History · Year 7

Active learning ideas

The Great Famine of 1315-1317: Causes

Students often see climate events as temporary or isolated, but the Great Famine’s causes unfolded over years and affected entire societies. Active learning helps them connect cold rain, soil conditions, and social pressures into a living timeline that textbooks flatten into paragraphs.

• National Curriculum Attainment Targets
• KS3: History - Social and Economic History
• KS3: History - Crisis in the 14th Century

• 30–45 min
• Pairs → Whole Class
• 4 activities

Activity 01

• Case Study Analysis
• 30 min · Pairs

Source Analysis: Weather Chronicles

Provide excerpts from monastic records describing endless rain and failed crops. Students highlight evidence of climate impacts in pairs, then share with the class to build a shared timeline. Conclude with a vote on the strongest cause.

Analyze the role of the 'Little Ice Age' in causing the Great Famine.

Facilitation Tip

During the Source Analysis: Weather Chronicles activity, have pairs read aloud the same chronicle entry twice, first in a calm voice and then in a hurried, anxious tone, to highlight how persistent rain shaped medieval fears.

What to look for

Provide students with a blank map of England. Ask them to shade regions most likely to suffer from crop failure based on their soil type and elevation, and write one sentence explaining their choices. Then, ask them to list two specific crops that would have been most affected.

• Analyze
• Evaluate
• Create
• Decision-Making
• Self-Management

Activity 02

• Case Study Analysis
• 45 min · Small Groups

Farmer Dilemma Cards

Distribute cards outlining medieval farming choices, such as crop rotation or soil type. Small groups debate and rank decisions by risk, using dice to simulate weather outcomes. Groups present their survival strategies.

Explain the agricultural practices that made medieval Europe vulnerable to famine.

Facilitation Tip

For Farmer Dilemma Cards, set a 90-second timer for each decision round so students feel the pressure of limited time, mirroring the urgency of famine conditions.

What to look for

Pose the question: 'If you were a peasant farmer in 1315, what single decision would you prioritize to survive the famine: saving seed for next year, eating your livestock, or migrating?' Facilitate a class debate where students justify their choices using evidence about medieval farming and the famine's conditions.

• Analyze
• Evaluate
• Create
• Decision-Making
• Self-Management

Activity 03

• Case Study Analysis
• 35 min · Whole Class

Famine Mapping Activity

Students plot famine reports on a Europe outline map using colored pins for crop types and weather data. Discuss patterns in whole class, connecting local impacts to continental scale. Add prediction arrows for social effects.

Predict the social and economic consequences of widespread crop failure.

Facilitation Tip

In the Famine Mapping Activity, provide a palette of only two colors—one for fertile lowlands and one for high, wet moors—to force students to simplify terrain choices like medieval farmers did.

What to look for

Present students with three short primary source excerpts (e.g., from chronicles describing the weather, rent demands, or food shortages). Ask them to identify which excerpt best illustrates a cause of the famine and explain why, citing specific phrases from the text.

• Analyze
• Evaluate
• Create
• Decision-Making
• Self-Management

Activity 04

• Case Study Analysis
• 40 min · Individual

Agricultural Model Build

Individuals construct simple three-field system models with clay fields and yarn fences. Test 'rain' with water sprays to show flooding risks, then journal vulnerabilities.

Analyze the role of the 'Little Ice Age' in causing the Great Famine.

Facilitation Tip

When building Agricultural Model Builds, supply only short, straight twigs for plows and soft beeswax for soil to keep models crude and historically plausible rather than modernized.

What to look for

Provide students with a blank map of England. Ask them to shade regions most likely to suffer from crop failure based on their soil type and elevation, and write one sentence explaining their choices. Then, ask them to list two specific crops that would have been most affected.

• Analyze
• Evaluate
• Create
• Decision-Making
• Self-Management

A few notes on teaching this unit

Teachers find success when they treat the famine as a systems problem: students trace how weather, soil, population, and trade all fed into scarcity. Avoid presenting causes as a checklist; instead, use activities that force students to layer evidence. Research shows middle schoolers grasp cumulative change best through iterative modeling, not lecture. Keep the focus on how medieval people adapted—or couldn’t—within their constraints.

By the end of these activities, students should trace how prolonged wet weather interacted with medieval farming limits to create widespread starvation, and explain why every class felt the crisis. They will use maps, models, and role-play to show cause-and-effect relationships rather than memorizing causes as a list.

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Watch Out for These Misconceptions

• During Source Analysis: Weather Chronicles, watch for students treating each rainstorm as a single event rather than part of a multi-year pattern.

  Have students create a group timeline on the board, adding one weather event per year from 1314 to 1317, to visualize the cumulative impact of repeated rains.

• During Agricultural Model Build, watch for students designing plows that look modern or assuming crops could be rotated faster than three fields allowed.

  Prompt them to label each field with its three-year rotation cycle and to test their plow in a shallow tray of water to see how it bogs down, linking form to failure.

• During Famine Mapping Activity, watch for students shading only coastal or riverine areas as affected, missing upland regions where rain pooled.

  Ask them to overlay elevation contour lines on their soil maps and adjust their shading to include high, wet moors that became waterlogged, matching chroniclers’ notes of ‘water standing in the fields’.

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Methods used in this brief

• Case Study Analysis