Resources from a practicing history teacher, Head of Department and IB Examiner who specialises in KS3, IGCSE and IB History courses, as well as Theory of Knowledge.
Please feel free to look around and leave useful comments about my resources.
Resources from a practicing history teacher, Head of Department and IB Examiner who specialises in KS3, IGCSE and IB History courses, as well as Theory of Knowledge.
Please feel free to look around and leave useful comments about my resources.
This document is a comprehensive student guide to the IB History Internal Assessment (IA). It outlines what the IA is, how to start planning the IA, advice on how to approach each section, marking criteria and a timeline to plan out the process of researching and writing the IA.
The word document can easily be adapted/edited for your own classes or school context.
This is an essay writing frame designed to be used for the successful writing of IB History P2 essay questions, specifically those that require a comparison of two case studies or factors.
The writing frame uses a PEEACL framework (Point, Evidence, Explain, Analyse, Compare, Link), This is an adaptation of the PEEL approach familiar to most history students.
It provides a clear writing structure as well as a table of prompts to help construct clear and cogent answers.
The resource also includes a focus on incorporating historians viewpoints and different interpretations in order to move students towards analytical answers.
This will aid the development of the basic organisational, argumentative and literacy skills required for P2 essay questions.
It is ideal for when lesson time is limited where a detailed plan can be produced, rather than a full essay. A bank of plans can be completed by individual students or groups of students when revising for examinations.
This worksheet is a time-line activity whereby students mark a series of significant events that led into the start of the Second World War in Europe and Asia. They need to decide whether it brought the world closer to war and note why it was significant. There is also an extract from a historians perspective, which leads into the writing of a Paper 1 style essay response.
This activity can be used in a variety of ways; as an introduction to the main causes of the Second World War, as a review at the end of a unit and preparation for a quiz, test, or assessment. It involves a body of relevant knowledge and historical perspectives. The work sheet can be easily edited and adapted; either to change the list of events or add a different historical source for the final task.
This resource is designed to take students through the process of identifying significant events and the reasons why they happened. Addressing second order concepts in history is crucial in helping students obtain the higher grades in their IGSCE and IB examinations.
The document identifies key questions and addresses the historical context of an event, before moving students to consider the impact and significance of the event. The resource breaks this down for the student into a series of focused questions and a ‘significance star’ diagram where a judgement can be made.
The resource can be used for classroom activities, homework and revision. It provides a scaffold to promote independent work on complex issues.
This resource is designed for use with Key Stage 3/4 and MYP students. The resource is a power point that outlines the task, which is to draw an accurate diagram of a ‘trench system’ in order to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the conditions of trench warfare in the First World War. It also tests students on time-management, meeting deadlines and following instructions. There is a marking rubric which can be teacher/self/peer assessed based on a simple scoring system. Bonus marks can be awarded for a the production of a crossword. This allows for bonus marks for students who may not be accomplished illustrators. The pack contains a power point, blank crossword and a marking rubric.
This is a helpful guide to Socratic questioning which is simple and easy to reference. An essential skill to master for effective teaching is questioning. It is the one thing that teachers do more of than anything else. The Socratic method allows for a dialogue to be opened between teacher and student, in which critical thinking takes place. The types of questions are used to explore complex ideas, clarify thinking, seek truth, dissect issues and problems, detect assumptions and biases, analyse concepts, and detect gaps in knowledge and understanding. This type of questioning is fundamental to the history classroom.
This worksheet can be stuck into a teaching file, put on a notice board, used as an insert in student books or used for departmental professional development.
This is a scaffolded writing mat designed for IGCSE and IB/A-Level essays. It is a structured set of sentence starters and prompts that will help students navigate through the structure of an essay, as well as how to express themselves in a more formal, academic manner. This should provide excellent support for weaker students, while also providing alternatives for more advanced students to develop their expression of history further. It is based on a PEE model of writing so should be familiar to teachers and students alike.
It is not designed to be a complete essay structure but rather it provides literacy support for most foundational elements required in a history essay. It can be easily edited and adapted as required.
This document is designed to be used with HL/SL History students studying IBDP History. This is specifically to provide formative feedback on Paper 1 source papers. The document incorporates the IBDP History Assessment Objectives, estimated grade boundaries, writing advice and room for formative comments (WWW/EBI) to be written. The document can be filed by the students and used for reviewing their work at a later date.
This is a resource designed to develop note-taking and organisational skills with IGCSE and IB History students. The resource has a word document with an exemplar template, student friendly explanation and a printable template for the Cornell Note-taking system. It can be used as a class based activity to introduce the approach or given to experienced students to use independently. There are handy pointers designed for history students but the resource can be easily adapted for any subject of age-group.
This is a template for teachers to use for marking the IB History Internal Assessment. The critieria and level descriptors from the IB History Guide have been put into an easy to reference format, enabling you to mark work quickly without having to find the guide. It can also be printed and handed out to students to introduce them to the IA marking criteria or once familiar with the critieria to self evaluate or peer mark their investigations.
This document is designed for busy teachers who just want to get on with their yearly planning and lesson preparation, without having to wait for the school provided planner, or who want to save money and get a ready made planner for little cost.
The document contains all the basics templates that you need; contact information, a daily lesson schedule, yearly academic calendar, weekly planner lists and a handy detailed lesson plan template when you need sketch out an observation.
This can be printed and used, or used electronically. All the templates are fully editable to suite your school organisation.
This is an essay writing frame designed to be used with the IB History P1 essay questions (the final question) on the exam. The writing frame uses a PEEL approach, one that should be familiar to most history students. It provides a clear structure as well as a table of writing prompts to help construct an organised and valid answer. This is ideal for developing the basic organisational and argumentative skills for P1 essay questions. It is ideal for when lesson time is limited or when revising for examinations.
This resources has been designed to make marking and feedback for IBDP Theory of Knowledge quick, easy and effective. The document consists of a range of marking codes with explanations that can be used with any ToK written work including the ToK essay, ToK journals or writing that evaluates knowledge questions. Simply copy and paste the codes onto the work. The comments can be used formatively to better engage students in reflecting on their understanding of ToK.
This resources is excellent for teachers who are new to ToK and require some ideas about what to look for in student writing and reflections, as well as experienced teachers looking to speed up, or simplify their marking.
The comments have been written with the ToK Assessment Instrument in mind and employ ‘ToK’ language and concepts throughout, as well as providing general advice about analytical essay writing.
This document is a step-by-step-guide to introduce and develop a clear and structured approach for students to plan out IGCSE History Paper 1 questions. The resource contains three sets of guidance for each of the three parts to a Paper 1 question, along with an accompanying worksheet to plan responses on.
This resource is ideal for introducing the Paper 1 questions for the first time, or to give to experienced students to build up a set of planned answers when preparing for examinations.
The resource is specifically designed to for the Cambridge International Examinations (CIE 0470) syllabus. However, it could be easily adapted for other courses.
This document is designed to provide all the basic information an IB History student would need to study the First World War as one of their 20th Century conflicts topics. The unit review contains an outline of the knowledge base required, some introductions to key concepts and historians as well as some example examination questions. The unit review document can be used for quick teacher, peer or self assessment of a students knowledge and understanding of the unit.
This is a free departmental unit plan and scheme of work to be used for the teaching of IB P2 Twentieth Century Conflicts. This is a working example of a history department teaching plan. It can be used as a short introductory unit, or split into stand alone lessons. The lessons seek to introduce some major themes and explanations on the nature of war, to move students away from linear explanations of the causes of conflict and simplistic generalisations on its nature. Some of these lessons could also be used with Theory of Knowledge.
The Unit plan is fully editable and is not intended to be a complete ‘how to’ teach on the nature of conflict.
For busy history teachers and Heads of Department marking the IB History Extended Essay. A table that includes the EE Assessment Descriptors has been married up with the History Subject Specific Guidance and the Unpacking the Criteria support material. These are normally found in separate documents but in this format they can be easily cross referenced, to both speed up the marking process and to build a better understanding of the assessment criteria. Also included in this document is the criterion summary for quick reference and importantly the Assessment Grade Descriptors for the Extended Essay which are very useful for helping to determine an overall impression of an individual essay. The document includes the 2020 revisions to the Extended Essay criteria (highlighted in yellow).
It can also be given to students so that they can work through the features of the Extended Essay and identify what they need to do for each criteria. Additionally, Heads of Department will find this a useful tool when introducing the requirements to their department, training staff or moderating their department Extended Essays.
This document has been designed to help teachers deliver the IB History Internal Assessment by providing a simple organising tool to be used by students. It can can be used as a reference point in subsequent class discussions and used to monitor student progress throughout the writing of the Internal Assessment.
The checklist contains a series of statements that relate to the assessment criteria, basic elements of the Internal Assessment, deadline dates and advice collated from past examiners reports. Students can tick these elements off as they complete them.
This document can be easily edited and developed to suit individual students, teacher or departmental approaches to the IA.
This is a planning document to help teachers outline what will be taught, and when throughout the two year History IB course. It is designed in an accesable format and is intended as a working document that a History department can use to plan out their intended course. This document could be adapted for the planning of any curriculum.