I've been teaching history for four years, and I aim to provide lessons that are ready to go with minimal tweaking just to personalise the resource to your class and their prior learning. I'm a big fan of paired discussion, group work, debates, living graphs and hot seating, and I provide a variety of tasks in each lesson to ensure learning happens at a pace and that all learning styles are catered for. All feedback gratefully received.
I've been teaching history for four years, and I aim to provide lessons that are ready to go with minimal tweaking just to personalise the resource to your class and their prior learning. I'm a big fan of paired discussion, group work, debates, living graphs and hot seating, and I provide a variety of tasks in each lesson to ensure learning happens at a pace and that all learning styles are catered for. All feedback gratefully received.
This game is great for consolidation of a 20th C unit, or as part of a series of lessons on change and continuity, looking at the differences between the world in 1900 and the world in 2000. You will need a dice and a coin, students move along the board encountering either multiple choice questions on 20th c trivia such as 'which house hold appliance was invented in the 1910s?' (toaster). There are also events squares where students flip a coin to decide which event will take place and how many squares they will move as a result. eg 'If you throw a heads you land in the middle of the war between Russia and Japan in 1905 – miss a go. If you throw tails you witness the signing of the entente-cordiale between France and Britain in 1904 – have another go.'
Many thanks to Paul Durnall who gave me this.
This lesson uses political cartoons to draw out inferences about the political climate in the USA before and during the First World War. There is a homework for which students will need the Edexcel textbook which accompanies this course.
ALL will be able to define these ideals and identify their appeal
MOST will be able to explain how these ideas would affect politics
SOME will be able to analyse the impact of these ideas on American politics
This lesson explores how the First World War affected people in the US and includes lots of precise, detailed information for students to use in their essays. I use the term 'fantastatistics' for this kind of evidence (fantastic statistics) and this term is used in the PowerPoint.
There is a task which follows on from the homework set in L4 to find out the definitions of 'isolationism' and 'normalcy', but you can allocate 5 mins to this in class if you are using this as a standalone lesson.
The lesson asks students to imagine what kind of measures politicians would have to implement in order to return to a pre war country, and this should give students a handle on normalcy and what the US voters were looking for.
The lesson also looks at isolationism and rugged individualism and students complete a venn diagram to see where these ideas overlap. This was a really successful exercise for my students who are now really comfortable with these political ideas.
NB You will need the edexcel textbook to support this lesson, although if you have an alternate textbook I'm sure you could locate the information elsewhere.
This lesson contains an essay structure for this question:
Were Republican ideas the main reason for the fact that there was a Republican president and a Republican majority in Congress in the years 1921-1931?
The lesson is centred around helping students to feel confident to have a go at this.
The Powerpoint contains images of Hoovervilles for students to see and for you to describe the effects of the Depression. The worksheet needs to be completed using the textbook.
ALL Will be able to describe Hoover’s actions and the effects of the Great Depression
MOST Will be able to explain Hoover’s limitations and the impact on public opinion of the Bonus Army
SOME Will be able to predict the impact of Hoover’s actions on the former popularity of Republicanism.
ALL Will be able to describe why Hoover didn’t win
MOST Will be able to identify detailed and relevant material to support their points
SOME Will be able to analyse the factors to show how they are connected
This lesson includes differentiated questions on the values and promises of Franklin D Roosevelt compared with the disaster Presidency of Hoover. Students will either need the textbook for this, or another resource on the Bonus Army.
Edexcel A Level Paper 1 Option F: In search of the American Dream: the USA 1917-1996
This lesson is an introduction to the course, it gives the teacher an idea of what students already know about the USA and gives a snapshot of what the USA is like at the moment. There are also slides on the structure of the US government, but I usually give my own description with the slides as illustrations.
- Students name US states
- Students use own tech and existing knowledge to answer general knowledge questions
- homework which asks students to find an existing article about the USA today
- slides on structure of government
Designed to follow on from a study of crime and punishment in the Saxon period, students will also need prior knowledge of the basics of the Norman conquest (they need to know it was a violent and foreign occupation). This lesson is designed primarily for the GCSE Edexcel depth study 'Crime and Punishment' and is updated for the brand new 2018 GCSE.
This PowerPoint includes information and tasks with ideas for group work and differentiation included. It also includes a sample exam question on this topic with a suggestion for a writing frame.
Although the textbook is not explicitly referred it, it may help students to have one to hand. The Edexcel textbook is ideal, but the OCR or SHP will work just as well.
Lesson Objectives:
ALL Will be able to describe new crimes
MOST Will be able to explain how these new crimes were connected to the Norman Conquest
SOME Will be able to identify change and continuity in crime from Saxon times
Designed to be used for GCSE Crime and Punishment either Edexcel or OCR, you will need a textbook to support learning from this lesson as students will be prompted to find out information for themselves.
This PowerPoint is essentially a focal point for the lesson, it covers Thomas Beckett and Benefit of the Clergy, Church Courts and moral crimes. It covers the following Learning Objectives:
ALL will be able to describe how the Church affected law and order in Medieval England
MOST will be able to used precise historical detail to describe the role of the church
SOME will be able to evaluate who had more power over law and order; the church or the King.
This lesson looks particularly at Henry II and the changes he made in 1154. It includes a clip, a sock matching exercise and an alternative exercise if you prefer to keep your students seated. It includes a structured written exercise and a plenary. Learning objectives are:
ALL will be able to describe how the King affected law and order in Medieval England
MOST will be able to used precise historical detail to describe the changes the King brought
SOME will be able to explain how much things change.
All resources are included, no textbook needed. Questions are differentiated into traffic light colours.
Intended to give a very quick overview of Tudor England for students in KS4, this lesson gives students the key information they need to begin to study the crimes and punishments of Tudor times.
Learning Objectives:
ALL Students will be able to recall key facts about life in Tudor Times
MOST Students will be able to consider how these facts impacted on the monarch of the time
SOME Students will be able to predict what kind of laws the monarchs would have brought in to deal with threats to their rule.
Designed for GCSE students either studying the OCR course, or the Edexcel course, you will need a textbook for this (OCR, SHP and Edexcel are all appropriate for this) and prior learning on law enforcement in medieval times.
Students will compare tudor law enforcement with law enforcement from medieval times:
ALL Will be able to describe one difference and one similarity
MOST Will be able to describe several differences and several similarities using detail
SOME Will be able to analyse the extent of change
This needs to be included in a scheme of work on American politics during this period as it helps structure an essay, but it doesn't provide new knowledge on content. The lesson is focused on how to pick out themes and structure an essay at A Level. Students come up with their themes as a class, but suggestions are made in the lesson, students assess a model paragraph to find the evidence and analysis present. Students structure their own paragraphs around the model paragraph structure.
The question this lesson considers is “The Vietnam War was the main reason the American public lost confidence in their President between the years 1968 and 1980” How far do you agree?
This lesson was designed to be part of a Scheme of Work on Edexcel AS/A Level history Paper 1, Option F: The American Dream
Intended for GCSE students either studying the OCR or Edxecel spec for Crime and Punishment, appropriate for both the new GCSE and the old, this stand alone lesson is designed to be used with a textbook. The SHP, OCR and Edexcel textbooks will all be fine for this lesson.
Lesson Objectives:
ALL Will be able to describe some of the reasons capital punishment ended
MOST Will be able to support their points with detailed evidence
SOME explain how these factors led to capital punishment ending
This lesson includes a clip about Derek Bentley, a table to be completed using the textbook, a triangle of importance and then an essay question that asks students to compare factors.
Standard board game that requires a dice and counters to represent the students playing. Students complete activity sheet as they play, using the knowledge they gained from the game.
Each square details something that might happen to a peasant to either cause them good fortune or bad and instructs students to move ahead or drop back a few spaces accordingly. As students play the game they have a range of activities to complete based on the information they find out in the game. They could do these as they play, or to consolidate what they have learned after.
Activities cover:
* the feudal system
* jobs of the peasant in each season
* factors affecting the peasant's life such as the weather
* matching pictures to the jobs of the peasant
* the roles of other people in the village such as the steward
This game is active learning that is student centred. Other than behaviour management, it is hands off for the teacher and enjoyable for students. This is appropriate to KS3.
Many thanks to Paul Durnall who gave this to me :-)
This lesson should follow on from either your own lesson on factory conditions, or my other lesson on factory conditions. The focus of the lesson is not new learning, it is practising the skill of assessing reliability based on the caption of the source. It doesn't go as far as NOP but allows students a more organic, paired or group discussion on whether a source is reliable. First you analyse reliability together, then students pass round sources and add their own notes to the bottom before completing a worksheet task.
NB. This lesson does not use the word 'bias' when examining sources as in my opinion, this leads students to stop analysing once they have decided that the source is biased. If instead they examine reliability, they are more able to take a balanced view on source reliability.
Learning Objectives: To know how to make inferences from the source (L5) and to know how to use the caption to decide how reliable the source is (L6)
Students analyse change using continuum bars. will also need previous learning on previous Presidents (Wilson onwards) and a textbook to refer to on Roosevelt's presidency. The 'Edexcel Paper 1: Searching for rights and freedoms in the 20th century' is what I use.
Tasks include:
chronological placing of Presidents
recall of previous facts learned about that President
an examination of FDR from the textbook
completing the worksheet on the continuum of change
This lesson is designed to be used with Access to History:‘Prosperity, Depression and the New Deal: The USA 1980-1954 by Peter Clements, but could be used with another resource if your resource is:
* of A level complexity or above (lesson skill focus is finding information in text)
* details the Supreme Court challenges made against the New Deal
* is no longer than 2 sides of A4
The skill focus is on finding information in text with a view to increasing student confidence in using the textbook and other more complex sources more independently. Tasks include 'skim it/scan it/scope it out' exercise, rephrasing complex concepts into student own words to improve comprehension, and differentiated tasks as per Blooms.
Students will also be fully informed about Supreme Court challenges to the New Deal and able to analyse the changing relationships within the US Federal government.
You need a textbook resource on the New Deal, or access to internet research for students to complete one of the tasks in this lesson. They just need basic information on the provisions of the new deal so they can summarise individual elements such as the NRA for each other.
Learning Outcomes
ALL Will be able to recall key facts about the New Deal
MOST Will be able to explain how the New Deal helped the economy
SOME Will be able to analyse the extent to which the New Deal altered the Presidency
Lesson includes:
Source analysis of a political cartoon
Student paired research
Student paired presentations
individual students select evidence to support the point that the New Deal changed the Presidency in its relationship with Congress and business.
ALL Will be able to describe the key features of McCarthyism
MOST Will be able to explain how this impacted on American politics and culture
SOME Will be able to use detailed evidence to analyse the threat posed by McCarthyism to the American government
Self contained lesson with all resources contained, differentiated questions and a homework paragraph structure.