Here is the link to the accompanying PowerPoint.

Lesson Plan-Final Project

This presentation, “The Ups and Downs (Mostly Downs) of Marriage in Medieval Iberia for Muslim and Women” is aimed towards grade 11/12 students.

The learning objective of this project is for the students to understand how marriage in Medieval Iberia worked for Muslim women. This includes the pre-wedding arrangements (dowry, etc.), the wedding itself, and divorce laws. I also want to students to understand why marriage in Medieval Iberia could be difficult for Muslim women, even if there were positives to being married in those days.

For the assessment, it would be helpful for the students to have a few follow up questions asked by the instructor to evaluate their immediate understanding. These questions could be discussed in small groups amongst the students and then all of the groups could share their answers with the class one by one. After, it would be helpful to have a short quiz within a few days, at the end of the week or the beginning of the next week in order to allow for maximum study time. If all of the students are engaging in the discussions and are able to do alright on the quizzes, this will signify success. If there is one question that the majority of students are getting wrong, this will signify that this aspect needs to be gone over again in greater detail in order to ensure that everyone understands the concept.

Prior to this lesson I think that the students should have an understanding of women’s rights in the Middle Ages. Perhaps the day before there could be a presentation on general women’s rights in Medieval Iberia which would tie in nicely to the concept of marriage. There should also be knowledge of how Muslims were treated in Medieval Iberia. However, this will be somewhat covered in the intro of the PowerPoint.

This lesson, including prior discussion, the PowerPoint and follow-up activities, should take about 25 minutes, depending on how long the follow-up discussions go. This does not include the time taken for the quiz at the end.

The hook for this lesson will be a small group discussion/activity. First, as a class, we will make a comparing and contrasting list of the things men had (possessions, rights, responsibilities), compared to the things that women had in Medieval Iberia. There should be a general understanding that men had more rights, access to more possessions, and higher respected responsibilities. This concept will be important to carry into the lesson that discusses how difficult marriage could be for women in Medieval Iberia.

The lesson will be presented using PowerPoint. There will be sheets with space provided for notetaking. This way students will know which elements to take notes on.

The follow-up activity will be the small group discussion that was previously described.

The conclusion will not require clean-up time. There will only be note sheets to put away if the students still have those out. The students will only be doing a discussion to follow up the lesson so there will be no need to clean up the room other than perhaps erasing brainstormed ideas from the front board.

The main takeaways from this lesson should be that:

• Women were generally only considered to be of value if they were married
• Women were not equally treated within marriage
• It is important to understand where Medieval went wrong in regards to the treatment of women in order to ensure that we do not slip back into these habits

The supplies for this lesson needed are:

• The PowerPoint for the lesson
• The blank note sheets to be handed out
• Premade, small groups of students in order to encourage effective discussion

The set up required for this lesson will be:

• Photocopying enough copies of the note sheets
• Setting up the PowerPoint