I searched for a graphic that might support students in a Grade 7 Social Studies course as they explored how changes in the Roman world led them to make changes in the way they organized their military. The curriculum asks students to be able to characterize different time periods in history, including periods of progress and decline, and identify key turning points that marked periods of change. In this lesson I would like students to look at the Marian reforms that were brought in during the late Roman republic, and be able to answer the question: “How did the reorganization of the army under Gaius Marius represent larger social and political changes happening within the Roman world?”
Finding graphics licensed for free use by educators related to this topic was difficult! I was able to find a few that I felt would be helpful. This one, found through Wikimedia commons, shows the Triarii system used by the early Roman Republic, and would serve as a contrast to the systems used in the later Republic period. However, in order to be used, I would want to translate some of the Latin labels that are on the diagram, to help students better understand what it is they are looking at.
The diagram was found at the following URL, and was created by user Cristiano64 in December of 2015: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Manipulus_triarii_Polybius.png
This graphic is an appropriate one for use in the classroom, because it has spacial contiguity – each of the terms are next to the part of the image they describe- which would help eliminate extraneous processing for my students (Mayer, 2014). On top of this, the graphic contains elements of both text and visuals, satisfying the multimedia principle for fostering generative thinking (Mayer, 2014).
References:
Mayer, R. E. (2014). Multimedia instruction. In J. M. Spector, M. D. Merrill, J. Elen, & M. J. Bishop (Eds.), Handbook of research on educational communications and technology (4th ed., pp. 385-399). Springer Science & Business Media.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-3185-5
