EDEXCEL 9-1GCSE - Topic 2: COLD WAR SUMMARY 'TOPIC ON A PAGE’ consolidation, revision, resource

This resource provides students with a 'TOPIC ON A PAGE’ summary for this topic of the Cold War Unit. It fully covers the syllabus content for each topic and can be used by students and teachers to:

a) consolidate knowledge and understanding to encourage student mastery (embedding academic language and concepts)after students have completed a topic in class or as a homework task, helping them identify areas of strengths and weaknesses

b) as a quick starter activity to review prior learning or weeks/months later as a spaced retrieval practice task. I regularly take sections from the placemats and use them to support spiralled learning.

c) to encourage relevant exam responses - specifically targeting the CONSEQUENCE and NARRATIVE analysis questions - the CONSEQUENCE question boxes encourage planned examples to include in an exam response and the CASE STUDY events on Hungary, Berlin (x2), Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Detente, Afghanistan, etc provide helpful chronological support for the NARRATIVE ANALYSIS question. (Students have also commented that revising each case study from topic 2 within a chronological order from beginning to end is much easier to revise than studying the case studies in fragmented parts, as set out in the syllabus outline.

d) the question squares can be cut up into cards to form an interactive timeline activity

e) as a useful revision aid before the final exam. (Many of my Year 11 students rely on these sheets in the final weeks and days of revision and have commented that they have helped make factual recall of the huge volume of the syllabus content more achievable.

The resource includes prompt pictures to appeal to visual learners and can be used as a stand alone resource or in conjunction with the Edexcel Pearson Revision Guide, where all of the answers can be found. This resource can also be used in conjunction with the topic placemats that I have produced to support students in lessons. In particular, I have successfully used the TOPIC ON A PAGE summaries with the ‘EXAM TECHNIQUE’ side of the placemats so when students are given exam questions, they can quickly find relevant supporting knowledge to use in a response. I have used this resource successfully with students targeted Levels 4 - 9. It could be easily adapted for students working on or below L3.

Please see the placemat at:https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/9-1-edexcel-history-learning-topic-placemats-for-superpower-relations-and-the-cold-war-topic-2-11755242