I am a History Teacher with a love for producing high quality and easily accessible history lessons, which I have accumulated and adapted for over 20 years of my teaching career. I appreciate just how time consuming teaching now is and the difficulty of constantly producing resources for an ever changing curriculum.
I am a History Teacher with a love for producing high quality and easily accessible history lessons, which I have accumulated and adapted for over 20 years of my teaching career. I appreciate just how time consuming teaching now is and the difficulty of constantly producing resources for an ever changing curriculum.
AQA GCSE 9-1 Elizabethan England, 1568-1603
The overarching aim of this and the subsequent bundle of lessons is to question and explore how Elizabeth tried to assert and establish her authority in the early years of her reign.
The eleven lessons are therefore linked together to build up a picture of her difficulties in trying to overcome this.
This lesson focuses on the threat posed by Mary, Queen of Scots through her activity and inactivity under the close guard and ‘protection’ of Elizabeth.
Students are taken through Mary’s life from the controversy of her husbands in Scotland to her imprisonment in England by Elizabeth.
Through sources, visual and video evidence, they have conclude how much of a threat Mary posed to Elizabeth using a colour coding activity which includes of all the plots associated with Mary, including the infamous Babington Plot.
A threat’o’meter gets the students to make an overall judgement and justify their conclusions.
They also learn about her execution and answer a GCSE practice question on the significance of her execution on Elizabethan England.
The lesson is enquiry based with a key question using a lightbulb posed at the start of the lesson and revisited to show the progress of learning.
The resource includes suggested teaching strategies, retrieval practice, differentiated materials and comes in Powerpoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change.
The Industrial Revolution
The aim of this lesson is to question how effective Victorian justice was.
This is an interesting and engaging lesson for students as they decide who was a criminal (from their looks), which were the most common crimes in the early 1800’s and what you could expect at a public hanging though some source analysis.
By the end of the lesson, students will be able to answer the following questions:
Why was it so easy to commit crime in the Victorian period in the early nineteenth century and if you were unfortunate to get caught what could you expect from Victorian justice?
What was the Bloody Code and why was the law so harsh to offenders irrespective in some cases of sex or age?
There are also three case studies to unpick and students are left questioning the morality and effectiveness of the punishments inflicted.
Please note that the reform of the criminal justice system is dealt with in other lessons such as the Victorian prison system and the setting up of the Metropolitan Police force by Sir Robert Peel and the abolition of the Bloody Code.
There are a choice of plenaries from hangman to bingo and heart, head, bag, bin which get the students to prioritise the most ‘effective’ methods used to deal with crime.
The lesson is enquiry based with a key question using a lightbulb posed at the start of the lesson and revisited at the end to show the progress of learning.
The resource comes in PowerPoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change.
I have also included suggested teaching strategies to deliver the lesson and there are differentiated materials included.
This is the complete bundle in a series of lessons I have created for AQA GCSE 9-1 Britain: Health and the People, c.1000-present.
I have taught this course for more than 20 years now and have decided to completely overhaul my lessons to bring them up to date with the latest teaching and learning ideas I have picked up and with a focus on the new 9-1 GCSE.
Furthermore I have dispensed with learning objectives to focus on specific enquiry based questions which address skills required for the GCSE questions.
As well as focusing on GCSE exam practice questions, the lessons are all differentiated and are tailored to enable the students to achieve the highest grades. They are also fully resourced and contain easy to print worksheets.
The lessons will allow students to demonstrate (AO1) knowledge and understanding of the key features and characteristics of the periods studied from the impact of Hippocrates and Galen on medieval medicine to the new ideas of the Renaissance, the laissez-faire approach of preceding Governments through to modern day Government and the nanny state.
They will study (AO2) second-order concepts such as change and continuity in the development of ideas about disease as well as the causes and consequences of medical treatment throughout the ages
The analysis and evaluation of sources (AO3) are used in for example, surgery, Public Health and the introduction of the NHS whilst substantiated judgements are made (AO4) on the discovery and development of penicillin, the development of the welfare state and the influence of the seven factors in medicine.
The lessons are as follows:
L1 An introduction to the course
L2 Hippocrates and Galen
L3 The influence of the Christian Church
L4 Islamic Medicine (free resource)
L5 Doctors and surgeons in the Middle Ages
L6 Public Health in the Medieval towns
L7 The Black Death and the Plague
L8 Renaissance Medicine
L9 Medicine in the 17th and 18th Century (free resource)
L10 John Hunter
L11 Edward Jenner and smallpox
L12 Surgery in the 19th Century
L13 Florence Nightingale and hospitals
L14 Pasteur, Koch and Tyndall
L15 Public Health in the 19th Century
L16 Liberal Reforms
L17 Medicine and war (free resource)
L18 Magic Bullets and the Pharmaceutical Industry
L19 Penicillin
L20 The NHS
L21 How to answer the factor question
Please note that setting a full mock examination in class after completing each unit is strongly recommended (L1-7, L8-15 and L16-21).
All the examination resources and markschemes are subject to copyright but can easily be found on the AQA website.
Unfortunately TES restrict bundles to 20 lessons and therefore please download Lesson 17 separately, which is a free resource.
Cold War
The aim of this lesson is to understand the causes behind the building of the Berlin Wall and the consequences for Berliners during the height of the Cold War.
Students analyse the differences between life on the East and West sides of Berlin to understand why thousands of Germans continued to cross the border to make a better life in West Berlin.
The second part of the lesson focuses on the building of the wall, using statistics, graffiti art and the personal account of Conrad Shuman in a thinking quilt to develop further understanding and evaluate its significance in the context of the Cold War.
The central enquiry of this and subsequent lessons is to ask why did civilians fear for their lives? Students will map out their ideas each lesson (which can be plotted in different colours or dates to show the progress of their learning and centred around the key question) and build up a picture of how these and different countries in the world responded and acted in this new nuclear age.
The resource comes in PowerPoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change and is differentiated.
I have also included suggested teaching strategies to deliver the lesson.
Cold War
The aims of this lesson are to explain how weapons developed during the Cold War in the aftermath of World War 2.
The new destructive power of the atomic bomb is shown in a great video link and students colour code a worksheet (differentiated) with challenge questions to describe and explain the development of the arms race.
Facts and figures are also given which students have to interpret, as well as key word tasks and source analysis, with help given if required.
The plenary is literally an arms ‘race’ complete with interactive dice and bombs as board pieces.
The central enquiry of this and subsequent lessons is to ask why did civilians fear for their lives? Students will map out their ideas each lesson (which can be plotted in different colours or dates to show the progress of their learning and centred around the key question) and build up a picture of how these and different countries in the world responded and acted in this new nuclear age.
The resource comes in PowerPoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change and is differentiated.
I have also included suggested teaching strategies to deliver the lesson.
Cold War
The aim of this lesson is to analyse the causes and consequences of the Cuban Missile Crisis , its significance and its effect on future relations between the USA and USSR during the Cold War.
In an anger management task, students link various emotions to emojis as they learn why tensions (and therefore anger) between the USA and Cuba escalated following the coming to power of Fidel Castro and his subsequent alliance to the USSR.
In a text mapping exercise they analyse how Castro defied the West by organising the placement of nuclear missiles on Cuba and how Kennedy reacted to this report and the stark choices he faced, urged on by the Hawkes and Doves in his assembled special committee, Excomm.
Furthermore students undertake an interactive quiz which is designed to be engaging and challenging as they have to make 13 decisions in the 13 days of the crisis.
The plenary is an interactive blockbusters and there are links to video evidence as well a recall, retention and retrieval task.
The central enquiry of this and subsequent lessons is to ask why did civilians fear for their lives during the Cold War? Students will map out their ideas each lesson (which can be plotted in different colours or dates to show the progress of their learning and centred around the key question) and build up a picture of how these and different countries in the world responded and acted in this new nuclear age.
The resource comes in Powerpoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change and is differentiated.
I have also included suggested teaching strategies to deliver the lesson.
Cold War
The aims of this lesson are to explain what the Cold War was in post war Europe and how it developed between the two existing Superpowers in 1945.
The USA and the USSR had different ideologies and students will learn the differences between Capitalism and Communism.
Furthermore, despite cordial relations at the three meetings held before the end of the war at Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam, suspicions were soon aroused.
Students will analyse the preceding decisions made about the divisions of Germany and Berlin and make informed judgements as to why these suspicions developed.
The central enquiry of this and subsequent lessons is to ask why did civilians fear for their lives? Students will map out their ideas each lesson (which can be plotted in different colours or dates to show the progress of their learning and centred around a lightbulb) and build up a picture of how these and different countries in the world responded and acted in this new nuclear age.
The resource comes in PowerPoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change and is differentiated.
I have also included suggested teaching strategies to deliver the lesson.
The Cold War
The aim of this lesson is to explore the winds of change within the USSR during the Cold War as Perestroika and Glasnost are introduced with the appointment of Gorbachev as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
But despite all the achievements he made, was it all in vain and just how successful was he with the Soviet Union in his short six years in office?
Students are required to emoji rate the problems facing Gorbachev in 1985 and then justify the most serious one using a pressure gauge.
Furthermore they have to evaluate how successful his policies were and how they were received in the west as compared to back home.
A thinking quilt at the end challenges their thinking as they have to group all they have learnt into categories and then explain the significance of each fact.
The central enquiry of this and subsequent lessons is to ask why did civilians fear for their lives during the Cold War? Students will map out their ideas each lesson (which can be plotted in different colours or dates to show the progress of their learning and centred around the key question) and build up a picture of how these and different countries in the world responded and acted in this new nuclear age.
The resource comes in PowerPoint formats if there is a wish to adapt and change and is differentiated.
I have also included suggested teaching strategies to deliver the lesson.
The English Civil War
The aim of this lesson is for the students to decide whether Charles I was guilty or not guilty at his own trial of ‘subverting the fundamental laws and liberties of the nation and with maliciously making war on the parliament and people of England.’
The lesson starts by questioning the types of hat the judge should wear followed by a series of biased images depicting Charles at his trial, of which students have to analyse and explain why.
Students then examine and evaluate information about Charles’s actions to come up with a guilty or not guilty verdict. If found guilty then they will have to sign his death warrant!
There is some sentence scaffolding and argument words provided if help is required.
The lesson is enquiry based with a key question using a lightbulb posed at the start of the lesson and revisited throughout to show the progress of learning.
The resource includes retrieval practice, suggested teaching strategies and differentiated materials, and comes in PowerPoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change.
This lesson sets out to explains how Hitler set Germany on the road to the Second World War in 5 steps.
Students are challenged to find out how and why was he able to defy the Treaty of Versailles so easily with little or no consequences (shown through a causal spider’s web).
Students analyse video footage and a number of sources, using the COP technique (modelled for student understanding) which has proved invaluable for evaluating sources at GCSE.
A final chronological recap of the events and evaluation of the most and least important of the events that led to war, will give students an in depth understanding of why World War II started.
This lesson is ideal as preparation for GCSE if you are embedding source skills or teaching the interwar years or WWII at Key stage 4.
It is enquiry based with a key question using a lightbulb posed at the start of the lesson and revisited throughout to show the progress of learning.
The resource includes retrieval practice activities, suggested teaching strategies and differentiated materials and comes in PowerPoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change.
These nine lessons are designed to cover Britain’s transatlantic slave trade: its effects and its eventual abolition.
This bundle addresses key historical skills: How did slavery show change and continuity throughout its history? What were the causes and consequences of the triangle trade on slavery? What were the similarities and differences in the actions of the slave owners? What was significant about the work of William Wilberforce or the help given by Harriet Tubman to the underground railway?
These skills are addressed in each of the lessons and allow students to be able to make connections, draw contrasts, analyse trends and be able to create their own structured accounts and written narratives.
All the lessons come with retrieval practice activities and suggested teaching and learning strategies, They come in PowerPoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change
The lessons are also differentiated and link to the latest interpretations of slavery from the BBC and other sources.
The lessons are as follows:
L1 The origins of Slavery
L2 The triangular trade
L3 The Middle Passage
L4 The Slave Auction
L5 The Slave Plantations
L6 Punishments and Resistance
L7 William Wilberforce and the Abolition of Slavery
L8 Underground Railroad
L9 Black people in the American Civil War
If you like this resource, please review it and choose any of my resources worth up to £3 for free.
This resource (in booklet form) sets out the Edexcel GCSE 9-1 Modern Depth Study, Weimar and Nazi Germany 1918-1939 in two sides of A4.
This is ideal for the student who wants a quick recap before the exam as it includes all the main details in bullet form.
It is also great for quickly printing and giving out for revision lessons, especially when the students claim they cannot remember anything they have been taught!
This resource can be also used for homework and interleaving or for quickly recapping topics.
This resource can also be easily emailed to parents to help students with their revision studies at home or put on the school’s digital platform.
I have included both PDF and Word formats if there is a need to change or adapt.
Cold War
The aim of this lesson is to explain how Germany was divided post 1945, as agreed at the Potsdam Conference and analyse the subsequent Berlin blockade and airlift which followed.
Students learn the intentions of both the USA and USSR and how this played out in the Cold War theatre of Europe.
This is a great opportunity for students to be creative as they plot the preceding events on an airport landing strip, using symbols and signs found in every international airport.
They will track the obstacles thrown up by Stalin and the immediate problems this caused in Berlin as he attempted to prevent any further western moves in Germany and with his aim of starving the West Berliners into submission.
Therefore this is intended to be a fun, challenging and engaging lesson to suit all abilities.
The central enquiry of this and subsequent lessons is to ask why did civilians fear for their lives? Students will map out their ideas each lesson (which can be plotted in different colours or dates to show the progress of their learning and centred around the key question) and build up a picture of how these and different countries in the world responded and acted in this new nuclear age.
The resource comes in PowerPoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change and is differentiated.
I have also included suggested teaching strategies to deliver the lesson.
Cold War
The aim of this extended lesson on the Vietnam War is to analyse its significance in the Cold War; from its dubious beginnings and inception to the types of weapons used, the war crimes which followed and the ensuing lack of support at home as well as the consequences for the civilian population of Vietnam.
So why did America fail to win this war despite overwhelming manpower, control of the air and sea and the most modern military weapons available at the time?
As a starting point, students focus on Paul Hardcastle’s 19 song and his reasons for writing it and analyse the photograph of Kim Phúc before examining the details surrounding the Gulf of Tonkin resolution.
They are given a number of differentiated tasks to analyse both American and Vietcong tactics to win the war (using printable worksheets) and the horrors surrounding search and destroy and the My Lai massacre, the tunnelling system as well as the use of napalm and agent orange.
At the end they will prioritise the reasons for Vietcong success and American failure and how this war played its key part in the Cold War.
The central enquiry of this and subsequent lessons is to ask why did civilians fear for their lives during the Cold War? Students will map out their ideas each lesson (which can be plotted in different colours or dates to show the progress of their learning and centred around the key question) and build up a picture of how these and different countries in the world responded and acted in this new nuclear age.
The resource comes in PowerPoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change and is differentiated.
I have also included suggested teaching strategies to deliver the lesson.
Cold War
The aim of this lesson is to analyse the Korea War between 1950-53 and understand the threat North Korea poses to the world today, with its insistence on spending millions on producing nuclear weapons despite catastrophic failures of industry and the famine of the 1990’s.
Students learn about present day Korea using a brilliant video link, and annotate key facts around a map.
They analyse key information about the Korean War in the 1950s and how this produced an armistice in 1953 during the Cold War, which is still in force today.
Students have to complete a variety of differentiated tasks which focus on the causes and consequences of the war and evaluate the reasons for the subsequent stalemate.
The central enquiry of this and subsequent lessons is to ask why did civilians fear for their lives during the Cold War? Students will map out their ideas each lesson (which can be plotted in different colours or dates to show the progress of their learning and centred around the key question) and build up a picture of how these and different countries in the world responded and acted in this new nuclear age.
The resource comes in PowerPoint formats if there is a wish to adapt and change and is differentiated.
I have also included suggested teaching strategies to deliver the lesson.
Cold War
The aim of this lesson is to explore the moon landings during the Cold War and the subsequent conspiracy theories which suggest it was faked and not real at all.
Students have to decide why it was so important for the USA to be the first to put a man on the moon and prioritise their reasoning using their knowledge of the Cold War.
They analyse footage from the time and are introduced to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to emphasise this audacious achievement in 1969.
However they also analyse sources from the time and different interpretations making their own sustained judgements as to whether the moon landings were fake or fiction.
They finish with writing an extended piece on the evidence they have selected and are given some argument words to help if required.
The plenary required them to judge if further facts are fake or authentic news.
The central enquiry of this and subsequent lessons is to ask why did civilians fear for their lives during the Cold War? Students will map out their ideas each lesson (which can be plotted in different colours or dates to show the progress of their learning and centred around the key question) and build up a picture of how these and different countries in the world responded and acted in this new nuclear age.
The resource comes in Powerpoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change and is differentiated.
I have also included suggested teaching strategies to deliver the lesson.
Edexcel GCSE 9-1 Medicine Through Time c.1250 to present.
This 42 page revision guide is broken down into 5 main sections: Medieval Medicine, Renaissance Medicine, Medicine in 18th and 19th Century, Modern Medicine and the Historic Environment, British sector of the Western Front .
This revision guide includes 29 GCSE practice exam questions throughout on the main questions and gives examples on how to answer each using model answers.
This will enable all learners to achieve the higher grades required by the exam board, including the skills of description, explanation, interpretation, change and continuity, source utility and cause and consequence.
The information is also broken down into an easy to use format to aid the students in their revision programme.
This Guide has been designed to be engaging, detailed and easy to follow and comes in Word and PDF format if there is a wish to change.
It can be used for revision, interleaving, home learning as well as class teaching.
Any reviews on this resource would be much appreciated.
Please email me for a free copy of any of my resources worth up to £3.50 if you do.
This lesson aims to find out the real reason for the sinking of Henry’s flagship, the Mary Rose.
The lesson starts with Henry crying (literally) and students have to decode a message to find out why.
Students are then given four options as to why the Mary Rose sank, from which they give their initial opinions.
Further analysis of video footage and written evidence will allow them to form their own judgements to be able to complete an extended writing task.
This lesson uses Henry as a talking head, discussing how it was impossible to sink it in the first place, due to his genius and finally responding to the students’ evidence in a witty plenary.
This lesson is engaging and fun and gives a different perspective of looking at Tudor seafaring and what was aboard the ships of the time.
The lesson is enquiry based with a key question using a lightbulb posed at the start of the lesson and revisited to show the progress of learning.
The resource includes suggested teaching strategies, retrieval practice, differentiated materials and comes in PowerPoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change.
The aim of the lesson is to understand how WIlliam the Conqueror asserted his control over the population using the feudal system.
Students get to know how the feudal system works by interacting with each other in an interactive Norman style ‘party’.
They each have a card to read which tells them their status and their oath to William. However they will have to decide and justify if they are happy with their status or not.
This lesson is designed to be fun, with students required to interact with each other and show their status by using the tables and chairs in the room.
The lesson uses video footage and music to engage and connect the learning.
Further learning tasks include creating a feudal system diagram using differentiated prompts, as well as explaining how it worked and analysing how pleasant it was to be a peasant under this system.
The lesson is enquiry based with a key question using a lightbulb posed at the start of the lesson and revisited at the end using a rate ‘o’ meter to show the progress of learning.
The resource is differentiated and gives suggested teaching strategies.
It comes in PowerPoint format which can be amended and changed to suit.
This lesson explores the role of monks and nuns in Medieval society and Norman England and questions their importance.
Students learn how people joined the monastic community and how they helped the local community.
Students also analyse their dress code and the reasons behind it, before engaging in literacy tasks such as linking their daily life to particularly headings and writing a narrative account.
There are accompanying worksheets and video links to reinforce the learning.
The plenary of ‘find and fix’ challenges the students to rewrite and correct a number of statements made.
The lesson is enquiry based with a key question using a lightbulb posed at the start of the lesson and revisited at the end using a rate ‘o’ meter to show the progress of learning.
The resource is differentiated and gives suggested teaching strategies.
It comes in PowerPoint format which can be amended and changed to suit.
