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 :-)

If you teach a six period day like me I hope you enjoy this simple, editable resource. Just amend the timings, text, and colour code your lessons. Feel free to swing by my shop to have a look at hundreds of other resources.

This book features 12 high scoring IB essays for the Paper 3 topic: The USSR and post Soviet Russia 1924-2000 Teachers – this book is for you if you have high-performing students asking what a good one looks like (WAGOLL). Set an essay and staple the corresponding exemplar to your students’ effort for instant assessment for learning. Included are over 70 annotations by an experienced IB examiner offering tips and tricks to improve your students’ Paper 3 technique. Don’t just tell them what to do, show them. Students - this book features high-performance essays for popular IB examination questions from real past papers. It will teach you how to unpack popular Paper 3 IB questions and to write an introduction with a thesis statement which pivots your response perfectly, using the DCO technique. It will also give you ways in which to evaluate historians’ perspectives as well as schools of thought and teach you how to forensically dissect historical evidence. It will also introduce many of the world’s leading experts to you. You will learn how to effectively embed words such as martinet, kleptocracy, multivalent, panoply, dialectical, polity, nomenklatura, gerontocracy, encomium, casus belli, opprobrium, polemic, and quinquennial to make your essays stand out from the rest. You will also read about how to use topic sentences and how to challenge the very premise of a given question. It will also provide fun and creative ideas for IB projects. If you are a student achieving Level 6 but want to reach for the very top grade in IB History this book is for you. Parents - this book will help you support your child to think critically and to produce deluxe essays. Essays include: Analyse the reasons for Stalin’s emergence as Lenin’s successor by 1929. (May 2012) “Propaganda was not a major factor in Stalin’s maintenance of power between 1929 and 1953.” Discuss. (November 2020) To what extent did the cult of personality contribute to Stalin’s maintenance of power more than terror? (November 2011) “Stalin’s Five-Year Plans and the policy of collectivisation failed to improve the Soviet economy by 1941.” Discuss. (November 2017) What were the consequences of the Second World War for Russia? (May 1994) Analyse the successes and failures of Khrushchev’s domestic policies in the years 1955 to 1964. (November 2012) Evaluate the success of Khrushchev’s foreign policy. (May 2014) Examine the view that Brezhnev’s domestic policies had a very limited impact on the USSR. (November 2015) “Brezhnev’s foreign policy was successful in reducing Cold War tensions.” To what extent do you agree with this statement? (November 2019) Evaluate the impact of Gorbachev’s domestic policies on the USSR. (May 2021) To what extent were Gorbachev’s policies responsible for improved East-West relations between 1985 and 1991? (May 2019) Evaluate the impact of political and economic developments in post Soviet Russia between 1991 and 2000. (November 2020)

This lesson begins with a starter activity in which five factors are laid out on a pentagon for students to consider. These include the Wall Street Crash, Hitler’s personal appeal, propaganda, opponent’s mistakes, and fear of Communism. The class are then told they will revisit this in the plenary. The 19-slide PPT then talks through teacher expo on each of the factors. The class then attempt a 30-piece hexagonal card sort activity. This is colour-co-ordinated for purposes of differentiation. More able students will draw links between factors. The lesson concludes with a plenary in which they are invited to vote on the most significant factor. I hope your students get as much out of this lesson as I know mine do.

Students are given one of the 26 different character cards ranging from Kaiser Wilhelm to Gavrilo Princip to lesser known players such as Leopold Lojka. Once students have got to know their character they then get into teams of fellow countrymen and attempt to find evidence to answer the question as to why the war began. There are 31 pieces of evidence for them to sift through, all greatly detailed and colour-coded for differentiation. This is one of the lessons I’m proudest of and it always leads to powerful debate (such as from those students pictured - they have placed the evidence around their tabards!) and empowers students with extremely high levels of subject knowledge from which to begin extended written responses to one of the biggest questions in History. I hope you enjoy it as much as my students do.

A very detailed set of notes with questions based on these which will cover the persecution of groups during the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. This lesson also comes with an appropriate starter and plenary activity to ensure students understand this very important period of history. If you have any questions please let me know. Thank you.

This lesson will really get your students actively engaged. They begin by figuring out the anagrams of key terms and phrases from the course before working through a detailed set of notes on how China changed after the 1911 Revolution. From here students proceed to complete a 15 piece card sort, arranging them into social, political and economic impacts of Warlordism. Students then complete the lesson with a fun activity (Dingbats) designed to test how well they have understood the key vocabulary and events from the lesson. This lesson was one I created and planned while teaching in China so I really invest as much precision in the historical detail as possible. I hope your students enjoy it as much as mine.

This activity works really well as a starter to introduce the topic or indeed as a plenary to test student knowledge and understanding. Its very simple. Just print out and laminate the cards and place them upside down. Students have to choose any two and read them aloud. Once they spot a colour-coordinated pair (a question and an answer) they score one point. My students really love the simple activity and it really boosts their precision in historical subject knowledge. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

This works really well as a quick starter or plenary activity. Students complete a questionnaire about Roman inventions and how recently they have used them. From this they achieve a score (out of 66) and are asked to stand up when their score bracket is read aloud. A fun way to introduce the concept of why the Romans are so significant.

This lesson includes clear and graduated aims and objectives (all will, most will, some will) and begins with a starter activity in which students have to identify which major groups came to the islands first (the order is Negritos or indigenous peoples, Austronesians, Spanish, Americans) in a Play Your Cards Right Activity. They are then given background information as well as cards and pictures. Using these students create a day in the life of a Negrito by adding the cards to an emotional rollercoaster (discerning between positive and negative aspects of life). They then conclude with a voting plenary. During this lesson they learn about the lifestyle of the nomadic and semi-nomadic Negritos (a word coined by the Spanish colonisers later) and explore such things as the Angono petrogylphs, the Tabon Man, and lots more. I hope your students enjoy this lesson as much as mine.

Very simple but spices up source analysis skills. Students create their die from the template and throw - when the die lands they have to ask the person next to them the question which is face up. This is a featured resource on the T.E.S scaffolding for History teachers website. Have a wonderful day.

This lesson is a bit niche! But its great. If you teach the history of the Philippines this is my first lesson in a local history unit. The class are introduced to five inquiry units they will study and begin the lesson with an odd one out starter activity. The lesson aims and objectives are clearly laid out and graduated (all will, most will, some will) and there are slides explaining some of the terrific things about the island nation. Students are then invited to create a title page using this info and there own knowledge/research. The lesson concludes with a game of Last Historian Standing in which they are tested on some of the information that they have gone over during the main phase of the lesson. I hope your students enjoy this activity as much as mine do.

This 61-page PowerPoint is a full lesson to the Key Question ‘why did the Spanish come to the Philippines?’ The lesson begins with clear and graduated lesson objectives (all will, most will, and some will) and proceeds to a lesson starter which is designed to build on existing student knowledge (students match up five dominoes with the correct question and answer). There is then background information in the PPT explaining from the Battle of Mactan in 1521 through to Spanish conquest. The slides then deal with four key factors - the role of economics (and the proximity of the Spice Islands in particular), the role of key individuals (not least King Phillip II who lends his name to the island chain), changing technology (Spanish galleons), and religion (missionaries). From this, students are placed into groups of four and asked to create a short role play to answer the key question. Students are reminded of the lesson objectives to see which level they have achieved. The lesson concludes with a DingBats plenary where students are invited to figure out a key word from the lesson based upon some picture clues (maritime trade routes, canon ball, Spice Islands etc). Thanks for your interest in this lesson which is written in British-English and is pitched at high achieving mainstream high school students. It is one of a series of lessons I’ve made on the history of the Philippines so please do feel free to look through the rest of my store.

This is my third lesson in a unit on the history of the Philippines and as always includes graduated aims and objectives (all will, most will, some will). The lesson begins with a starter activity asking students to infer from the Boxer Codex, a manuscript of illustrations the Spanish created of Filipinos in the Sixteenth Century. Students are then given the main task which is to categorise information from 48 information cards into areas such as conflict, government, belief systems, trade, and education and skills. There is a colour-coordinated set and a blank set. You decide which to use based on the level of ability of your class. There is then information on the PPT for students to discuss what they have learned. The lesson concludes with a fill in the gaps (Have I Got News For You) activity designed to test their knowledge of information learned. Homework is included which is to create a piece of written work to answer the key question.

This is a simple but effective way to spruce up any History display. Key terms and words. Just print and stick on your displays. Et voila! Have a wonderful day.

This is a great little starter activity when teaching castle design. Students divide themselves into three teams - research, design, and construction. Then using only scotch tape, scissors, and a tablet/computer or textbook, they need to design their own castle using the labels provided. Works especially well when accompanied by Mission Impossible music! I hope you enjoy using this resource as my students do. And if you like this free resource why not check out my shop for more goodies?

In this 1-slide PPT you will find a student learning journey about Ancient China. The template is easily editable and provides you with an outline of a scheme of work which can be delivered. I like to ask students to glue these into their exercise books so they know exactly where on their own learning journey they are. This learning journey is broken down into inquiry units and individual lesson titles within these.

This lesson begins with an ‘Odd One Out’ starter activity where students are asked to look at four people (Honecker, Emperor Qin, Emperor Hadrian, and Donald Trump) and to offer reasons for one of them being the odd one out. The answer we are looking for is that they all built walls bar Trump whose proposed southern wall was never built. That introduces the concept of walls and their purpose. The class then take part in an escape room activity. (Please note this takes a bit of setting up to be done properly, but can be done more simply if missions and codes are just printed back to back - just tell students they can’t turn over the page until you have verified they have got the code correct). Nevertheless, if you can it is a whole lot more enjoyable with boxes and padlocks! There are six missions - each with background information about key turning points in the Wall’s History (from the end of WWII and the split through to the Berlin Blockade through to the border being closed through to barbed wire Sunday through to the Next Gen Wall through to Escape attempts). Each mission is then completed on the worksheet. Please note I do not cover the collapse of Communism or the fall of the wall here (because I cover that in a separate lesson). The lesson concludes with a ‘play your cards right’ chronology activity in which the students use the knowledge they have gained to test their awareness of key events and dates. The lesson comes with an accompanying 11-page set of notes. I hope your students get as much out of this fun lesson as mine always do and please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

In this 1-slide PPT you will find a student learning journey about Medieval Realms. The template is easily editable and provides you with an outline of a scheme of work which can be delivered. I like to ask students to glue these into their exercise books so they know exactly where on their own learning journey they are. This learning journey is broken down into inquiry units and individual lesson titles within these.

In this 1-slide PPT you will find a student learning journey about the Triangular Trade. The template is easily editable and provides you with an outline of a scheme of work which can be delivered. I like to ask students to glue these into their exercise books so they know exactly where on their own learning journey they are. This learning journey is broken down into inquiry units and individual lesson titles within these.