My students love using these as a revision tool and also as an in class activity. Each of the twenty three hand-shaped cards has a key topic about the Cold War on it and each finger has a name/date/quote/statistic/fact on. Students learn precise supporting material which really boosts examination success. These aides can be reversed so students can test each other by reading the answers first and guessing the topic also. Once cut out and laminated they make a very handy and mobile revision aide and knowledge on them is extremely precise and exact.

One of the main reasons for exam success is the detailed and focused set of revision menus I give to my students to help them prepare for exam success. Of all of my resources these revision menus are my must-haves! I hope they can be of much use to your students as they are to mine. If you enjoyed this resource please leaf through my collection of other revision menus and resources. This pack focuses on the Cold War, includes space for student notes, and includes revision content for the following topics: Why did the USA-USSR alliance breakdown? How had USSR gained control of Eastern Europe? How did the USA react to Soviet expansionism? What were the consequences of the Berlin Blockade? Who was more to blame for starting the Cold War: the USA or the USSR? America and events in Korea America and events in Cuba American involvement in Vietnam Why was there opposition to Soviet control in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and how did the USSR react to this opposition? How similar were events in Hungary and in Czechoslovakia ? Why was the Berlin Wall built in ? What was the significance of Solidarity in Poland for the decline of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe? How far was Gorbachev personally responsible for the collapse of Soviet control over Eastern Europe?

Last year I achieved 94% A*-A in my IGCSE exam results. The year before it was 88%, making the History Department consistently high achieving and one which students want to sign up for. One of the main reasons for this is the detailed and focused set of revision menus I give to my students to help them prepare for exam success. Now you can have them too. Of all of my resources these revision menus are my must-haves! I hope they can be of much use to your students as they are to mine. If you enjoyed this resource please leaf through my collection of other revision menus and resources. This pack focuses on Twentieth Century China, includes space for student notes, and includes revision content for the following topics: China 1911-34 The triumph of Mao and the CCP, 1934-49 Change under Mao, 1949-63 The impact of the Cultural Revolution China, 1969-89

In this lesson the class begin by playing a game where they are given a series of statements and need to vote with their feet to decide if they are true or false. Once incorrect they return to their seats and the winner is crowned as the last person standing. (This starter is based on the Great Helmsman goes swimming in order to introduce concepts of power and virility in Maoist China.). The class then work through detailed notes about different groups in society and are given a movie making activity. The lessons concludes with a great plenary PPT in which students are given a series of caption competitions and need to try to use some of the knowledge they have accrued thus far. There are examples given. My students love this topic and I planned these resources during my time teaching in Shanghai so they really mean a lot to me and my students. I hope you can get just as much use from them.

This lesson will really get your students actively engaged. They begin by figuring out the anagrams of key terms and phrases from the course before working through a detailed set of notes on how China changed after the 1911 Revolution. From here students proceed to complete a 15 piece card sort, arranging them into social, political and economic impacts of Warlordism. Students then complete the lesson with a fun activity (Dingbats) designed to test how well they have understood the key vocabulary and events from the lesson. This lesson was one I created and planned while teaching in China so I really invest as much precision in the historical detail as possible. I hope your students enjoy it as much as mine.

My students love this activity. 160+ questions based on the following categories: USA & her allies Soviet leaders The People Wars Words & Phrases Statistics It takes a little while to cut out the cards and the board and works best once laminated but your students will love this revision activity. The questions are designed to boost subject knowledge and focus on precise historical detail which in turn helps student examination performance. I hope your classes enjoy this activity as much as my IGCSE and IB classes always do! You can watch a game in action with this URL here - https://youtu.be/i8TtkQZs3cU

A 22-page pack of over 100 great ideas for the History teacher looking to improve his or her pedagogy. I use this within my team to shake up our teaching and revitalize old schemes of work. All of the activities are easy to implement and very transferable across topics. The pack can also be used as a great CPD tool for staff training. I’ve compiled these ideas over a 20 year teaching career and am very proud to share them with other education professionals. Daniel Guiney

In this lesson students work through a comprehensive set of notes before attempting a Tarsia card sort activity to consolidate knowledge acquired. The lesson concludes with a game of Nazism Guess Who whereby students ask only questions which require a yes/no response (they can use the internet to help respond). Please note prior to purchase this game works best if you already have a board upon which you can stick the pictures! I hope your students find this lesson on Widerstand as useful as mine always do.

This is a one-page Power point slide (editable) which can be set as a project-based assessment on the significance of Ancient Chinese inventions. Students are given clear criteria (beginning, developing, expected, and mastery) and a set task with a list of key words which can help them. The slide also has a section to show students how long they have to work on this assessed piece of work. Please note: this assessment task can very easily be edited for any assessed piece of work focusing on the second order concept of significance. Thanks for your interest in this and I hope it helps you ! Best wishes, Daniel

This is a fully-resourced lesson which will help your class understand the reasons the Bolsheviks came to power. Please note though that this lesson does not cover the weaknesses of the Provisional Government (that is done in a previous lesson) but instead focuses solely on the strengths of the Bolsheviks and Lenin. The lesson includes learning objectives which are broken into all of you / some of you / most of you will and begins with a starter activity designed to encourage students to consider a range of different historiographical perspectives on the importance of Lenin and the Bolsheviks (Pipes, Merridale, McMeekin etc). From here the class work through background notes before attempting a Diamond 9 activity where they place different factors into a sequence with the most important at the top and the least important at the bottom. After this students are prepared to complete an assessed piece of written work and a detailed and graduated rubric is provided for this based on the second order concept of interpretation. The lesson concludes with a plenary where students are asked to vote on which side of the historiographical debate they side with. I hope your students get as much out of this lesson as mine do and please do let me know if you have any questions. This lesson is pitched towards high-achieving secondary aged students.

Please note: To use this lesson you need to have a copy of the 1998 animated Disney movie Mulan. This is a great lesson in which students are given graduated learning objectives (some of you will / most of you will / and all of you will) in order to help them answer the essential question 'what can we learn about Ancient China from the Disney movie Mulan?". The lesson begins with a starter activity to engage your students in which they are invited to guess the odd one out from a group of Disney characters (the answer is Mulan - because she has killed whereas the others, Bambi’s mother et al, had been killed. This leads them into the lesson nicely and the idea that the ballad of Hua Mulan is no ordinary ‘Disney Princess.’ The class then work through 45 different evidence cards and arrange these into things they can learn from the movie (ie accurate things like the use of rickshaws and only the Emperor being allowed to wear yellow etc) as well as movie mistakes and things which are inaccurate (such as Mulan being allowed to hug the Emperor and the way she inserts her chopsticks vertically into her rice etc). There are two versions of this card sort, one for students who like a challenge and a differentiated version for students who need a more straightforward task. Students can also divide them using the labels given (info relating to women, family, rule and government, culture, society, military etc. Students then watch the movie and tick off those they spot (a nice end of term type activity - but not simply ‘watching a movie for the sake of it’!). From this the class then complete a movie review exercise using the template given before attempting a plenary in which they vote with their feet to establish how many stars (1-5) they would rate the movie for historical authenticity (ie they now answer the essential question). I have also included a final slide which is an assessment rubric should you wish to turn this series of lessons into a formal testing point. I teach this to high achieving high school students as part of a scheme of learning about Ancient China and I hope your students get as much out of it as mine always do. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to ask and thanks again for your interest in this lesson, which is in PPT form but which does need the buyer to have purchased a copy of the 1998 animated movie (not the 2020 version.)

This lesson begins with an ‘Odd One Out’ starter activity where students are asked to look at four people (Honecker, Emperor Qin, Emperor Hadrian, and Donald Trump) and to offer reasons for one of them being the odd one out. The answer we are looking for is that they all built walls bar Trump whose proposed southern wall was never built. That introduces the concept of walls and their purpose. The class then take part in an escape room activity. (Please note this takes a bit of setting up to be done properly, but can be done more simply if missions and codes are just printed back to back - just tell students they can’t turn over the page until you have verified they have got the code correct). Nevertheless, if you can it is a whole lot more enjoyable with boxes and padlocks! There are six missions - each with background information about key turning points in the Wall’s History (from the end of WWII and the split through to the Berlin Blockade through to the border being closed through to barbed wire Sunday through to the Next Gen Wall through to Escape attempts). Each mission is then completed on the worksheet. Please note I do not cover the collapse of Communism or the fall of the wall here (because I cover that in a separate lesson). The lesson concludes with a ‘play your cards right’ chronology activity in which the students use the knowledge they have gained to test their awareness of key events and dates. The lesson comes with an accompanying 11-page set of notes. I hope your students get as much out of this fun lesson as mine always do and please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

This lesson begins with an introduction to some perspectives about Gorbachev and then the class are invited to take part in a ‘what would you do?’ starter activity. They are given 12 scenarios (ranging from the war in Afghanistan through to economic stagnation through to Chernobyl and so on) and have to decide on one of three possible options. When they have completed all twelve issues/scenarios they are given a score for each answer which explains what kind of a leader they are. After this the class move on to the meat of the lesson which is a forty-eight piece card sort (including some images). The class need the information into those relating to foreign policy, perestroika (political and economic), glasnost, foreign policy, and nationalities issues. They glue these to a large piece of paper and label on successes/failures and causes/consequences. There are two versions of this card sort included so as to differentiate (one is colour coded already and has some key prompts emboldened). Once complete it leads to a good discussion of why Gorbachev acted the way he did and what the impact of his policies was. The lesson concludes by referring back to earlier perspectives and applying the knowledge acquired to see if the class agree or disagree with these before reviewing Gorbachev’s own conclusions on his rule. I have pitched this lesson towards high achieving post-16 students. Please let me know if you have any questions and I hope your students gain as much from this lesson as mine do.

In this very detailed lesson students received clear aims and objectives (all will, most will, and some will) before being given a source starter activity which they are asked to break down using the frame provided. This introduces the idea of growing Japanese strength (its about the Russo-Japanese War). The class are then given activation material in the form of extremely detailed notes. The consolidation phase then asks IB students to sort a 25 piece hexagonal card sort into factors - domestic, economic, militaristic, and nationalistic. The lesson concludes with a chronology activity to test student knowledge acquired in a fun way. I have also made a revision video which is included as homework. I hope your IB students get as much from this as mine do and that it helps them prepare for this Move to Global War Paper 1 IB topic.

This book features 12 high scoring IB essays for the Paper 3 topic: The USSR and post Soviet Russia 1924-2000 Teachers – this book is for you if you have high-performing students asking what a good one looks like (WAGOLL). Set an essay and staple the corresponding exemplar to your students’ effort for instant assessment for learning. Included are over 70 annotations by an experienced IB examiner offering tips and tricks to improve your students’ Paper 3 technique. Don’t just tell them what to do, show them. Students - this book features high-performance essays for popular IB examination questions from real past papers. It will teach you how to unpack popular Paper 3 IB questions and to write an introduction with a thesis statement which pivots your response perfectly, using the DCO technique. It will also give you ways in which to evaluate historians’ perspectives as well as schools of thought and teach you how to forensically dissect historical evidence. It will also introduce many of the world’s leading experts to you. You will learn how to effectively embed words such as martinet, kleptocracy, multivalent, panoply, dialectical, polity, nomenklatura, gerontocracy, encomium, casus belli, opprobrium, polemic, and quinquennial to make your essays stand out from the rest. You will also read about how to use topic sentences and how to challenge the very premise of a given question. It will also provide fun and creative ideas for IB projects. If you are a student achieving Level 6 but want to reach for the very top grade in IB History this book is for you. Parents - this book will help you support your child to think critically and to produce deluxe essays. Essays include: Analyse the reasons for Stalin’s emergence as Lenin’s successor by 1929. (May 2012) “Propaganda was not a major factor in Stalin’s maintenance of power between 1929 and 1953.” Discuss. (November 2020) To what extent did the cult of personality contribute to Stalin’s maintenance of power more than terror? (November 2011) “Stalin’s Five-Year Plans and the policy of collectivisation failed to improve the Soviet economy by 1941.” Discuss. (November 2017) What were the consequences of the Second World War for Russia? (May 1994) Analyse the successes and failures of Khrushchev’s domestic policies in the years 1955 to 1964. (November 2012) Evaluate the success of Khrushchev’s foreign policy. (May 2014) Examine the view that Brezhnev’s domestic policies had a very limited impact on the USSR. (November 2015) “Brezhnev’s foreign policy was successful in reducing Cold War tensions.” To what extent do you agree with this statement? (November 2019) Evaluate the impact of Gorbachev’s domestic policies on the USSR. (May 2021) To what extent were Gorbachev’s policies responsible for improved East-West relations between 1985 and 1991? (May 2019) Evaluate the impact of political and economic developments in post Soviet Russia between 1991 and 2000. (November 2020)

My students love playing this to introduce or recap subject knowledge. Simply cut out and laminate the forty-two dominoes and ask students to match the question up with the correct answer. I hope your students enjoy the activity as much as mine do. Works really well as a starter, plenary or stand-alone activity.

This 36-page pack is the incredibly detailed and complete set of notes I have written for my students. It is basically an entire course on Stalin’s Russia in one pack! Suitable for 16+ including GCSE, AP, A Level, and IB students. Notes are broken down into the following sections: How did Stalin come to power by 1928? How successful were Stalin’s economic policies? How did Stalin control the Soviet Union through purges? How did Stalin control the Soviet Union through the cult of personality? *What was the impact of the Second World War on the Soviet Union? 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. Your students will find the notes supremely useful and they will help them achieve examination success.

This thirty-nine-page pack is the incredibly detailed and complete set of notes I have written for my students. It is basically an entire course on the I.B. Paper 1 Move to Global War in one pack! Notes are broken down into the following sections: How can we explain Japanese expansion in the move to Global War? How did Japan move to Global War? How did Italy fit into inter-war European geopolitics? Why was the international response to the Abyssinian Crisis so weak? How and why did German foreign policy develop? 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. Your students will find the notes supremely useful and they will help them achieve examination success.

I teach this lesson as part of my unit on 1920s USA and it always proves tremendously successful. Students are allocated one of seven detailed character cards - these include Sacco’s Defence Lawyer Fred Moore and the biased Judge Webster Thayer amongst others. From here students familiarise themselves with their character and work through 15 pieces of evidence ranging from ballistics documents to the hat that Sacco was reported to have worn (it did not fit). Once they have considered the evidence students then use the trial reenactment template provided to act out one of the most famous trials of the Twentieth Century. I get my class to shout out “Sono innocente!” upon news of the verdict and it is always a powerful lesson. I hope you enjoy this series of activities as much as my students do.