Writings of a First Year Teacher: Some pictures

These are SO late in being posted but I finally found time to download them from my camera. A few weeks ago, in my seventh grade class, we did an interactive activity which helped the kids know what life in Feudal Europe was. We arranged the classroom into four manors and a castle. The king or queen, depending on the class, got to sit on a chair on top of the table, wear a crown and be ruler of the class. The four lords got to sit on the tables, the serfs had to tie themselves to the table leg with a ribbon because they were tied to the land (and lord, did I not pray ever second of fourth andsixth period that there wouldn't be a fire drill....) and the knights got to travel freely from one place to another. The lords had to swear an oath of loyalty to the king in order to get their food and land tokens, each serf had to swear loyalty to their lord and give up some food tokens and the lords had to bid using food and land tokensto get the loyalty of the knights. It was a really fun activity (although some serfs moaned about being tied to the table because they wanted to be a lord- and then shut up when I told them that it sucked being born into a role, right?) We had a really great discussion afterwards and I really think that it helped them understand Feudal Europe. So enjoy the pictures.