League of Nations: Causes of the Abyssinian Crisis 1935.

The focus of this lesson is to build upon the failures of the LON and in the 1930s fits into the bigger picture of ‘To What Extent Was The League of Nations a Success’? The lesson’s purpose is to introduce the reasons behind Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia through a series of student led and source evaluation (less teacher talk) tasks.

**Hook: **students are handed hook sheet as they enter to instantly complete focusing around recalling 5 key facts about the impact of the Manchurian crisis. Teacher introduces the lessons intention.

**Starter: ** After watching an introduction video about the causes and reasons behind the invasion (summary video) (embedded into the PP)

Main task 1: Students are tasked with completing their own card sort sheet of reasons all of which can be found in the introduction video. Teach than takes feedback and challenged students to think of the bigger picture and add their own reasons (re-calling previous learning) Students can then be challenged to form a judgment on the most significant reason Italy wished to invade.

Main Task 2: Students are to think-pair-share the options open to the L.O.N as a result of Italy’s reasons to invade. There are to be recorded on A1 sheets of paper around the room – students are to circulate the room adding their opinion to each option in regards to:

How it would have stopped Mussolini and why it was not done

Teacher then draws this all together to form a judgment on why the League did not try and stop Mussolini.
Plenary: are supplied with a key source from one of Mussolini’s speeches the day before invasion and are challenged to summarize his reasons for invasion in as little words as possible (reward / prize for students who condenses the most but still gets the meaning across).

**All videos embedded / descriptions and prompts included in the PP description. **