For Teachers

This WebQuest was created specifically for the Military History class at Nashua High School. This class is unleveled, attracting students from all abilities, from grades 10-12. Realizing this is a fairly specific population, you could probably adapt it fairly easily for a Western Civilization class. I have tried to put in as much of the information we will cover in class (the specific military weapons and tactics) in the Definitions page.

To help keep the students within reasonable boundaries, you can either set up your own parameters, or use the vague ones I have established. In this exercise, students can only use technology that could have been found in Medieval times. Also, I will occasionally create situations that will hinder their castles based on their decisions, such as sending a plague to wipe out part or all of the army (if students have created an unrealistically large army for a small area), or having their serf villages join me in taking the castle down (if students chose to have their castles far away from a serf village). These consequences come out during the siege, and could result in students being picked to assist me in trying to take the castle down.

For the siege, I plan to bring in some small models of medieval siege devices: a catapult, battering ram, and various missiles to simulate an army's attack. I may allow other students to help, depending on the group's decisions in creating their castle. All models will be appropriate to school (no pointy or dangerous objects).

As an alternate to the siege, you could also have students present their castles in a short, informal presentation. This way other students will be able to look at the other castles and give their feedback as to strengths or weaknesses they might notice.

To keep students on task, I also gave each group a checklist to follow along with. If you have particular concerns about how your students are progressing, you can collect these sheets at the end of every class. To deal with absences in my classes (of which there are plenty), I chose the groups, putting 5 students in every group. This way, I was able to spread those students who have attendance issues through the groups. I also asked that if a group had 5 members, that two students play the role of General, as Architect and Mason will already work very well together.

Grading: I will grade the entire project using the rubric provided, and give a single grade for the group. This grade will be multiplied by the number of students to create the number of points the group has to grade themselves.

Example: Group of 4 gets an 85.  85 x 4 = 340. The group has 340 points to divide among themselves.

If students believe that everyone has done equal amounts of work, they could divide the points evenly. Therefore, everyone would get an 85. Students could reflect varying amounts of work by assigning different points to different students. Example:

Atticus: did the most work, should get a 92.
Englebert: worked pretty hard, should get an 87.
Ichabod: slacked off a bit, should get an 83.
Oswald: slacked off a lot, should get a 78.

Ultimately, the final decision lies with the teacher. If I saw that Oswald worked really hard, but the group wants to give him a 60, I can veto this action and require the group to provide a rationale for why the points were divided up that way.

This WebQuest meets the following New Hampshire State Standards for Social Studies:

Students will be able to:

And the following National Council for the Social Studies Standards:

Students will be able to: