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Tournament Day in the Kingdom
It’s Tournament Day in the Kingdom, and a famous knight has a few words for us: Sir Ulrich von Lichtenstein, the real 13th-century knight whose name was borrowed in A Knight’s Tale. SIR ULRICH: (bowing) Good morrow, Master William! Tournament Day, and my name is on every herald’s lips. Though I hear some peasant thatcher…
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Only the Young: A Hammer, a Horn, a Castle, and a Code
Every Middle Ages unit has the same problem: how do you get a class from the fall of Rome to castles and knights without losing them somewhere in the 700s? My answer is a four-part animated series set to Journey’s Only the Young — plus a review game — all free on DuelingHistory.com. Parts One…
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All This Time: The River Outlasts the Empire
Sting’s 1991 song “All This Time” is one of the most upbeat-sounding tracks on The Soul Cages, but the whole album came out of grief. His father died in 1987, not long after his mother, and Sting has said he was stuck with writer’s block until he went back in his mind to the River…
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Ancient Roman Leaders – Free Teacher Guide
Fifteen leaders who shaped Rome, from the Gracchus brothers to the last emperor of the West (133 BC – AD 476). I put together a teacher guide for the free Roman Leaders activities on Dueling History. It explains what each activity does, how to run it, and includes the answer keys. Download the Roman Leaders…
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Would Hannibal have seen the Pont du Gard?
No, he missed it by about 270 years, though he probably passed very close to where it now stands. Hannibal came through in 218 BC. He crossed the Rhône somewhere between Avignon and Beaucaire, most likely near Roquemaure or Fourques. That’s only about 15–25 km from the Gardon gorge where the Pont du Gard stands.…
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Survey Says… Homer! Student Feud Comes to Ancient Greece
Good answer! Good answer! The old History Feud from my ToolBook days is back, rebuilt for the browser and renamed Student Feud. Two groups, one board, five top answers, three strikes. And this time the host is a blind poet who has been telling stories for about 2,800 years. Meanwhile, Backstage on Mount Olympus… Homer…
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Atticus, Boo, and a Mad Dog: Rivet Your Attention Goes to Maycomb
English teachers, this one’s for you. Every year somebody reads To Kill a Mockingbird, and every year somebody mixes up Miss Maudie and Calpurnia, or can’t say why a dog in the street matters. So I built a board for it. Rivet Your Attention puts every card face up. The pink cards are pictures: Atticus…
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Rivet Your Attention: Match the Graph, Beat the Clock
Remember the matching cards? Vocabulary word on a colored card, definition on a white one, and a table of students racing to pair them up. It was one of the simplest review tools in the room, and one of the few that got every kid leaning in. It’s back, rebuilt for the browser. Rivet Your…
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Pick a Square, Any Square: The Quiz Show Is Back From 1999
In 1999 I built a Jeopardy-style review game on a CD, loaded it with Astronomers, Doctors, Philosophers and Musicians, and handed out copies at Georgia teacher conferences. Most of those CDs are coasters now. The game deserved better. So here it is again, rebuilt for the browser: Quiz Showdown, the newest duel on DuelingHistory.com. No…
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Gordon Central 14, Calhoun 0 — And Nobody Threw a Pass
Somewhere in Gordon County that scoreboard would start an argument. Here it only means Gordon Central answered two more questions than Calhoun did. The Football Quiz Game is new over at Dueling History, and it works like this: two teams, one field, seventy-five yards to the end zone. On every play the team with the…
