Modern History - Russian Revolution - Sub question development

A lesson designed to teach students about the importance of conducting thorough background research prior to writing their sub questions, valuable online sources they have access to and how to perform a BOOLEAN search. This is followed by advice for forming sub questions (for when they are ready to do that part of their assessment).

It begins with a history skills video about conducting background research and a discussion about the importance of coming up with a system that works for them for organising their research. Afterwards, students are introduced to the State Library of Queensland – a useful resource for inquiry tasks and how they can sign up. Screen shots are provided about how to run a search through their online data base. Students are reminded of the types of sources they should be looking for and how to determine if a source is useful.

The lesson concludes with advice about creating sub questions, a video with examples and an examination of the sub questions in the QCAA example about Mao Zedong. Following this, students have time to begin conducting their background research.