Ways to teach the peasants' revolt of 1381

Further to discussions with Ruth on my blog, she has asked that I look at some ways of how I would teach the information that I am looking at the moment:







I will investigate this by looking at how I would teach children the causes and the events of the peasants revolt of 1381:







To teach children the events of the revolt, I would outline the main events of the revolt and explain what happened on each of these days (being careful to leave out the causes of the revolt):

• 30th May 1381




• 1st June




• 7th June




• 10th June




• 12th June




• 13th June




• 14th June




• 15th June

In order to reinforce the events I could use some of the images and sources which I have included in the last post on the peasants revolt.

Before showing students the causes of the revolt I could ask them to think in pairs or small groups using the events of the revolt, what they think could have caused the revolt? or alternatively I could provide them with some possible causes of the revolt and them to discuss between themselves which ones they think could have caused the peasants revolt.

Once the students have completed this task I would introduce to them the causes: This could either be done by producing a powerpoint presentation which would give them and explain to them some of the causes of the peasants revolt.

However from my past experience of watching and helping out in lessons in schools, I often find that children do not learn anything or take in a lot information, if they are just given the information all the time, therefore I will suggest other ways for them to learn the causes of the revolt:

One exercise I have seen in operation is when information sheets are spread around the room and children are given blank sheets to fill in. This can be done individually or in small groups and each information sheet would explain one of the causes of the revolt (i.e. the statute of labourers, the poll tax, the black death etc) and the children would have to briefly summarise the information from the information sheet on to their fact sheet.

Once they had done this they could then rank in order the importance of the causes to triggering off the revolt and decide whether they were short term, longer term or trigger causes. Following this they can also write a report on the peasants revolt (pretending that they are either on the peasants side or the side of the king) making sure they outline why they became involved in the revolt and why they acted the way they did in the revolt(giving some of the causes of the revolt), what happened and how the revolt ended.

Another activity which I have found online which could be quite useful to teach the peasants revolt is: http://www.thinkinghistory.co.uk/ActivityBase/WhyDidPeopleRebelin1381.html (it suggests splitting the children into groups of 5 so that they have one lord, two freemen and two villein and acting out how each would react in the revolt which will reinforce the causes and events of the revolt).

Also I have found a short video clip of the peasants revolt: http://timelines.tv/index.php?t=1&e=5 which could be used and simple question sheets could be handed out to the children so that I can check that the children have watched the clip and have understood the main issues of the peasants revolt.