What is life like in an absolute monarchy?

As a part of our new push to meet Common Core Learning Standards (CCLS) the new expectation in my department is that we conduct a close read exercise at least once per unit.  A close read is when we give the students a primary source document and help them to make meaning out of the document.

Today was my first close read of the year.  I chose a letter from James I, King of England to his parliament.  As this was the first close read the students have done I provided a significant amount of support throughout the process.  There were a handful of vocabulary words defined on the worksheet, there were other vocabulary words that I helped break down for the students as we read.  We read the document aloud, sentence by sentence making sense of everything we read.  Finally it was a pretty straight forward document that illuminated the power of Kings ("God's lieutenants on Earth." ) and their dismissive attitude toward parliament and the rest of the populace.

After we completed the document the students answered a few questions on the back of the document and we discussed the answers.  Slowly we are beginning to move toward why people began to resist the absolute powers of the monarchs.

The Reading can be found here.  As always if you use these materials or ideas, let me know how they work out for you.