Title: Inhabitants of medieval cities

Lesson plan elaborated by: Katarzyna Kuczyńska

Target group

5th grade students of an eight‑year elementary school

Core curriculum

V. Poland in the early years of Piast dynasty reign Student:

6. describes the society of Poland during the early reign of the Piast dynasty.

The general aim of education

The students learn about social life and social structure of the inhabitants of a medieval city.

Key competences

• communication in the mother tongue;

• communicating in a foreign language;

• learning to learn;

• social and civic competences.

Learning outcomes

Student:

• characterizes social groups which lived in medieval cities, talks about their roles and status in the city;

• realizes the need for common responsibility and cooperation of the city inhabitants (on the example of a medieval city), including the rules of honest performance of your profession.

Methods/techniques

• programmed: using an e‑textbook;

• problematic: active: discussion, preparing letters;

• practical: exercises, work with text;

• expository: comments and explanations of the teacher.

Forms of work

• collective activity;

• work in groups;

• individual work.

Teaching measures

• e‑textbook;

• notebook and crayons/markers;

• interactive whiteboard, tablets/computers.

Lesson plan overview (Process)

Introduction

1. The teacher defines the purpose of the course and gives students the criteria for success.

2. He asks the students how they imagine life in a medieval city. Short discussion. The teacher listens to what the students have to say and, depending on the strategy he adopts, can correct incorrect assumptions or come back to them later.

Realization

1. The teacher divides the students into 4 groups: Merchants, Artisans, Students and Others. Each group completes adequate module of Task 1 (Merchants - module A, Artisans - module B, Students - module C, Others - module D). Then, on the basis of the information gained, each group prepares a letter: students imagine an inhabitant of a medieval city (Merchants - a merchant, Artisans - an artisan, Students - a student of a chosen profession, Others - an inhabitant of a city who is neither a merchant nor an artisan - e.g. a priest, a monk, a water carrier, a vagrant or a beggar) and in their name they write a letter, they define the addressee of the letter themselves. It is important - which the teacher emphasises - that in their letter they include important information on how a chosen person lives in the city, meaning they use new information from the class. The teacher can recall the category of historical sources and define the task as “fabricated historical source” in form of a letter of an inhabitant of a medieval city. At the same time, the teacher emphasises that during this task, besides the criterion of content (the information the students include in their letter) it is important to retain vital elements of a letter (it should have a correct character and style depending on who the students chose as its addressee, e.g. be more direct if it’s addressed to a friend, include questions about their health and well‑being if it’s addressed to the parents who live far away), and that students can also give information in form of a story about an event.

2. The groups read out their letters. The teacher supervises if all important information from the Task were included in the letter; if needed, he informs the students which elements were missing.

3. The students complete Exercise 1: work with the source text. The students listen to a recording (they can read the information as they listen to it) and complete exercises that are aimed at checking how well they understand the recording.

4. Then, the students do Exercise 2: match names of professions with their images and Exercise 3 that consolidates the vocabulary.

Summary

1. Checking the correctness of the exercises with the class.

2. The teacher or selected student summarizes the lesson.

3. As homework, the teacher asks the students to answer in writing (4‑5 sentences) the following question: Can the city inhabitants of today learn something from their medieval predecessors?

Summary of the most important contents of the lesson

1. Learning about the characteristics of social groups which inhabited a medieval city.

2. Analysis of common responsibility and cooperation of the medieval city inhabitants, including the rules of honest performance of your profession.

3. Reflexion on the living conditions in a medieval city and a contemporary one.

The following terms and recordings will be used during this lesson

Terms

Texts and recordings

Inhabitants of medieval cities

Inhabitants of medieval cities are called townspeople. These were mainly merchants and craftsmen. They paid taxes for the needs of the city, for example for the construction of city walls, maintenance of order and cleanliness. They were also obliged to defend the city in case of an enemy invasion.

The most numerous group of inhabitants were craftsmen. In the Middle Ages, unlike today, most of the goods needed by city inhabitants were produced locally, in small workshops and small quantities. Craft workshops were located on the ground floors of the tenement houses. From the 13th century craftsmen, with the support of the city authorities, started to establish their own organisations, called guilds. The guild consisted of craftsmen of one or more related specialities. Craftsmen of the same speciality often lived close to each other on the same street. This is evidenced by the names of some streets that have been preserved to this day.

Merchants were amongst the richest inhabitants of medieval cities. They had an impact on the city governance because they were members of the city council. They lived off trade in goods, which they often imported from faraway lands. There were also many small merchants among the townsmen, who carried the sold goods with them on their backs and reached the townspeople's houses directly. The cities were also inhabited by priests who served in churches and monks (for example, Franciscans and Dominicans) who founded their monasteries within the city walls. The city also attracted numerous beggars and vagrants.