Teaching the Crusades

The Crusades is a very interesting topic as it is an economic battle hidden under layers and layers of religious conflicts.
Their are numerous overlooked facts about the crusades that are very interesting to most students. The first being that in the First Crusade during the Siege of Jerusalem, the Crusader knights killed everyone regardless of religion. This is a very important fact to get across to students.

A good movie to show about the Crusades is the movie Kingdom of Heaven. While most movies are historically inaccurate, the movie does a good job to show the difference between the European perception of Islam and the actual thing. The movie also shows the Islamic forces in a very positive light, which in the Post 9/11 era is sometimes a rare thing.

Another angle for teaching students about history is the numerous conspiracy theories surrounding the Knights Templar. There are numerous fiction novels such as

The Da Vinci Code,

The Last Templar,

and The Templar Legion

These all feature the Templar's and there actions during the Crusades as the basis for massive world wide cover ups. While this is not something that is required to be covered by the Standards, it is something that the students know and will likely be interested in, thus you can use it as a conduit of teaching the rest of the Crusades.