Medieval City Projects complete

I have to say how impressed I was today with the presentations on Medieval Cities! Each group's style was unique and had its own strengths and weaknesses. Overall, though, the quality was better than I've seen from presentations given by students in grade 10. I'll mark the bias work and the individual written work over the weekend, but every group was able to earn 3 out of 4 on the rubric - meeting or exceeding standards in three different categories of evaluation. Students were also thoughtful and reflective in assessing their own work and the work of the other groups. I'm really looking forward to the projects we will do on the Renaissance after the Christmas holidays!

Next week we'll begin working on Knights, Castles and the code of chivalry, and we'll take one more look at the impact of the plague (Black Death) on medieval society in Europe before we wrap up our studies on the Middle Ages. There is no homework this weekend except to finish up any uncompleted work from Term 1 and any incomplete work from the start of Term 2.

Have a good weekend!

Bias and Controversial Issues

Today we are looking at page 180/181 in our handout (Assessing positions on a controversial issue.)  Child labour was a fact of everyday life in the Middle Ages, but is less common today in North America. In other parts of the world, it is more common. Points to remember:
Bias  means "preference". Every writer considers what to leave in and what to leave out when writing about a topic. Good writers try to be fair and unbiased, however, controversial topics sometimes require a writer to take a certain point of view to make a point.

When reading about controversial topics (like Child Labour or politics or laws or religion) remember to:

1. Consider the source
     a. Who wrote it?
     b. Why was the material written?

2. Watch for biased language
    a. What is the language like?
    b. Does the writing show preference?

3. Recognize fact versus opinion
 

In preparation for tomorrow's class - please check out the Medieval City Webquest!

Late Middle Ages

Economics of the Middle Ages Lesson

Today we tried out a new piece of technology in an app called Notability. I'm hoping the link above will work as I was recording the audio of the lesson I was teaching while giving examples of how to do flow charts showing different economic systems.

Homework tonight is to read pages 149-152 about trade and the development of towns, in preparation for finishing the last flow chart in class tomorrow.  We've begun our 4th unit, focusing on the late Middle Ages. The finished title page from our last unit (added images) will be due on Friday and the start of the new title page will be due at the same time (title words and frame only).

Report cards will be coming out soon,  so please make sure you're all caught up. I'll be giving my marks and comments to the office on Tuesday, November 13th in the morning.