Lesson 2

Learning Intention: 

To understand why the term, ‘Dark Ages’ is problematic when you explore the many events from the period that showed progress rather than decline.

Success Criteria:

I can identify what the ‘Dark Ages’, ‘Early Medieval Period’, ‘Barbarian Age’ and ‘Viking Age’ refer to.

I can explain why the term Dark Ages is no longer used by historians and justify why ‘Early Medieval Period” or ‘Early Middle Ages’ is more appropriate.

Motivate: Show students the series of images from the Motivate Presentation (below). Before presenting, explain that the images were generated when the term ‘Dark Ages’ was typed into an image search engine (specifically Google images). Students are prompted to write one to three words for each image they see creating a word bank mind map or another form of brainstorm.

Discuss – How many of the words that you wrote down use negative connotations? How many of the words that you wrote down use positive connotations? From these images and your word bank – what does the term Dark Ages mean then? What do you think it could refer to? Justify your response with reference to your word bank or brainstorm.

Add: Go through the presentation (that uses Mayer’s theory of multimedia) that explores the concept of the Dark Ages and why it is controversial. Students note-take accordingly. As you are going through the presentation follow the script to go with the multimedia content.

Practice: Students complete a digital historical significance timeline activity mapping 7 events from the end of the Roman Empire to the Middle Ages. This activity has two purposes, first to examine the students skills in historical significance and chronology. Second, to examine their ability to research on a digital platform. Students won’t have an understanding of what these events are from prior knowledge; they must use their ability to research to place the events on the scale (both chronology & historical significance). 

This will help you identify strengths/weaknesses in their capacity to research using the internet which will be helpful in future lessons when you introduce lateral reading and online reasoning. In particular, ask students about domain endings, how they know the information is reliable etc. to get an understanding of any misconceptions they may hold. The goal is for students to understand that the ‘Dark Ages’ weren’t so ‘dark’. If any students struggle with the research component or don’t know where to start direct them to type into Google the following:

“Dark Ages” site:edu  OR  “Dark Ages” site:gov

“Dark Ages” AND “Petrach” site:edu  OR “Dark Ages” AND “Petrach” site:gov

“Dark Ages” AND “misnomer” site:gov OR “Dark Ages” AND “misnomer” site:edu

Then help students if needed to select an appropriate website. Students should be able to complete this activity once they have conducted some preliminary research. Once students have completed, ask them to share their screens with others in the class. Students should discuss and be able to justify why they placed certain events in particular places on the historical significance axis. 

Success: Exit Ticket – What does the term Dark Ages mean? Why is it problematic? What does the term Barbarian Age mean? How does it relate to the Viking Age? How does the Viking Age relate to the Medieval Period? What terms are interchangeable?