Students learn a huge amount of content in this lesson but do so in an engaging manner. The lesson begins with the starter activity in which students are invited to create a VENN diagram to compare two characters - one from the Golden Years and one from Nazi Germany. This introduces the idea of social change and economic recovery between 1923-29 and the class then work through a detailed set of notes in order to gain subject knowledge. The main task is a Tarsia shape card sort activity and students complete the lesson by playing a game of Guess Who to introduce key characters. Please note (prior to purchase) you will need your own board for this plenary activity to work best and you should allow students to use the Internet to research as they play. I hope your students get as much out of this lesson as mine do.

In this lesson students explore the Key Question ‘How successful was the League of Nations in the 1930s?’ They begin by acting out cards which they will have covered in the 1920s as a game of charades. The class then work through a set of detailed notes before playing a game of snakes and ladders bingo. It needs to be printed in colour and laminated but these work great with students and as an activity the league’s successes (ladders) and faults (snakes) become very clear. The lesson concludes with an angram plenary to test student comprehension of key terms. I hope your students enjoy this lesson as much as mine do.

My students always find Dingbats a really engaging starter and one which sets a nice tone for the lesson. The class then work through a set of detailed notes which are high on precision before consolidating their learning by selecting two reasons for and two reasons against the policy and using this information to complete the newspaper template. I hope your students enjoy this lesson as much as mine do.

This lesson will introduce your students to Weimar Germany fantastically well. Students complete a maths challenge in the starter PPT to introduce them to some of the financial difficulties Germany was facing. After this the class work through a set of exceptionally detailed notes before completing a funneling activity designed to help them discriminate between evidence to form a judgement to help them answer the Key Question. The lesson concludes with a class vote PPT plenary. I hope your students get as much out of this lesson as much as mine do.

Great activity for revision. There are two different question cards and the battleships are all named after significant ships (eg Hitler’s personal yacht, the Grille). Students take it in turns to guess a square and if they answer the quesiton correctly they are awarded a hit or miss. Needs to be printed back to back. I hope your students enjoy this as much as mine do.

In this lesson students explore the reasons the victors left Versailles feeling that they did not get everything they wanted. To introduce the topic the class work through a series of map-based questions before proceeding to dig into detailed notes. The class then complete a 24 piece hexagonal card sort to answer the Key Question. This lesson finishes with a fun Who Wants to be a Millionaire Plenary designed to test student understanding. I hope your students enjoy it as much as mine do.

In this lesson students begin with a charades starter to test knowledge from prior learning. They then work their way through a detailed set of notes before completing a card sort activity in which they decide if evidence suggests the war was the fault of Iraq, Iran, or the USA. Students complete the lesson with an exit plenary activity. I hope your students get as much out of this lesson as much as mine do.

This 34-page pack is the incredibly detailed and complete set of notes I have written for my students. It is basically an entire course on Why do events in the Gulf Matter? in one pack! Suitable for 16+ including GCSE, AP, A Level, and IB students. Notes are broken down into the following sections: How did Saddam Hussein rise to power in Iraq? What was the nature of Saddam Hussein’s rule in Iraq? Why was there a revolution in Iran in 1979? What were the causes of the Iran-Iraq War, 1980-88? What were the consequences of the Iran-Iraq War, 1980-88? Why did the First Gulf War take place? I am confident you will love this resource because there is nothing on the Internet which I have found which offers the same level of breadth and detail on this topic.

This is a very clear and structured approach to ensuring student success in the History IA. The PPT talks students through how to tackle each section of the IA and rubric breaks it down so they know what to aim for in each section. I hope your students find these items as useful as mine.

The lesson begins with a game of Bingo to see how much they already know (there are 30 different cards and a list of 61 key questions to read out with answers such as Article 231, Woodrow Wilson, 100,000 etc). The winner is the first to get a line crossed off and to shout out Bingo. A second starter activity then leads to students address the views of Harold Nicolson who said the treaty was “neither just nor wise” with historian Alan Clark who argues that this view “needs to be abandoned.” Lesson aims and objectives are introduced and these are graduated (all will/most will/some will). Students then proceed to work through a very detailed set of slides (teacher talk) which is broken into for and against arguments. Arguments that it was justified include the Kaiser’s September programme, the harshness with which Germany had treated Russia at Brest-Litovsk, and the need to crush German militarism after the invasions of France in 1870 and 1914. Arguments given that the Treaty was not justified include how it created the stab in the back theory, German expectations based on Wilsonianism and the 14 Points, the argument that Germany might not be solely responsible for the First World War, and of course the economic and political instability it caused in Germany. Students then complete a 14-piece card sort activity (there is a colour-coordinated version for purposes of differentiation if required) and they then fill in and glue on the explanation cards. The lesson concludes with a Blockbusters game plenary. Students choose an acronym and the teacher reads out the clue. If they get it right they continue. The winner is the person who makes a continuous line from top to bottom or from left to right. The final plenary asks students to revisit the debate between Nicolson and Clark and to vote with their feet.

In this lesson students begin by identifying what’s behind the squares in the starter activity which leads to source analysis which is designed to introduce the Key Question - What were the motives of the Big Three at Versailles? The class then explore a detailed set of notes before being issued a character card. The class then hotseat in role using the masks provided before concluding with a ‘Have I got News for You?’ style plenary in which they have to fill in the gaps to show comprehension. I hope your students gain as much from this lesson as mine do.

This is one of the most controversial lessons on the curriculum and it always produces excellent and thought provoking history for able secondary students. Students work through detailed information on the bombing of Germany before being drip-fed 41 pieces of precise historical information. They have to compile these in groups into evidence which suggests it was morally right to bomb Germany (it took anti aircraft guns away from the Eastern Front for example) and evidence which suggests it was morally wrong (even Churchill by March 1945 felt the bombing should be reduced). This in turn leads to great student debate. I really hope your classes get as much from this very stimulating lesson as mine do.

I designed this lesson when I taught History in Shanghai and so have used that city as a case study but it works really well in a unit on C21st China. In this lesson students complete an odd one out activity designed to hook them into the topic. They then work through detailed background notes and sources before attempting to complete a range of questions. The lesson concludes with a fun formative assessment task (‘Last Historian Standing’) to test them on the subject knowledge they will have acquired during this lesson. I hope you students get just as much from this lesson as mine do.

In this lesson students piece together a linear card sort as a starter activity to understand how US troops ended up fighting in Vietnam. Once this has been achieved the class work through very detailed notes on the nature of fighting on both sides before beginning a model making task to explain US/VC tactics (the model can be a built model, a written model, a picture model or a computer generated model). The lesson concludes with a Dingbats plenary on some of the key terms covered in the lesson (punji trap, domino theory, guerilla tactics). I hope your students enjoy this lesson as much as mine do.

My students love this lesson. I created it for a local history unit when I worked in Shanghai but now use it as part of my unit on C20th China. The class begin with an odd one out activity designed to get them thinking about the period. They then work through a detailed set of notes before being divided up into high society and seedy underbelly. Students create a collage of their aspect of society using the card sort and take part in a freeze frame activity. The lesson concludes with a fun game of Dingbats to test subject knowledge.

In this lesson students begin by working through the set of background notes before completing a large diamond 9 activity as a group task. They then fill in their pyramid activity collectively before making recipe equations. I hope your students get as much from this lesson as mine always do.

My students loved taking part in these STEAM activities which have been designed for Key Stage 2 students. The activities are in Power Point form and instructions are given step by step so the class teacher and students can successfully recreate five different inventions (I have also listed a ‘what you will need’ slide for each activity). I have also put a link in to an example of each activity (You Tube) to show students how the finished activities should look). You can click the links to see what each STEAM activity looks like on completion. Sebastian Lenormand’s parachute (made out of black bin liner) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGobZeXR5OE&list=PLgzcyyWkDljnR_SCk9QRVfPwokv9o8T0a&index=7&t=0s Lawrence de Mole’s tank (with working rubber bank gun!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJl6-KUKPvc&list=PLgzcyyWkDljnR_SCk9QRVfPwokv9o8T0a&index=24&t=0s Henry Ford’s Model T motor vehicle (propelled by balloon power!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4WMD1fjeDY&list=PLgzcyyWkDljnR_SCk9QRVfPwokv9o8T0a&index=25&t=0s Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s bridges (made from uncooked spaghetti) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baGpVKMGQy4&list=PLgzcyyWkDljnR_SCk9QRVfPwokv9o8T0a&index=22&t=0s And Robert Goddard’s rocket https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpLAOjZA0zw&list=PLgzcyyWkDljnR_SCk9QRVfPwokv9o8T0a&index=9&t=0s All of the activities are fun for students and designed to generate thinking about how significant these inventions are and how they work. Each activity works towards a collaborative element where students test their inventions or participate in a race or game. I really enjoyed creating this series of STEAM lessons and my students loved them more than any other classes that year. I hope you find them helpful with your students too. These lessons are naturally a bit messy but bring out the very best in students and help them develop a love and appreciation of the past.

Ideal for an end of unit fun quiz on the USA in the roaring Twenties and thirsty Thirties … Seventy eight slides with fourteen categories and a whole range of activities to help students think about the key areas in this period. Tasks include anagrams, photo fit faces, chronology activities, dingbats and lots more. You might wish to allow students to use phones or devices to help them throughout the quiz or you may wish them to attempt it without them. I hope your students find this as fun and useful a revision activity as mine do.

I designed this lesson for my IB students and it is pitched at more able students. The lesson begins with a simple starter activity to introduce them to the topic. The hook here is the Socialist Fraternal Embrace and it leads to a discussion of the symbolism of the Breznev-Honeker kiss on the Berlin Wall. From here students read the introductory notes before working through a highly detailed card sort. The cards are coloured to guide those who need it (lighter and darker tones portray positive and negative aspects of life in Brezhnev’s USSR whilst the colours themselves represent factors - domestic, foreign, economic etc). Students then use this information to model a spoken or written responses to the Key Question. The plenary is a fun dingbats powerpoint in which students have to shout out one of the key words or events covered in this lesson and explain its significance. I created this last week and used it with my students for the first time and they really understood the period in so doing whilst showcasing a range of higher order Historical skills. I hope your students can benefit from it also.