Renaissance Lesson Plan: Change, Continuity, and Context

*Click to open and customize your own copy of the Renaissance Lesson Plan. 

This lesson accompanies the BrainPOP topic Renaissance, and supports the standard of describing historical developments as examples of change or continuity. Students demonstrate understanding through a variety of projects.

Step 1: ACTIVATE PRIOR KNOWLEDGE

Ask students: What do you already know about the Renaissance?

Then, display these images of the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper:

Ask: Have you seen either of these paintings? What do you know about them?

Step 2: BUILD KNOWLEDGE

• Read the description on the Renaissance topic page.
• Play the Movie, pausing to check for understanding. 

Step 3: APPLY and ASSESS 

Assign Renaissance Quiz, prompting students to apply essential literacy skills while demonstrating what they learned about this topic.

Step 4: DEEPEN and EXTEND

Students express what they learned about the Renaissance while practicing essential literacy skills with one or more of the following activities. Differentiate by assigning ones that meet individual student needs.

• Make-a-Movie: Produce a documentary tracing the different factors that contributed to the radical changes in Europe during the Renaissance. 
• Make-a-Map: Create a concept map identifying and analyzing cause-and-effect connections between the different developments during the Renaissance.  
• Creative Coding: Code a digital museum featuring figures and artifacts representing achievements and developments during the Renaissance across all sectors of society. 

More to Explore 

Time Zone X: Middle Ages: Place historical events in chronological order in this interactive timeline game.

World History Unit: Continue to build understanding around continuity and change by exploring more BrainPOP World History movies.

Sortify: Inventions: ​​Challenge players to sort by inventions by area of impact, such as communication, agriculture, and more in this learning game.  

Related BrainPOP Topics: Deepen understanding of the Renaissance with these topics: Michelangelo Buonarroti, Leonardo da Vinci, Black Death, and Copernicus.

Teacher Support Resources:

• Pause Point Overview: Video tutorial showing how Pause Points actively engage students to stop, think, and express ideas. 
• Learning Activities Modifications: Strategies to meet ELL and other instructional and student needs.
• Learning Activities Support: Resources for best practices using BrainPOP.