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History
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Early History of Rome: Knowledge Organisers (Dual-Coded)
Attached are Ten separate (dual-coded) knowledge organisers that convey the key information students need to know for the following topics:
Aeneas - The first Roman?
Romulus & Remus
Romulus - 1st King of Rome
Numa Pompilius- 2nd King of Rome
Tullus Hostilius - 3rd King of Rome
Ancus Marcius - 4th King of Rome
Lucius Tarquinius Priscus - 5th King of Rome
Servius Tullius - 6th King of Rome
Tarquinius Superbus - 7th King of Rome
The Wars of Independence
Information on our key sources for this period (Livy & Dionysius of Halicarnassus) is also relayed where relevant.
Each file is portrait-orientated and can be printed off in A4 or A5. They can be used in conjunction with teacher exposition (and can be annotated) or they can be used as a revision aid for the OCR Ancient History 9-1 GCSE ‘Foundations of Rome’ unit.
My students absolutely love them. They streamline the GCSE content and they are presented in a way designed to eliminate ‘noise’. They were painstaking to produce and have proved inavlauble in my teaching of the GCSE :)
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Elizabethan Sailors - AQA GCSE History
This lesson is designed with with AQA 9-1 GCSE History spec in mind.
The lesson takes inspiration from Oli Caviglioli’s methods of Dual Coding to help lessen cognitive load for students while simultaneously ensuring learning sticks. This requires teacher expertise and subject knowledge (all included as hidden slides in case you’re worried!)
The lesson takes you through Sir John Hawkins, his significance and key details. Then Sir Francis Drake, his background, significance of his round the world voyage and other key details. Finally, students are introduced to Sir Walter Raleigh and his significance as an explorer and his direction in the setting up of Roanoke Colony.
Information on the new technologies used by these three men is also included, and there are constant prompts to assess students learning through paired attempts at low-stakes multiple choice questions that appear.
Then two exam questions are included: the first for students to verbally attempt in pairs, followed by an 8 marker for students to complete on their own, with appropriate scaffolding. There is also an information sheet included for each student (with all the basic details for each sailor on to avoid extensive note-taking) which can be printed off in A5, highlighted and annotated appropriately as the lesson progresses.
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Aeneas: Why was he so important to the Romans & their identity?
This lesson seeks to explain, despite the existence of the Romulus and Remus Foundation Myth, that Aeneas remains an important figure for Romans in terms of the founding of their city. (It does also at the end explain how Romans got from Aeneas to Romulus story-wise!)
There are 3 short storyboard tasks, already filled with text (included as slides ready to print within the PowerPoint) which students need only draw quick images for. These are presented at 3 different points in the lesson in order to quickly get across the main parts of Aeneas’ story after his escape from Troy.
I have really only tried to include events which directly pertain to or foreshadow the founding of Rome - it was impossible to include everything!
In between these, scholarship is used in an accessible way (including one comprehension with a glossary for difficult to understand terms) to draw out the importance of Aeneas to the Romans, but also what his actions tell us about how the Romans saw themselves and their new emperor Augustus (Virgil was writing at the time of the new Imperial Age).
This lesson is designed to be engaging and academic in its approach, with appropriate support and challenge throughout to support all learners, but also to ‘teach to the top’ wherever possible.
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Romulus and Tullus Hostlius: How do their kingships compare?
I have created this lesson due to the lack of resources available to secondary teachers above and beyond the standard trope of "Romulus was celebrated because he founded Rome and established the city among its neighbours’ and Tullus Hostilius was a bad king because he focused far too much on war and neglected religion’ This view is expounded by nearly all freely available information on the Roman kings online and in secondary text books.
This has arguably come about because Livy is the ‘go-to’ source for a history of the Roman regal period. This is fine but often other resources take his moral stances and opinions as fact. It is well known in academia (as the lesson points out using scholarship in an accessible way) that Livy uses the first four Roman kings as a vehicle for his messages regarding proper decorum from Rome’s public officials. He claims there are lessons to be learnt from History and shapes his narrative to do this.
This lesson therefore seeks to dig into the similarities between Romulus and Tullus, both war-like and easily compared, and to challenge the notion that Tullus’ kingship should be seen in the negative light in which school-level resources tend to (all too easily) paint him. It introduces the opinions of Dionysius of Halicarnassus and of Cicero in order to draw out the nuance in the ways Romans themselves interpreted Tullus’ reign in light of Romulus’ achievements.
There is suitable challenge in this lesson as you might imagine but I have also been careful to provide plenty of support in the way of glossaries of key terms and key questions teachers should be posing at each point within the lesson.
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The Roman Regal period: How much can we really know?
This lesson has been created with the OCR Ancient History GCSE 9-1 spec in mind, but provides suitable challenge for any A Level students needing to confront the reliability of Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus as historical sources.
The lesson really tries to use scholarship in an accessible way. Summaries of journal articles are given to students initially in bite-sized formats. Students are questioned on these before completing some straightfoward comprehension questions to solidify their learning (on a sheet included as a slide within the .pptx file).
Students are then presented with summarised information sourced from another journal and academic book which looks at Dionysius’ and Livy’s motives for writing and key learning is then available for note-taking.
Students are then given a print out of an empty table where they fill in information about the two authors as the teacher goes through the information on the screen, with students having to guess whether the information belongs in their Livy table or their Dionysius table (teacher led - it’s made obvious on the screen at each point!). Students can then check their tables against a completed one on the screen at the end.
The plenary task asks students to come to a decision on who they believe is the most reliable author when it comes to learning about Rome’s earliest history, given all the limitations, biases and the political context constraining each author.
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Why did Alexander set fire to Persepolis?
This lesson was designed with the OCR Ancient History 9-1 GCSE spec in mind.
The starter of the lesson offers 5 interpretations of Alexander’s motives for invading Persia, and 5 different characters. Students have to match the interpretation to the character. The point of this exercise is for students to realise there are a wealth of interpretations for Alexander’s motives at every stage of his journey.
The focus then turns to our sources. A passage from Plutarch is presented and students are directed to annotate it while discussing it’s implications.
Similarly, A passage from Arrian is then presented where students do the same.
Both passages, when compared to each other, show different motives for Alexander setting fire to Persepolis, based on their own bias/sources/moral point of view.
A discussion of that these implications then ensues, followed by a directed 20 mark exam question complete with sentence starters.
A model conclusion is then included to allow students to a) see before they begin answering to know what direction in which to take their essay, and b) to use to improve their own answers/conclusions in self-assessment.
The final plenary centres around the fact that Diodorus remains mostly silent on what, to the other authors at least, seems a turning point in Alexander’s Persian campaign.
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What Renaissance themes does Kenilworth Castle exemplify?
This lesson aims to comprehensively cover all of the Renaissance influences prevalent throughout the castle buildings and, particularly, the castle gardens.
It would be particularly useful to anyone teaching AQA GCSE History, wehre the 2021 site study is Kenilworth Castle.
The lesson starts by quickly analysing the view of a historian about the balance between the Medieval and Renaissance features of the castle. There is then brief discussion of what the Renaissance actually was (with reference to early (low) and later (high) Renaissance architecture.
There are various examples of Renaissance architecture then presented to students alongside the ancient Classical buildings they were influenced by. This allows students ti visually compare the buildings and see how Classical architectural styles influenced buildings during the Renaissance.
The notes section also provides the key thinking behind each slide if you are unsure of the discussion points pertinent to a particular slide.
Robert Dudley’s Renaissance extension of Kenilworth Castle is then discussed, followed by a discussion on how he was somewhat of a trend-setter, influencing later Renaissance architecture in England (e.g. Hardwick Hall). But also why Dudley, Earl of Leicester, believed them to be important. The imagery surrounding the Roman goddess Diana is also discussed as well as parallels Dudley was perhaps seeking to make between her and Elizabeth.
Finally, there is advice on an exam-style question (16 mark essay question) and students revisit the initial historian’s interpretation to see whether their views have become more nuanced. Key learning is emphasised on slides throughout the lesson to be printed off or just to help anchor the lesson.
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The 'truth' about Alexander: Why is it so difficult to find?
This resource can be used at any point during any sort of study of Alexander the Great. In our school we have designed it to sit at the beginning of our OCR Ancient History 9-1 GCSE unit on Alexander.
One of the biggest issues with studying Alexander (and something crucial to the 20 mark essay question on the GCSE paper!) is our sources for his life and conquests.
This resource tackles the four main problems with our sources. It also encourages students to come to a judgement in the form of an exam question at the end of the lesson as to how much we can ever really know about Alexander.
There are ample notes in the ‘notes’ section on the Powerpoint to support teachers in delivering the lesson accurately and the aim has always been to create an easy-to follow, high quality resource that can be used ‘off the shelf’ and can easily slot in to any scheme of work as a stand-alone lesson.
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Who were the Achaemenid (Persian) Kings?
And how well did each one rule the Persian Empire?
This lesson has been designed as an ‘opening’ or ‘overview’ lesson for OCR Ancient History GCSE students, embarking on their study of the Persian Empire/ Achaemenid kings (Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius and Xerxes).
It has also been used however as a stand alone lesson, for example as a lesson in a thematic unit on different empires throughout history.
The starter introduces students to the geography of the Persian Empire in relation to Europe and the rest of the world - giving students some context.
The main bulk of the lesson is based around an activity involving four A5 cards. Each A5 card has details about each king. Students identify positives and negatives of each king from the cards and then evaluate the relative success of each one in relation to the others. The information cars are included as slides within the PowerPoint, ready to be printed.
Students are then advised how to apply the knowledge they have gained to the June 2019 summer exam essay question through the use of visuals, followed by an effective plenary involving students judging their own progress (with your support) using ‘post-it’ notes.
This lesson is designed to last an hour, unless you elect for students to attempt the exam question, in which case it will run to nearer two.
The resources are very accessible are designed with the research behind ‘dual-coding’ in mind. The resources do not shy away from some ambitious vocabulary though and teachers may find spending some lesson time unpicking some of this vocabulary useful.
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Who was Alexander the Great and was he really that great?
This lesson is aimed at KS3/4 students embarking on a study of Alexander the Great.
It was designed with the OCR Ancient History Spec in mind but can also be used as a stand alone lesson as its aim is to introduce students to the debate surrounding Alexander and his ‘greatness’.
The lesson begins with a quick-fire drawing game based on the Alexander Mosaic from the House of the Faun in Pompeii. Students are then given Mary Beard’s views on Alexander and discuss whether she believes Alexander is ‘great’ etc.
It then moves onto a look at a timeline of his life with students encouraged to identify what might have been they most significant events in his life and why. There is then a task where students have to decide whether key events in his life were either positive or negative and draw conclusions about his greatness from this. They are then encouraged to compare their analysis with Mary Beard’s opinion, followed by Philip Freeman’s.
The final task involves looking at a map of Alexander’s empire at the time of his death and the routes he took. Students then use this to feed into their gradually evolving opinion on Alexander which they can explain at the end and link to the lesson’s success criteria. This lesson should ideally cover around 2 hours, but could be reduced to 1 if necessary.
Reading is included which students do as homework following the lesson with an accompanying short written task.
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How significant and how accurate is Herodotus?
This lesson is designed as a stand alone lesson for students of any age 13+ who studies Herodotus. It acts as a great introduction, covering who he was, what he was writing and why he was writing it.
The lesson begins with a series of images asking students to try and work out what the lesson will be about. In order to demonstrate progress the same images are used at the end in a plenary where students are encouraged to show how each image links to their learning.
The lesson proper begins with a discussion of what ‘accuracy’ means based on students coming up with their own synonyms.
Students are then introduced to who Herodotus was through a handout (included as a slide within the .ppt file) which has a literacy focus and some challenge questions attached.
A short passage from Herodotus’ History is then included with students being encouraged to draw inferences from the passage (with prompt questions down the side to promote discussion). Students then address issues such as ‘how could Herodotus possibly know this happened’? etc.
There is another handout (included as a slide) explaining the degree to which Herodotus is accurate and students plot Herodotus’ accuracy on a target (based on their own opinion, formulated throughout the lesson).
A link to the TEDed video discussing Herodotus is also included with encouragement for students to add to their notes and then finally (before the plenary) there is a task where students have to agree or disagree with a ‘verdict’ given by a Historian on Herodotus’ accuracy/reliability.
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GCSE Cold War Knowledge Organisers (1945 - 72)
Contained within the .ppt file are 19 separate handouts which detail each important event in AQA’s ‘Conflict and Tension 1945-72’ History GCSE unit on the Cold War.
Each handout focuses on causes of the event, the event itself, and its consequences within the context of the Cold War. These can be used as a support in lessons or as a revision aid.
Each sheet also has one or two challenge/thinking questions which encourage students to engage with the information they are reading and form an opinion on the event one way or another, backed up by specific examples.
Handouts are mixture of information and helpful images/sources which can also be used as a basis for discussion. These have proved particularly useful in my lessons when printed a5 size, stuck in the middle of a page in an exercise book and get highlighted and annotated by students as the lesson progresses. Being able to answer the challenge/think questions also gives students an instant sense of achievement.
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What were Cleopatra's personality traits and how was she perceived by her own subjects?
This lesson contains numerous handouts with a literacy focus but also seeking at analysing whenever possible, the accuracy and reliability of the primary sources we have available to us, when discussing Cleopatra’s personality traits; namely her courage, humour and how she was perceived by her own subjects.
The .ppt file contacins all handouts as slides ready to print and clear instructions as to what to do with each handout. Plutarch’s Life of Antony and Horace’s Odes are used to give us an insight into what she was like and the characteristics she needed to exhibit in order to be a successful queen of Egypt. Both of these primary sources are prescribed sources for the new 9-1 OCR Ancient History GCSE.
There is also plenty of discussion included surrounding the accuracy and reliability of both sources and students are challenged at every turn to consider this and back their explanation up with evidence from the text.
The lesson ends with a discussion on how she was perceived by her own subjects and students use the information they have gathered over the course of roughly 2 hours worth of work to create a letter from Cleopatra’s point of view to Antony, discussing proposals to raise taxes on grain. Through outlining her worries and advice she needs from Antony, students can demonstrate the nuances of how she was viewed by different parts of Egypt and the effect of her actions on the wider world i.e. Rome.
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How did Cleopatra expand the Ptolemaic Empire? (+Intro to OCR Ancient History GCSE questions)
The lesson starts with a creative drawing competition starter activity familiarising students with what Alexandria would have looked like. Students are then presented with a timeline of events from Cleopatra’s life and asked to outline the 5 most significant events and explain their reasoning. This allows students with little prior knowledge of Cleopatra understand the significance of her life in a short activity.
The focus of the lesson then moves onto lands she managed to secure from mark Antony and students are encouraged to come up with a memorable acronym to help them remember which lands she gained. Students are then introduced to the Donations of Alexandria and have to analyse its significance in relation to the first lands she managed to secure from Antony.
Students are then given an extract from Plutarch’s ‘Life of Mark Antony’ and given two 5 mark OCR Ancient History GCSE questions to think about. Sentence starters are included to help them structure their work. After they have had a go they can look at the two model answers provided and use these to improve their own.
Students finally are asked in the plenary to consider how she managed to be successful in expanding Egypt’s influence when her predecessors had failed in this regard.
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What do we know about the early life of Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt?
This lesson was designed for GCSE students as an introduction to Cleopatra and the likely features of her early life/ childhood.
The lesson covers both her likely experiences but also the reasons for the lack of evidence available to us when examining her formative years. Scholarship from Weigall and Tydesley is included in various places with students asked to make inferences about her earliest experiences from the text.
Challenge questions are included throughout to encourage deeper thinking and both worksheets are included as slides within the .ppt file in the appropriate places ready to be printed out. All instructions are clear to both students and staff and it is a very straightforward, yet informative, lesson to teach.
A progress check activity in the middle of the lesson is included and the plenary at the end is more creative/cross-curricular in its focus.
There are multiple opportunities throughout for students to consider how her earliest experiences may have shaped her future actions as queen, without necessary prior knowledge of the events of her reign required.
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Who was Cleopatra and how much can we actually know about her?
The lesson begins with students making inferences about Cleopatra based on a single representation of her from Hollywood. This helps us to pick apart the generic view of Cleopatra as a seductress/ tragic queen as the lesson progresses.
There is a wealth of different secondary history within this lesson. It uses excerpts from Roller, Morgan and Weigall to introduce what she was like as a person (as far as we can know).
The second part of the lesson focuses on the limitations of the ‘primary’ sources from the ancient world we have available to us. There is a comprehension task included with a literacy focus and some challenge questions for HA learners.
The final part of the lesson then moves onto what Cleopatra’s world looked like geographically and some of the potential pitfalls that would befall her thanks to her father’s ‘up and down’ relationship with Rome, the growing superpower of the time vs Egypt, which was on the decline.
The end of the lesson very much sets the teacher up to teach lessons on the events of her life and ensures that students have a sound understanding of what she was probably like vs how she has traditionally been portrayed (both in the ancient world and in the ‘modern’ media).
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How did the Romans feel about 'foreigners'?
This lesson uses a range of primary and secondary sources to examine how Romans really felt about foreigners.
The lesson starts with a look at definitions of ‘foreigner’ to us today vs what ‘foreign’ meant to the Romans and discussion can ensue about potential reasons behind this difference.
Students are then provided with a worksheet (as a slide in the .ppt file ready to be printed out) where students examine evidence from the following sources:
Juvenal
Livy
Watts (secondary)
Cicero
Tacitus
Athenaeus
Ulpian
Beard (secondary)
Students have to infer from passages of the authors’ own writing (all included) what the Romans believed about foreigners living in their city, but also examine Romans’ own identity as ‘foreigners’ themselves from the beginning of the city’s foundation.
The progress check invites students to define Roman attitudes to ‘the other’ halfway through the lesson, but then revisit this answer at the end to see if their views have changed (they should be more nuanced by the end of the lesson).
There are a series of questions at the end of the lesson designed to allow students to exhibit their understanding. HA students are challenged by being asked to consider how Romans perceived foreign rulers, using Cleopatra as an example.
An SMSC plenary centring around whether the Romans are that much different than modern society (in terms of distrust of foreigners) using Brexit and Immigration controls as a parallel, rounds off the lesson.
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How did Volero Publilius become Tribune of the Plebs and what reforms did he enact in 471 BC?
This lesson is designed with OCR Ancient History 9-1 GCSE spec in mind. Although it fits snugly into any study of the Roman Republic and plays a pivotal role in the ‘Conflict of the Orders’; the struggle between the Patricians and the Plebeians in Ancient Rome as the plebs struggled to secure more rights, freedoms and controls from their Patrician counterparts.
The lesson begins by studying a cartoon and trying to draw inferences about the story from it, after briefly looking at lictors and their job (since lictors play as big role in the first part of the story of Publilius’ ascencion to tribune of the Plebs). There is then a ‘gap fill’ exercise sheet to be printed off aimed at nailing key vocabulary.
Brief audio files (edited and adapted from the free Ancient Rome Podcast The Partial Historians are included along with relevant questions for students to answer based on these audio clips (each roughly 5 minutes in length).
It is important to note that the podcast is free and is available to download at https://partialhistorians.com/category/podcast/from-the-founding-of-the-city/
But the audio files are included for ease of use and obviously no copywright infringement is intended. I have found these podcasts really enjoyable and an invaluable resource as a teacher of this unit given the lack of available CPD and cannot recommend them highly enough :) I have also tried to point my students in their direction as a revision resource.
There is then a brief discussion about the reliability of Dionysius and Livy’s accounts of Volero Publilius’ reforms and then a comprehension sheet which can be printed off (included within the relevant point in the lesson) which has a 6 mark exam question as a challenge at the end.
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What military challenges did the Roman Republic face in its early years? Wars of Independence
This lesson is designed with the new 9-1 GCSE Ancient History Spec in mind. It seeks to give students a clear understanding of the chronology of how Tarquinius Superbus tried to reconquer Rome after his family’s expulsion in 509 BC.
The lesson focuses on three battles:
The Battle of Silvia Arsia
Lars Porsena’s invasion of Rome
The Battle of Lake Regilius
The lesson is also designed to make it clear who is fighting on which side in which battle (as this can be a little unclear) and key individuals have their own dedicated part of the lesson. maps of the area are also included so students can get a visual understanding of what happened and where. Storyboard tasks are mixed with exam questions to ensure students can prove their understanding of each battle.
Students then finish with a discussion of which battle was the most significant and why. This powerpoint will probably span approximately 2+ hours depending upon the speed you work through it.
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Were the Plebeians better or worse off after the expulsion of the kings in the new Republic?
The lesson begins with a reminder of why the Plebeians had been unhappy under Tarquinius Superbus and should have had a lot to look forward to under the new Republican regime.
There is then a handout included within the .ppt file (as a slide to be printed out) defining the Plebeians and describing their daily lives, occupations and concerns. There are some literacy and comprehension based questions that go with this that students are to answer (along with a challenge question to stretch the more able).
Students are then presented, in turn, with the 6 concerns of the Plebeian class under the new Republican regime and reasons for this dissatisfaction. Students then fill in a table (included) with details of the concern and why each one caused such resentment towards the patrician class.
There is then discussion surrounding just how politically aware the plebeian class would have been in the 5th c. BC with trade links with Athens providing us with the scant evidence for this.
There is then finally an SMSC plenary looking at questions surrounding what people can do when they are oppressed and how ‘people’ can change/ have changed their societies for the better. Students are then encouraged to link this to the Roman Plebeians in a discussion.
This lesson acts as a ‘scene-setter’ for the ‘Conflict of the Orders’ and the resulting publishing of the Twelve Tables and other reforms the plebeians managed to secure from the patricians.