QR Challenge: Does William deserve to be known as the Conqueror? QR Code Scavenger Hunt

Created using the ClassTools QR Treasure Hunt Generator

Teacher Notes

A. Prior to the lesson:

1. Arrange students into groups. Each group needs at least ONE person who has a mobile device.

2. If their phone camera doesn't automatically detect and decode QR codes, ask students to

• Download a QR reader (e.g. I-Nigma | NeoReader | Kaywa) onto their mobile devices
• Bring these devices into the lesson.

3. Print out the QR codes.

4. Cut them out and place them around your class / school.

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B. The lesson:

1. Give each group a clipboard and a piece of paper so they can write down the decoded questions and their answers to them.

2. Explain to the students that the codes are hidden around the school. Each team will get ONE point for each question they correctly decode and copy down onto their sheet, and a further TWO points if they can then provide the correct answer and write this down underneath the question.

3. Away they go! The winner is the first team to return with the most correct answers in the time available. This could be within a lesson, or during a lunchbreak, or even over several days!

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C. TIPS / OTHER IDEAS

4. A detailed case study in how to set up a successful QR Scavenger Hunt using this tool can be found here.

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Questions / Answers (teacher reference)

Question	Answer
1. What two nicknames did William have before the Conqueror, which didn’t really take off as his nickname until the 13th century?	'The Great’ by his admirers, and ‘the Bastard’ by his detractors
2. The Normans brought a castle building boom with them from France. How many had they built by William's death in 1087?	Around 500
3. In the Winter of 1069-70 the English and Danish in the North of England rebelled against William's rule. What was his response to this called and how did William respond?	The Harrying of the North. William laid waste to England north of the Humber, destroying crops and livestock so that the region could not support human life. Famine followed, and, according to a later chronicler, 100,000 people perished as a result.
4. William ended the Anglo-Saxon slave trade. How true is this statement?	In pre-Conquest England, at least 10 per cent of the population – and perhaps as much as 30 per cent – were slaves. William banned the slave trade and in some cases freed slaves, to the extent that by the end of his reign their number had fallen by 25 per cent. By the early 12th century, slavery in England was no more.
5. Why did William's weight prove to be a problem at his funeral?	Finally, William’s body proved to be too fat to fit into his stone sarcophagus, and when the monks tried to force the issue his swollen bowels burst, filling the abbey with such a stench that everyone apart from the officiating clergy fled.
6. How many of England's 15 cathedrals had William rebuilt in stone by the time of his death in 1087?	England had 15 cathedrals in the 11th-century. By the time of William’s death in 1087 nine of them had been rebuilt, and by the time of the death of his son Henry I, in 1135, so too had the remaining six.
7. How did William persuade the town of Alencon to surrender when he was at war with the Count of Anjou in 1046?	When the town of Alencon refused to surrender to the Normans, William ordered that 34 prisoners should have their eyes removed and their hands and feet cut off in front of the town gates. William then threatened to do the same to all the men in the town unless they surrendered immediately.
8. What did William order to be made towards the end of his reign in 1085? What was the purpose of it?	The Doomsday Book. It was made principally to find out how much wealth England had that William could tax as he was preparing for a likely invasion of England by a Viking army. The Domesday book said who had owned the land in 1066 and now in 1086.
9. How could William's castle building programme both be evidence that William the Conqueror was a 'good' king AND a 'bad' king?	BAD. The main role of the castle was to control and oppress the Anglo-Saxon peasants. Castles would protect William's soldiers who could then patrol the surrounding areas, dealing with any dissatisfied Anglo-Saxons by arresting or killing them. Castles would easily be the largest building in the landscape of an areas and this sheer size was designed to intimidate the Anglo-Saxons and display to them the power of William. GOOD. Castles along borders, such as with the Welsh kingdoms and the coastline would improve the safety of these areas from border raids or Viking raids, this was beneficial to everyone living in these areas.
10. How could the Domesday Book both be evidence that William the Conqueror was a 'good' king AND a 'bad' king?	BAD. It showed that the vast majority of Anglo-Saxon lords and landowners had been ousted by 1086 and replaced by William's Norman supported. William already had a strict system of taxation and service giving maintained by the feudal system he introduced into England, yet he was trying to extract more here from the oppressed Saxon peasantry. GOOD. It was a massive feat of organisation in the early Medieval period to conduct a survey on such a scale - England is unique in Europe for having such a detailed source - this shows the power and also the wisdom of William. While it was designed to tax England more, the survey found that areas that had been affected by the Harrying of the North still hadn't fully recovered and it might have prompted William to tax them less to allow them to recover.

 

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