Medieval Japan

Activity 1 – Government & Warfare

Created by Marion Wadowski for Ancient History Encyclopedia

Essential Question  What were the key people and events of medieval Japan?

Objectives  Improve reading fluency of a complex article and gain insights

from specific details of that text to understand it as a whole
 Analyse a sequence of events to provide a clear summary that
shows relationships of key details and ideas

Needed Materials and  Worksheet (timeline and keys are in a separate PDF, together with
Information this lesson plan)
 Computers, as per your school policies
 Weblinks:
o https://www.ancient.eu/Medieval_Japan/
o https://youtu.be/QP0NoVSqyuk
(Optional - The Shogunate: History of Japan)
 Optional tips for students and marking grids for teachers:
https://www.ancient.eu/edu/printables/

We would like to thank the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation very much for giving us the
opportunity to develop this resource.

1
www.ancient.eu – Government & Warfare in Medieval Japan – Activity 1
 Lesson Plan Government & Warfare

Instructions
50 minute class periods needed, including the wrap-up activity. It could be less if students are required to
complete some parts at home.

 This activity can be done either to introduce or wrap-up your lesson about medieval
Japan.
 You also have quite some choice on how to proceed with the worksheet below,
depending on the level of abilities of your students or your learning objectives.
 First possibility: students fill in the timeline.
o In this case, you can either ask each student to complete the whole timeline
on their own or in pairs (as homework it would work quite well), or you split
the class in groups, each group taking care of a specific category of the
timeline.
o You have four categories: government and rulers, religion, wars, society. In
all groups, we would ask that they complete the names of the period,
regardless of the category they are studying.
o Regarding correction, you can ask students for answers and complete the
timeline yourself on the computer for the class to see (or any device you are
using) or simply hand out the keys.
 Second possibility: you hand over the keys straight away.
o In that case, the students have the whole completed timeline in front of them
and their task is to write a few paragraphs to “explain” the timeline. This will
help them to think of a timeline less in terms of a sequence of events but
more in terms of consequences; which event led to which other one.
o You can take this exercise as far as you need. You can ask for the answer to be
written, or to be discussed. You can guide your students asking them how
one category influenced another category.
o We would recommend to send your students to the article from which the
timeline has been created (https://www.ancient.eu/Medieval_Japan/) and ask
them to verify the accuracy of their assumptions.
o

2
www.ancient.eu – Government & Warfare in Medieval Japan – Activity 1
 Lesson Plan Government & Warfare

Wrap-Up Activities
15-20 minutes, or more if you wish to take this further.

 If you had the time and wanted to go further, you could ask your students to
compare the article and the timeline, discover the discrepancies between the two
and analyse why such differences can occur.
o Why some elements are represented and not some others. Is there anything
they would have written or symbolised differently?
o What needs to be clear in the representation chosen by the students is the
consequence or sequencing of events; how the key elements they chose are
interlinked.
 If this is a skill you want your students to practice you could ask them to summarize
the article in a different way (not as a timeline), in a way they can easily remember
the main information of the text. They may choose to do a mind map or a diagram
of some sort.
 First we would advise them to choose the main information they would want to
highlight or retain and then choose a way of representing that, perhaps, needing a
legend, etc. It’s a fantastic exercise for the students to understand the way they learn
and see how they can decrypt any text, no matter its complexity into something
they can easily learn and digest!

3
www.ancient.eu – Government & Warfare in Medieval Japan – Activity 1