Lesson 3 Remixed Lesson Plan
Learning Intention: To understand who Charlemagne was and why he is considered historically significant.
Success Criteria: I can explain who Charlemagne was and provide reasons for studying him in the 21st century.
Motivate: Project the image of Charlemagne or print out a large coloured copy to place at the front of the room. Ask students:
- Who was this man?
- What do we learn about him from this painting?
Explain to students this is a representation of a King, we don’t have any primary visuals of him due to when he reigned (the early Medieval period) and yet he is considered significant enough that many portraits have been painted centuries after his death.
- Why do you think this is the case?
- What must he have done to make people paint his image centuries after he died?
Add: Share with students the webpage (below) with images showing the area we will be focusing on and additional information that places our inquiry task in context.
Practice: Explain to students what historians do when they conduct research. They use museums and libraries as well as personal collections to explore the past. Historians use primary sources but often they need to get special permissions to access primary source material. They also use secondary source material but, before the internet, they would need to go to libraries to read various books and journals to find the information. When reading historians have a ‘way of reading’ and we will be exploring this today. For your information review the teacher information before the template (last page). You can also review the overview video here.
Explain that you are going to emulate this process now though it is more ‘guided’ because you have ‘found’ the sources for them due to time constraints in the lesson. Take students on a guided inquiry in order to answer the question (discussion questions also included): Who was Charlemagne and why is he historically significant?
Students will have access to the primary source material. You must read the secondary source material using the teacher sheet. In addition students will complete the Wineburg ‘Read Like A Historian’ Template.
To end the lesson students will complete a mix and match activity in small groups online using the key events and dates from Charlemagne’s reign (not created for this partial build).
Success: Students complete the question on their sheet: Who was Charlemagne and why is he historically significant?
Lesson 3 Remixed Content: Webpage
The following section is an example of what a webpage purpose built for your class could look like. Ideally, you would have a dedicated section of the website for inquiry projects. Within each ‘project’ page you would have a contents page which introduces the topic, key ideas and source material so students can use this page as a grounding point for their inquiry into the “open” internet.
Charlemagne Who?
You may have heard of Napoleon Bonaparte, Genghis Khan and William the Conqueror – each of these leaders are considered by Historians as historically significant individuals because their actions greatly influenced society and, in some cases, their impact continues to this day.
For this unit you will be introduced to another historically significant individual – Charles the Great, more commonly known as Charlemagne – the barbarian King who was able to unify or conquer (depending on how you see it) a diverse range of peoples in modern day France and Germany in the 8th and 9th centuries.
Historians agree that Charlemagne was a significant individual and should be studied in the present but debate surrounds whether or not his actions were those of a unifier establishing peace after a tumultuous time of upheaval or a conqueror asserting control and dominance over individuals who wished to stay independent. Over the next few lessons you will discover his actions, the people he ruled and key events and movements that distinguished his reign so that you will be able to answer the inquiry question: ‘Was Charlemagne a great unifier or ruthless conqueror?’
So that you have a strong foundation of ‘when’ and ‘where’ you will be exploring it is recommended that you review the information below and answer the questions.
First, you need to remember that with the fall of the Western Roman Empire regions that were once organised under the Roman Emperor changed dramatically with the ethnic peoples reasserting their dominance. The area that concerns us for this unit of work is known as ‘Gaul’ a region of Western Europe that encompasses modern day Spain, Belgium, France, Luxembourg, as well as sections of Switzerland and Germany (see source 1 & source 2).
Image: Charlemagne, oil on limewood by Albrecht Dürer, 1512; in the collection of the German National Museum, Nürnberg, Germany.
Sources: Sémhur. (2007). Map of the rise of Frankish Empire, from 481 to 814. Accessed on 2.2.2023 from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Frankish_Empire_481_to_814-en.svg
& Modern Day Map: https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/europe_map.htm
In addition to the geographic location you need to be aware of the various Kingdoms that emerged after the fall of the Western Roman Empire within Gaul and its surrounding areas. Most of the Kingdoms were ruled by two ethnic groups the ‘Goths’ and the ‘Franks’. The Goths were a Germanic people that played a crucial role in the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, they were further separated into the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths. The Franks were another Germanic people who rose to dominance in the early Medieval period with two strong Kingdoms emerging – the Merovingians and the Carolingians. Of course other Germanic tribes existed at this time and in future lessons you will learn more about them (such as the Saxons).
As you can see by the timeline below, the early Medieval period in Gaul was a time where Kingdoms emerged and collapsed. Other smaller city-states or regions in Gaul also rose to fill the power vacuum after the fall of the Western Roman Empire but for the purposes of this unit of work we will focus on kingdoms directly related to the Carolingian Empire – Charlemagne’s Kingdom.
Check your understanding:
Question 1: What does it mean if something is considered historically significant?
Question 2: What ethnic group are we focusing on as part of the Carolingian Kingdom?
Question 3: What modern countries fall within the region controlled by the Carolingians?
Question 4: When did the Carolingian Empire exist?