What was life like in the reign of Alexander III?

This lesson explores how reactionary Alexander III was. Lesson objectives are differentiated and very clear and there is an interesting starter activity (about the ‘hippo’ statue of Alexander in St. Petersburg). The 52 page PPT proceeds to discuss the various changes Alexander made to Russia (economy, society, politics and opposition, Russification) and the class then have a two part main task. One is to create a speech as a particular character, and the second is to plot this on a graph to show which groups were repressed, like Jews, Poles, Zemstvos etc and which were doing well like the black clergy and Pobodonostev etc. The lesson concludes with a plenary in the form of ‘Have I Got News For You’ where students test their knowledge retrieval of what they have learned.

The lesson also comes with a set of ready-made student notes.

I hope you enjoy this lesson as much as my students do. It has been designed for high achieving post-16 students and is written in English, not US- English.

Please let me know if you have any questions and thanks so much for your interest in this lesson.

Have a great day fellow teachers!! Daniel