Card Sort: Why was maintaining law and order in the American West difficult?

This outstanding resource is designed to help students analysing the key reasons why it was difficult to maintain law and order in the American West. It is followed up by a thinking skills review triangle activity to help students decide which factor was the most important. Both activities can be used as a revision exercise, starter or plenary and will work along side any main stream text book or resource on the American West.

The first resource entitled 'Card Sort - Why was law and order a problem in the West?', includes five headings under which the students can sort the rest of the cards. These are political, social, economic, geographical, values and attitudes. The rest of the resource then includes 11 cards which can be matched to the headings.

Once the cards have been sorted, the students should then be able to move onto the review triangle activity. This is best done in pairs or groups, with one person from each group feeding back their results onto the IWB and explaining their choice.

The results from the review triangle and the card sort can then be used, along with any of your other classroom resources, as a basis for students writing an essay or extended piece of writing on this topic.

The aims and objectives for this lesson are:

Theme: The American West
Know: What were the key reasons why maintaining law & order was difficult?
Understand: What roles did social, economic, geographical factors as well as the values and attitudes play of the people at the time, play in making law enforcement difficult?
Evaluate: Which was the most important factor?

WILF - What Am I Looking For? Identify and describe: what were the main reasons why maintaining law and order was difficult?
Explain: What roles did social, economic, geographical, factors as well as the values and attitudes of people at the time, play in making law enforcement difficult?
Analyse: Which was the most important factor?

Kind Regards

Roy