KS3 - The Gunpowder Plot - The Events

This lesson focuses on the key events of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, and the reasons for its failure. It is part of a series of KS3 lessons that I have created about the tensions between Catholics and Protestants in the 17th century. The lesson focuses on the key events of the Gunpowder Plot, and identifying the reasons for the failure of the plot. The lesson ends by asking the students to write a narrative account which explains why the plot failed.

The lesson starts with a quick starter which gets the students to think about the consequences of the Gunpowder Plot. I use the picture source of Guy Fawkes’s signature before and after the rack - and then a BBC video link to tell the story of Fawkes’s torture.

Then, the PPT has background information about the preparation of the plot, and the monteagle letter for a teacher discussion about this. I have included part of the Monteagle letter, and the students can read this to make inferences about the letter - and hypothesise what will happen next in the story.

The students then read the “whole story” of the plot to think about “how close did the plotters come to killing the king?”. They use this to fill out a table which has some basic key events of the story - they have to add specific factual detail to flesh out the story. This will be used later for their narrative account.

The final activity is an extended piece of writing. It gets students to write a narrative account which explains “Why the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 failed”. They use their research to write this. I have included a grid of phrases (linking phrases, process phrases) to help them to structure their historical writing.