking it out!