I really enjoy teaching this lesson but it makes a content-heavy subject very easily understood. Students begin by breaking down a source using the OPVL method (origin, purpose, value, limitations) before proceeding to work through an extremely detailed set of notes. The class then use this information to create their own cults of personality before attempting a mix and match memory card game to test their comprehension. The lesson concludes with an exit ticket plenary. I hope your students enjoy this lesson as much as mine do.

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.

Students learn a huge amount of content in this lesson but do so in an engaging manner. The lesson begins with the starter activity in which students are invited to create a VENN diagram to compare two characters - one from the Golden Years and one from Nazi Germany. This introduces the idea of social change and economic recovery between 1923-29 and the class then work through a detailed set of notes in order to gain subject knowledge. The main task is a Tarsia shape card sort activity and students complete the lesson by playing a game of Guess Who to introduce key characters. Please note (prior to purchase) you will need your own board for this plenary activity to work best and you should allow students to use the Internet to research as they play. I hope your students get as much out of this lesson as mine do.

In this lesson students explore the Key Question ‘How successful was the League of Nations in the 1930s?’ They begin by acting out cards which they will have covered in the 1920s as a game of charades. The class then work through a set of detailed notes before playing a game of snakes and ladders bingo. It needs to be printed in colour and laminated but these work great with students and as an activity the league’s successes (ladders) and faults (snakes) become very clear. The lesson concludes with an angram plenary to test student comprehension of key terms. I hope your students enjoy this lesson as much as mine do.

In this lesson students begin to explore the concept of totalitarianism by a class discussion of photographs of a much-loved Hitler in the starter activity. This the leads to students accessing a detailed set of notes before beginning a mind map exercise in which the class explore the role of propaganda, economics, crushing of opposition and use of terror. Students conclude this lesson by participating in a Connect 4 style plenary to measure subject knowledge. I hope your students get as much out of this lesson as mine do.

This is a four-part lesson in which students tackle the essential question ‘why did Russia do so badly in the First World War?’. The lesson begins with a starter activity in which students pick the odd one out. This is designed to get them thinking about the nature of fighting on the Eastern Front, something they might be less familiar. They are then given a set of detailed notes before attempting a card sort activity which is broken into three categories: socio-economic, military, and political reasons for Russia’s lack of success. The class can glue these into their books and then write up their own summary before attempting the plenary, which is a ‘Find Someone Who Can’ activity where they walk around the class asking peers to help fill in their sheets and in so doing test their own and the class’ subject knowledge. I hope your students get as much out of this lesson as mine do and please don’t hesitate if you have any questions. This lesson is pitched towards high-ability secondary aged students.

In this lesson students tackle the question ‘what were the causes of the February revolution in 1917?’ and complete an assessed piece of work. The lesson begins with a starter activity (short movie clip with comprehension questions to introduce the question). The class then explore some background notes and a range of long and short term reasons on the PPT provided. From this the class digest this information into their own protest boards and these are then compiled by the teacher and either printed or shared digitally so the class can create their own personalised storyboard. After this students are given as assessment rubric (beginning, developing, expected, and mastery is the graduated criteria) in order to help them write a piece of extended written work to the question. The lesson concludes with a quick odd one out plenary. Please let me know if you have any questions about this lesson, which is pitched towards high achieving secondary students.

This is a fully-resourced lesson which will help your class understand the reasons the Bolsheviks came to power. Please note though that this lesson does not cover the weaknesses of the Provisional Government (that is done in a previous lesson) but instead focuses solely on the strengths of the Bolsheviks and Lenin. The lesson includes learning objectives which are broken into all of you / some of you / most of you will and begins with a starter activity designed to encourage students to consider a range of different historiographical perspectives on the importance of Lenin and the Bolsheviks (Pipes, Merridale, McMeekin etc). From here the class work through background notes before attempting a Diamond 9 activity where they place different factors into a sequence with the most important at the top and the least important at the bottom. After this students are prepared to complete an assessed piece of written work and a detailed and graduated rubric is provided for this based on the second order concept of interpretation. The lesson concludes with a plenary where students are asked to vote on which side of the historiographical debate they side with. I hope your students get as much out of this lesson as mine do and please do let me know if you have any questions. This lesson is pitched towards high-achieving secondary aged students.

Please note: To use this lesson you need to have a copy of the 1998 animated Disney movie Mulan. This is a great lesson in which students are given graduated learning objectives (some of you will / most of you will / and all of you will) in order to help them answer the essential question 'what can we learn about Ancient China from the Disney movie Mulan?". The lesson begins with a starter activity to engage your students in which they are invited to guess the odd one out from a group of Disney characters (the answer is Mulan - because she has killed whereas the others, Bambi’s mother et al, had been killed. This leads them into the lesson nicely and the idea that the ballad of Hua Mulan is no ordinary ‘Disney Princess.’ The class then work through 45 different evidence cards and arrange these into things they can learn from the movie (ie accurate things like the use of rickshaws and only the Emperor being allowed to wear yellow etc) as well as movie mistakes and things which are inaccurate (such as Mulan being allowed to hug the Emperor and the way she inserts her chopsticks vertically into her rice etc). There are two versions of this card sort, one for students who like a challenge and a differentiated version for students who need a more straightforward task. Students can also divide them using the labels given (info relating to women, family, rule and government, culture, society, military etc. Students then watch the movie and tick off those they spot (a nice end of term type activity - but not simply ‘watching a movie for the sake of it’!). From this the class then complete a movie review exercise using the template given before attempting a plenary in which they vote with their feet to establish how many stars (1-5) they would rate the movie for historical authenticity (ie they now answer the essential question). I have also included a final slide which is an assessment rubric should you wish to turn this series of lessons into a formal testing point. I teach this to high achieving high school students as part of a scheme of learning about Ancient China and I hope your students get as much out of it as mine always do. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to ask and thanks again for your interest in this lesson, which is in PPT form but which does need the buyer to have purchased a copy of the 1998 animated movie (not the 2020 version.)

This lesson will introduce your students to Weimar Germany fantastically well. Students complete a maths challenge in the starter PPT to introduce them to some of the financial difficulties Germany was facing. After this the class work through a set of exceptionally detailed notes before completing a funneling activity designed to help them discriminate between evidence to form a judgement to help them answer the Key Question. The lesson concludes with a class vote PPT plenary. I hope your students get as much out of this lesson as much as mine do.

A twenty minute guide in which I talk through tips and tricks for students and teachers on how to produce an excellent IA. The IA has a weighting of twenty percent of the overall grade for Higher Level History and twenty five percent for Standard Level History for the I B course and in this video I have used my teaching and examining experience to piece together advice for students in this crucial piece of work. I hope your students find it just as useful 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.

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.

In this lesson students explore how Hitler consolidate power between 1933-34. The class begin with a mix and match starter to test subject knowledge before working their way through the notes. They then complete a playdoh storyboard to consolidate their learning (this can be done as a simply drawn storyboard if the teacher prefers). The lesson finishes with a back to back plenary in which students are awarded points for guessing their partners key words (there are given words they are not allowed to use). In this lesson students explore a high level of content in an engaging and active manner designed to embed subject knowledge in long-term memory.

In this lesson students read very detailed information in the background notes before creating a factor-led mind map. Please watch the accompanying short video to see some of my students in action in this lesson. Its a great way for them to acquire super strong subject knowledge and to visually map out Deng’s domestic rule.

My students love using these as a revision tool and also as an in class activity. Each of the twenty three hand-shaped cards has a key topic about the Cold War on it and each finger has a name/date/quote/statistic/fact on. Students learn precise supporting material which really boosts examination success. These aides can be reversed so students can test each other by reading the answers first and guessing the topic also. Once cut out and laminated they make a very handy and mobile revision aide and knowledge on them is extremely precise and exact.

In this lesson students work through a comprehensive set of notes before attempting a Tarsia card sort activity to consolidate knowledge acquired. The lesson concludes with a game of Nazism Guess Who whereby students ask only questions which require a yes/no response (they can use the internet to help respond). Please note prior to purchase this game works best if you already have a board upon which you can stick the pictures! I hope your students find this lesson on Widerstand as useful as mine always do.

In this very detailed lesson students have the opportunity to tackle on the of the greatest history mystery activities around! The lesson begins with a Power Point activity designed to captivate the class from the go and they view a short video outlining differences people have on this question. The class then work through a detailed set of background notes to enrich their knowledge before attempting a 26 piece evidence sort. The class work in pairs or individually to place each piece of evidence into a column - they are colour co-ordinated to differentiate where required - some evidence suggests the landings were real and others suggest they were a hoax. Once complete the class use this as a scaffold to write an answer to the question ‘did man really walk on the moon in 1969?’ before voting online in their plenary activity. It really is a lesson (for high school students) which engineers original thought and allows students to discriminate between evidence to arrive at a well thought out conclusion. My students always find this a fascinating lesson and a great part of any Cold War unit or stand-alone activity. I hope yours enjoy it as much as mine do. You can find alternatives on this site which address this question and which cost a tiny bit less but I don’t think they have the level of detail and precision as you will find here :-)

This lesson begins with a fun starter activity where students view images of Putin and are introduced to the idea that Russians like a tough muzhik style leader (Geoffrey Hosking). They then read through a detailed 4-page pack of notes before completing a card sort where they divide information onto two ‘roads’ - one that suggests Russia was legitimately on the road to reform and democracy, and one that suggests it was on the road to revolution because of a Tsar who refused to give up any power. Students are then expected to write a short response to the overall question before the plenary which shows them two different Historians’ views on this question (Pipes and Morison). The class are asked to vote by standing either on the left or right of the room. I hope you enjoy this lesson as much as I do when I deliver it and please do ask me if you have any questions. The lesson is pitched at high achieving secondary school students.