Ideal for an end of unit fun quiz on the USA in the roaring Twenties and thirsty Thirties … Seventy eight slides with fourteen categories and a whole range of activities to help students think about the key areas in this period. Tasks include anagrams, photo fit faces, chronology activities, dingbats and lots more. You might wish to allow students to use phones or devices to help them throughout the quiz or you may wish them to attempt it without them. I hope your students find this as fun and useful a revision activity as mine do.

I designed this lesson for my IB students and it is pitched at more able students. The lesson begins with a simple starter activity to introduce them to the topic. The hook here is the Socialist Fraternal Embrace and it leads to a discussion of the symbolism of the Breznev-Honeker kiss on the Berlin Wall. From here students read the introductory notes before working through a highly detailed card sort. The cards are coloured to guide those who need it (lighter and darker tones portray positive and negative aspects of life in Brezhnev’s USSR whilst the colours themselves represent factors - domestic, foreign, economic etc). Students then use this information to model a spoken or written responses to the Key Question. The plenary is a fun dingbats powerpoint in which students have to shout out one of the key words or events covered in this lesson and explain its significance. I created this last week and used it with my students for the first time and they really understood the period in so doing whilst showcasing a range of higher order Historical skills. I hope your students can benefit from it also.

My students loved taking part in these STEAM activities which have been designed for Key Stage 2 students. The activities are in Power Point form and instructions are given step by step so the class teacher and students can successfully recreate five different inventions (I have also listed a ‘what you will need’ slide for each activity). I have also put a link in to an example of each activity (You Tube) to show students how the finished activities should look). You can click the links to see what each STEAM activity looks like on completion. Sebastian Lenormand’s parachute (made out of black bin liner) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGobZeXR5OE&list=PLgzcyyWkDljnR_SCk9QRVfPwokv9o8T0a&index=7&t=0s Lawrence de Mole’s tank (with working rubber bank gun!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJl6-KUKPvc&list=PLgzcyyWkDljnR_SCk9QRVfPwokv9o8T0a&index=24&t=0s Henry Ford’s Model T motor vehicle (propelled by balloon power!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4WMD1fjeDY&list=PLgzcyyWkDljnR_SCk9QRVfPwokv9o8T0a&index=25&t=0s Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s bridges (made from uncooked spaghetti) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baGpVKMGQy4&list=PLgzcyyWkDljnR_SCk9QRVfPwokv9o8T0a&index=22&t=0s And Robert Goddard’s rocket https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpLAOjZA0zw&list=PLgzcyyWkDljnR_SCk9QRVfPwokv9o8T0a&index=9&t=0s All of the activities are fun for students and designed to generate thinking about how significant these inventions are and how they work. Each activity works towards a collaborative element where students test their inventions or participate in a race or game. I really enjoyed creating this series of STEAM lessons and my students loved them more than any other classes that year. I hope you find them helpful with your students too. These lessons are naturally a bit messy but bring out the very best in students and help them develop a love and appreciation of the past.

This is a one-page Power point slide (editable) which can be set as a project-based assessment for the second order concept of change and continuity (this one about castles). Students are given clear criteria (beginning, developing, expected, and mastery) and a set task with a list of key words which can help them. The slide also has a section to show students how long they have to work on this assessed piece of work. Please note: this assessment task can very easily be edited for any assessed piece of work focusing on the second order concept of change & continuity and works especially well with my lesson resource on how and why castle design changed across time which can be found here - https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/how-and-why-did-castles-change-6-page-full-lesson-notes-worksheet-project-12016455 Thanks for your interest in this and I hope it helps you ! Best wishes, Daniel

This is a one-page Power point slide (editable) which can be set as a project-based assessment on interpretation of whether Emily Davison died deliberately. Students are given clear criteria (beginning, developing, expected, and mastery) and a set task with a list of key words which can help them. The slide also has a section to show students how long they have to work on this assessed piece of work. Please note: this assessment task can very easily be edited for any assessed piece of work focusing on the second order concept of interpretation and works especially well with my lesson resource on Emily Davison which can be found here - https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/suffragette-emily-davison-10-page-lesson-pack-11920338 Thanks for your interest in this and I hope it helps you ! Best wishes, Daniel

This is a terrific first lesson if teaching a unit on Russia from the turn of the Nineteenth Century until the Revolution. Students are introduced to the lesson with a ‘what’s behind the squares PPT’ which reveals a Social Revolutionary poster displaying Russian society as a wedding cake. They are then given a detailed 8 page set of notes broken down into population, cities, geography, rule and government and so forth and are asked to research and present 8 physical items that explain what life was like for different groups for their main task. They are given some examples (such as Faberge eggs or rubles buried under peasant homes or Cossack knouts/whips to guide them). I have also included a plenary (Dingbats) with some of the key terms students come across in this lesson to test comprehension at the end of their presentations. I hope your students enjoy this lesson as much as mine do. It is designed for secondary aged students who can use detailed information as well as their own research to present their findings. Any questions please let me know and I’m always happy to help.

Students begin this lesson with a starter activity in which they watch a video clip of the traditional view of events (with some true or false questions to test comprehension). They then work through a detailed 3-page set of notes before handling 17 pieces of evidence, some of which offer the traditional view (that this was a peaceful protest whereby the Imperial Guard massacred innocent civilians) and others of which suggest a more revisionist perspective (that Father Gapon was a double agent and expected/wanted to provoke a violent response). Students answer questions on the sources and are invited to give their opinion, which ties back neatly to the starter activity and the Key Question. The lesson concludes with a plenary activity which asks students to listen and contemplate on the meaning and nuances within Dmitri Shostakovitch’s famous 11th symphony. I hope you enjoy this lesson as much as my students do. It has been pitched towards high achieving secondary aged students but please do ask me if you have any questions.

This lesson begins with a chronology exercise designed to recap students’ prior learning (from events dating back to 1905 onwards) in the forms of a ‘Play Your Cards Right’ activity. The class are given two events and simply need to state whether or not the second of these took place earlier or after the preceding event. The final event given is of course the Russian Civil War which is the focus of this lesson. The class then work through some background information and are given reasons why the Reds won the Civil War (ranging from Trotsky’s leadership skills in charge of the Red Army through to the lack of uniformity in the White Army’s motives through to the Reds’ access to the Tsarist arsenal etc). From this students are asked to design a storyboard to recap the reasons, leaving out one (so they are discriminating between factors and deciding which is least/most important). The lesson concludes with a plenary where students have to stand on one side or the other of the class to decide on whether one of the 11 statements is true or false and in this way they test their subject knowledge acquired in the activation and consolidation tasks. I hope you find this lesson and its resources as useful as my students do. It has been designed by myself and pitched at high achieving secondary school students. Please do let me know if you have any questions.

In this lesson students begin with a quick starter activity to see how many Rolls-Royce owning celebrities they can identify - they’re usually rather surprised to see that Lenin is one of these! The lesson has learning objectives which are graduated (all of you/most of you/some of you) and the class then work through a very detailed set of background information/notes focused on Lenin’s big promises of peace, land, and bread. The main activity is then for students to collate information on how well he achieved his aims in these three areas by creating a ‘school report card’ on him. A completed example is also included. The lesson then concludes with a simple voting plenary which asks students to answer the lesson’s question and to support it with evidence (ie did he achieve his promises of peace, land and bread). This lesson is aimed at high achieving secondary students. Please do ask if you have any questions and thanks for popping by. I hope your students get as much out of this activity as mine do.

This lesson begins with a starter activity in which students are invited to cut out and stick together a 12-part jigsaw. This features turning points in Filipino history up to this point (the early inhabitants, the Battle of Mactan, Spanish colonization, and Andres Bonifacio. It also features an image of Jose Rizal.) Once glued in students label the key turning points which introduces us to Dr. Rizal. The lesson title and aims as well as graduated criteria (all will/most will/some will) are introduced and there are some teacher expo slides which explain the second order concept of historical significance. The acronym GREAT is used (ground-breaking, remembered, importance at the time, affected the future, and turning-point) and examples are given to aid discussion and understanding of these as they relate generally and more specifically to Jose Rizal. This information is collated onto one slide which can be distributed to the class as they begin their main activity (to make a digital, written, or visual model celebrating Rizal’s importance.) The lesson concludes with a fill in the blanks Have I Got News For You? activity designed to remind students that Rizal died for nationhood. A consolidation homework task is included where students write an answer to the Key Question.

This 30-slide PowerPoint is a fully resourced lesson which addresses the Key Question ‘what impact did the USA have on the Philippines?’ and is part of a unit of lessons on the history of the Philippines. The lesson begins with a starter activity in which students identify the Statue of Liberty and read the words on her unchained feet. They then explore a famous source which comments on US annexations post Spanish-American War, and this introduces us to the concept of American imperialism. The lesson title, aims and objectives are introduced, and these are graduated by criteria (all will/most will/some will) and students are invited to refer back to these later to see how much they have learned. The main activity is a 32-piece card sort in which students divide information up into social, political, military, and economic impacts the USA has had. They then use this information to write a mini essay. The lesson concludes with a discussion plenary. Students are invited to comment on the geopolitical situation in Asia and in particular whether they think the Philippine government should allow US naval forces to station themselves in the islands. They draw on the historical knowledge they’ve acquired to help them form thoughtful and evidence-based responses. A homework task is set to help students prepare for a follow up lesson in the unit (Second World War).

My students always feel exam-ready thanks to this lesson. The class begin with a source analysis starter in which they reconstruct a source from a jigsaw. This allows for great discussion about what is in the foreground/background. The class then work through a set of very detailed notes on the First and Second New Deals before creating an emoji storyboard to explain it. Finally a bingo plenary allows for testing of comprehension.

In this lesson students receive background information before sequencing a 33 piece card sort to explain the terrible conditions enslaved Africans endured on Guineamen slave ships. This then leads on to the main task in which students are given a card listing three conditions experienced on the ships. They then create a class oral history project which can be recorded and stitched together. This is always an extremely powerful lesson and one which needs to be taught sensitively and with purpose.

The aim of this lesson is to let students showcase their awareness of the Triangular Trade using plenty of subject specific vocabulary and precise historical details (names, dates, people, places, events, quotes and statistics) and I normally give them a couple of lessons to achieve this. The objective is to write a five-part poem detailing: The causes of slavery Conditions on the Middle Passage Life in the Americas Resistance Abolition Throughout the 24-slide Power Point there are five slides with heaps of precise historical detail to help students decide what to include in their poems, and there are five examples too. Please be aware that the slides are deliberately heavily packed with information to ensure students can write different accounts. I use this lesson to tie together the unit once students have already got a good grasp of the subject knowledge. It’s a powerful way to remember and to allow for some cross-curricular overlap between History and English. If you have any questions about this lesson let me know and thanks for stopping by.

I couldn’t find a book on Germany 1918-45 which suited my high ability IGCSE students so I wrote one myself. This is my 233-page PDF which covers all of the key parts of the CIE specification and which includes comprehension questions and activities at the end of each chapter. I give it to students to supplement the course. It also includes detailed revision menus. If you prefer you can find it on Amazon in published form but am selling it here also in case anyone prefers a digicopy they can print. Wishing you a great day, Daniel

I couldn’t find a book on Core Content Option B 20th Century: International Relations since 1919 which suited my high ability IGCSE students so I wrote one myself. This is my 355-page PDF which covers all of the key parts of the CIE specification and which includes comprehension questions and activities at the end of each chapter. I give it to students to supplement the course. It also includes detailed revision menus.

Get students to glue this sheet in. It explains graduated criteria for five skills (interpretation, significance, causation, change and continuity, and consequence). Each has criteria for Mastery, Secure, Developing, Emerging, and Beginner grades. I always ask students to highlight their grade on returned assessments and then do the same in another colour to note what they need to do to improve.

I couldn’t find a book on USA 1919-41 which suited my high ability IGCSE students so I wrote one myself. This is my 215-page PDF which covers all of the key parts of the CIE specification and which includes comprehension questions and activities at the end of each chapter. I give it to students to supplement the course. It also includes detailed revision menus. If you prefer you can find it on Amazon in published form but am selling it here also in case anyone prefers a digicopy they can print. Wishing you a great day, Daniel

I couldn’t find a book on China 1900-89 which suited my high ability IGCSE students so I wrote one myself. This is my 200-page PDF which covers all of the key parts of the EdExcel specification and which includes comprehension questions and activities at the end of each chapter. I give it to students to supplement the course. It also includes detailed revision menus.