1,2,3,4, I Declare a Holy War!

Hello, my friends! Welcome once again to the sound studio, where today we will be talking about one of Obaratone's personal favorite topics, the Crusades! Well, we won't actually be going into detail of the Crusades =( But we will be talking about ways to teach it! Yeah! For our iTunes project of making a podcast list about a topic, Angie and I decided to choose the Crusades since they are in interesting part of our history, and we believe students would be very engaged with this topic. Our collection is called "Medieval History and Crusades." The podcasts we found are rather lengthy, so we agreed that we would only have the students listen to select portions of some podcasts (the most interesting ones of course!)

Now of course we couldn't just let them listen to the podcasts alone. That would be far too boring! I'm not saying that I would be bored with that (maybe), but we all know how kids are nowadays. They have the attention span of 160 characters. So what we need is something else to give them to have them learn! First we have to make sure they actually know what the Crusades were and when they took place. How about we start them off by showing them this website and letting them take a look at it! It gives a good short summary of the Crusades and also makes it easy to read than some of the other sites. After letting the students have some fun on this site and going through the different parts of it, we should give them some primary documents from the era. Going to this website will give the teacher some good documents that can be used and read to the class and explained to them to give them a firsthand account of how things went down back in that time, through the eyes of the people who lived it. Also, it would be wise to give them some maps of the Middle East, and maybe some of Europe at the time so they get a picture of where things were taking place.

For a little activity for them to do, give them a blank map of Europe and the Middle East, and have them draw the different Crusade routes on the map. Then, after analyzing the maps and maybe after some background, have the students write a reflection piece on what kind of trials the Crusaders would have gone through on their way to the Holy Land. These could be physical, geographic elements or political/people elements. Ask them if they would have made the sacrifice to go on a Crusade, and what they would need to bring with them if they did. If you're feeling a little adventurous, you could also have them think about what might happen if they did not go (political backlash, religious backlash, public humiliation.)

All in all, I think this lesson, or any lesson, about the Crusades can be very useful and also very entertaining to the students. You could also find ways to relate this to the current situations in the Middle East and see what the students' are in that spectrum. I also highly recommend watching (at least parts of) the Crusades special as shown on the History Channel. It is a personal favorite of Obaratone! It lets students really get a great visual look at the Crusades. So until next time, this is Obaratone, bidding you, in the words of the great Dave Mishkin, a fond farewell and a pleasant good evening. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a refrigerator to crusade...

-JPO

P.S. Thanks goes out to the University of Texas, USF, Internet Medieval Sourcebook, Middle Ages Sourcebook, and of course the wonderful History Channel for providing the above materials free and online.