Who was the worst medieval king in England?
This enquiry gives the pupils an understanding of political power in the Middle Ages. The concept is made accessible by allowing medieval monarchs to speak for themselves. The pupils become experts on one medieval monarch and speak in role as the monarch in a balloon debate. The hook is the story of the Norman Conquest, told using video extracts. The pupils then go on to consider the ways in which William I established control over his new kingdom; through this they determine criteria for assessing the success or failure of medieval monarchs. They learn that successful monarchs died natural deaths, produced heirs, taxed their subjects, controlled the nobility, defeated foreign enemies and kept the Church in its place. In groups, the pupils use these criteria to research their own monarch in detail, and other monarchs in outline. They then hold a ‘balloon’ debate in which they defend their own monarch and attack another. A panel of pupil-judges decides which monarch should jump from the
