Knights and Castles (First Reading, Level 4)

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Sally: Not knights, which was a male role. But there were very powerful women, who led armies and controlled battles. Fantasy worlds are especially great for inspiring and supporting a range of specific learning areas, like aiding spelling and vocabulary for Literacy aims, or helping children take an imaginative approach to tasks for Expressive Arts and Design or Tech. Between the end of the 11th century and the middle of the 13th, a change took place in the relationship of knighthood to feudalism. The feudal host, whose knights were enfeoffed landholders obliged to give 40 days’ service per year normally, had been adequate for defense and for service within a kingdom; but it was scarcely appropriate for the now more frequent long-distance expeditions of the time, whether crusades or sustained invasions such as those launched in the Anglo-French wars. The result was twofold: on the one hand, the kings often resorted to distraint of knighthood, that is, to compelling holders of land above a certain value to come and be dubbed knights; on the other hand, the armies came to be composed more and more largely of mercenary soldiers, with the knights, who had once formed the main body of the combatants, reduced to a minority—as it were to a class of officers. We have plenty of other resources to help this topic run smoothly - here are some we think you'll love: Knight comes from the Old English word 'cniht' meaning 'boy' or 'servant'. It also has roots in old Germanic as evidenced by the German and Dutch root of 'knecht'.

After watching the video the teacher could use this as a role-play / story-telling activity. Pupils can recreate what they saw in the video and perform their retellings for the class.This video lends itself well for pupils designing, and / or building, their own castle and then presenting it. Castle comes from the Latin root 'castellum' or 'castrum' meaning 'fort', which itself comes from the latin 'fortis' meaning 'strong'. By this nature we can see that the word means strong structure.

The teacher could show a picture of the Bayeux Tapestry and explain that 1000 years ago, many people could not read, so people told stories using images instead. The pupils could try to retell the story as a ‘tapestry’, which would link to the NC objective in Art of ‘using drawing, The author describes the topic with detached, historical facts, and the time he gives an opinion is at the end of the book when he writes ‘’ Old castles are still a source of wonder around the world ‘’ Harry: Okay, let's put our virtual reality headsets on, so you can see what things were really like and find out more.Sally: William was very young when he became the Duke of Normandy. This was a very important ruler in France. He had lots of enemies who wanted to take over as Duke, so he had to work hard to make sure he could carry on being in charge. Each group could be given one feature of a castle and asked to explain to the rest of the class why that feature is the most important feature of a castle. Drawbridge: Could be raised and lowered when necessary. It was used to protect the castle from invaders.

This video is a good initial stimulus for an introduction to the way society is structured - who has power? The teacher could stop at various points, asking questions about what is the same and what is different between the Medieval This would be enhanced if the teacher could do some examples of oral storytelling first to set expectations and give examples which would make the pupils feel more confident. Our collection has over 500 resources on Castles & Knights for children, our collection has everything you could need to run a great array of History lessons and more, all while saving you time with our brilliantly made, beautifully illustrated resources, activities, games and display items. There are also elements of the physical geography curriculum which could be utilised through using this video as a stimulus.painting and sculpture to develop and share their ideas, experiences and imagination’. Curriculum Notes

A medieval castle had two purposes: it was both a fortification and the home of a lord. The first castles were just earthwork enclosures. And castles built with an outer wall around the curtain wall were known as concentric castles. Inside domestic life often centred around the Great Hall where the wealthy could entertain guests with lavish feasts. Fatima: Yeah, I'm going to go and design a castle with tall walls, a moat, a drawbridge, gates, a tower and a big hall for everyone to eat in. Maybe I can make a model of it. To describe this topic to a friend, I would tell that people in the middle ages used specific building to protect themselves and they also used to train knights at an early age to fight in battles and protect people.

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Have a clear idea of what you want to achieve e.g. 'give an overview of the features of medieval castles'. Inject some creativity and expression into your topic on castles with this Fairytale Coat of Arms Shield Template.