This enquiry focuses on helping children to learn about the power and authority of Queen Elizabeth and to appreciate the contrasting lifestyles of rich and poor in late Tudor England. The vehicle for doing this is to cast pupils in role as the household of a local aristocrat whom Elizabeth is to visit.
Everything must be done to perfection or the whole team will incur the wrath of the queen and the lord’s position at court will be jeopardised. So pupils need to start getting organised pretty quickly. Some need to work on the menus, dividing the courses between them, whilst others need to lay the tables with the appropriate plates and cutlery. And of course, it must all be carefully researched! If Elizabeth is not happy with Sir Henry’s efforts he might be left out of the court yet again!
Learning Objectives
- Pupils appreciate the power of the queen over her subjects and how leading gentry needed to keep in with the queen to gain access to court;
- they learn how astonishingly luxurious the royal progresses were and on such a vast scale;
- they research from a variety of sources ensuring that they are particularly careful to distinguish between
