I've been teaching history for four years, and I aim to provide lessons that are ready to go with minimal tweaking just to personalise the resource to your class and their prior learning. I'm a big fan of paired discussion, group work, debates, living graphs and hot seating, and I provide a variety of tasks in each lesson to ensure learning happens at a pace and that all learning styles are catered for. All feedback gratefully received.
I've been teaching history for four years, and I aim to provide lessons that are ready to go with minimal tweaking just to personalise the resource to your class and their prior learning. I'm a big fan of paired discussion, group work, debates, living graphs and hot seating, and I provide a variety of tasks in each lesson to ensure learning happens at a pace and that all learning styles are catered for. All feedback gratefully received.
ALL will be able to define these ideals and identify their appeal
MOST will be able to explain how these ideas would affect politics
SOME will be able to analyse the impact of these ideas on American politics
This lesson explores how the First World War affected people in the US and includes lots of precise, detailed information for students to use in their essays. I use the term 'fantastatistics' for this kind of evidence (fantastic statistics) and this term is used in the PowerPoint.
There is a task which follows on from the homework set in L4 to find out the definitions of 'isolationism' and 'normalcy', but you can allocate 5 mins to this in class if you are using this as a standalone lesson.
The lesson asks students to imagine what kind of measures politicians would have to implement in order to return to a pre war country, and this should give students a handle on normalcy and what the US voters were looking for.
The lesson also looks at isolationism and rugged individualism and students complete a venn diagram to see where these ideas overlap. This was a really successful exercise for my students who are now really comfortable with these political ideas.
NB You will need the edexcel textbook to support this lesson, although if you have an alternate textbook I'm sure you could locate the information elsewhere.
This lesson contains an essay structure for this question:
Were Republican ideas the main reason for the fact that there was a Republican president and a Republican majority in Congress in the years 1921-1931?
The lesson is centred around helping students to feel confident to have a go at this.
The Powerpoint contains images of Hoovervilles for students to see and for you to describe the effects of the Depression. The worksheet needs to be completed using the textbook.
ALL Will be able to describe Hoover’s actions and the effects of the Great Depression
MOST Will be able to explain Hoover’s limitations and the impact on public opinion of the Bonus Army
SOME Will be able to predict the impact of Hoover’s actions on the former popularity of Republicanism.
These are the first ten lessons I have taught in this course, some of the lessons require you to have the textbook provided by Edexcel for this paper but where this is the case I have made sure to let you know in the description.
This lesson looks particularly at Henry II and the changes he made in 1154. It includes a clip, a sock matching exercise and an alternative exercise if you prefer to keep your students seated. It includes a structured written exercise and a plenary. Learning objectives are:
ALL will be able to describe how the King affected law and order in Medieval England
MOST will be able to used precise historical detail to describe the changes the King brought
SOME will be able to explain how much things change.
All resources are included, no textbook needed. Questions are differentiated into traffic light colours.
Intended to give a very quick overview of Tudor England for students in KS4, this lesson gives students the key information they need to begin to study the crimes and punishments of Tudor times.
Learning Objectives:
ALL Students will be able to recall key facts about life in Tudor Times
MOST Students will be able to consider how these facts impacted on the monarch of the time
SOME Students will be able to predict what kind of laws the monarchs would have brought in to deal with threats to their rule.
Designed for GCSE students either studying the OCR course, or the Edexcel course, you will need a textbook for this (OCR, SHP and Edexcel are all appropriate for this) and prior learning on law enforcement in medieval times.
Students will compare tudor law enforcement with law enforcement from medieval times:
ALL Will be able to describe one difference and one similarity
MOST Will be able to describe several differences and several similarities using detail
SOME Will be able to analyse the extent of change
This needs to be included in a scheme of work on American politics during this period as it helps structure an essay, but it doesn't provide new knowledge on content. The lesson is focused on how to pick out themes and structure an essay at A Level. Students come up with their themes as a class, but suggestions are made in the lesson, students assess a model paragraph to find the evidence and analysis present. Students structure their own paragraphs around the model paragraph structure.
The question this lesson considers is “The Vietnam War was the main reason the American public lost confidence in their President between the years 1968 and 1980” How far do you agree?
This lesson was designed to be part of a Scheme of Work on Edexcel AS/A Level history Paper 1, Option F: The American Dream
Intended for GCSE students either studying the OCR or Edxecel spec for Crime and Punishment, appropriate for both the new GCSE and the old, this stand alone lesson is designed to be used with a textbook. The SHP, OCR and Edexcel textbooks will all be fine for this lesson.
Lesson Objectives:
ALL Will be able to describe some of the reasons capital punishment ended
MOST Will be able to support their points with detailed evidence
SOME explain how these factors led to capital punishment ending
This lesson includes a clip about Derek Bentley, a table to be completed using the textbook, a triangle of importance and then an essay question that asks students to compare factors.
Standard board game that requires a dice and counters to represent the students playing. Students complete activity sheet as they play, using the knowledge they gained from the game.
Each square details something that might happen to a peasant to either cause them good fortune or bad and instructs students to move ahead or drop back a few spaces accordingly. As students play the game they have a range of activities to complete based on the information they find out in the game. They could do these as they play, or to consolidate what they have learned after.
Activities cover:
* the feudal system
* jobs of the peasant in each season
* factors affecting the peasant's life such as the weather
* matching pictures to the jobs of the peasant
* the roles of other people in the village such as the steward
This game is active learning that is student centred. Other than behaviour management, it is hands off for the teacher and enjoyable for students. This is appropriate to KS3.
Many thanks to Paul Durnall who gave this to me :-)
This lesson should follow on from either your own lesson on factory conditions, or my other lesson on factory conditions. The focus of the lesson is not new learning, it is practising the skill of assessing reliability based on the caption of the source. It doesn't go as far as NOP but allows students a more organic, paired or group discussion on whether a source is reliable. First you analyse reliability together, then students pass round sources and add their own notes to the bottom before completing a worksheet task.
NB. This lesson does not use the word 'bias' when examining sources as in my opinion, this leads students to stop analysing once they have decided that the source is biased. If instead they examine reliability, they are more able to take a balanced view on source reliability.
Learning Objectives: To know how to make inferences from the source (L5) and to know how to use the caption to decide how reliable the source is (L6)
This lesson is designed to be used with Access to History:‘Prosperity, Depression and the New Deal: The USA 1980-1954 by Peter Clements, but could be used with another resource if your resource is:
* of A level complexity or above (lesson skill focus is finding information in text)
* details the Supreme Court challenges made against the New Deal
* is no longer than 2 sides of A4
The skill focus is on finding information in text with a view to increasing student confidence in using the textbook and other more complex sources more independently. Tasks include 'skim it/scan it/scope it out' exercise, rephrasing complex concepts into student own words to improve comprehension, and differentiated tasks as per Blooms.
Students will also be fully informed about Supreme Court challenges to the New Deal and able to analyse the changing relationships within the US Federal government.
ALL Will be able to describe the key features of McCarthyism
MOST Will be able to explain how this impacted on American politics and culture
SOME Will be able to use detailed evidence to analyse the threat posed by McCarthyism to the American government
Self contained lesson with all resources contained, differentiated questions and a homework paragraph structure.
If you are using this bundle and are looking for Lesson 8, it is the lesson entitled 'Red Scare'. Apologies this is not more clearly labelled.
I'm uploading this lesson for free because the bulk of the lesson I taught on it was me drawing a flow diagram of the wall street crash and students making their own diagrams. There is a good clip though with a summary attached.
ALL will understand that the Wall Street Crash resulted from the boom years of the 1920s, will also be able to describe the effects of the WSC
MOST Will understand the relationship between the boom and the bust and explain the effects of the WSC
SOME Will be able to analyse aspects of both the boom and bust to identify where ideas of isolationism and laissez-faire had contributed to the crisis.
I attended a lecture with my year 12 and took these notes which I then typed up into a resource for them to use. There were lots of facts that weren't covered in any of the textbooks so this is a useful resource to read over before planning a lesson on this topic. Please review if this was useful.
This resource for KS5 looks at the challenges faced by Reagan in exerting his power as president, and looks at whether the Presidency was 'imperilled' and power disseminating to Congress. The resources in this pack support students to achieve the first two of these Learning Objectives, the third objective is a holistic objective that asks students to consider their previous learning on Nixon, Ford and Carter. If they haven't learned this, they will still have access to the first two objectives.
ALL: Will be able to describe how it was difficult for Reagan to use his power
MOST: Will be able to explain how the obstacles Reagan faced would impede his policies
SOME: Will be able to make links between these obstacles and the failures of the previous presidents to explain how the Presidency had become ‘imperilled’
Civil Rights, KS5, students need an existing knowledge of MLK's Southern Campaigns before they can access this lesson effectively. All resources included, no need for additional textbooks although they are always useful for extra material.
The starter asks students to look at the Moynihan Report and decide why MLK turned his attention North. The main body of the lesson is a card sort on the Northern Campaign, students separate 'event' cards from 'analysis' cards, then use the event cards to put together a chronology. Students then colour code their cards to align with various reasons the Northern campaign was unsuccessful, then they either make three bullet point lists, or write three paragraphs to answer the question.
This follows on from lesson 5 which introduces students to the ideas of isolationism, normalcy and rugged individualism. It aims to achieve these outcomes:
ALL will be able to explain why the American public admired Republican ideas at this time.
MOST will be able to relate these to ideas of ‘normalcy’,’isolationism’ and ‘rugged individualism and explain how the three Republican presidents used these ideas.
SOME Will be able to support their answer on the appeal of Republicanism with context from the 1920’s.
The lesson includes a clip with questions for students to discuss, a colour coding card sort activity, a paragraph which they use to highlight evidence, a homework sheet on Harding and Coolidge and a worksheet to focus the lesson activities.
This highly versatile resource can be used as part of a scheme of work (following on from my Toussaint L'Ouverture resource) or as a stand alone lesson. It is aimed at KS3 but contains sufficient challenge for KS4 and can be adapted down for LA KS3 (students aged 11-16). It has been designed to enable students to meet these objectives:
LO: To be able to describe the actions of these freedom fighters
LO: To make a comparison of their strengths and weaknesses
LO: To evaluate their significance in ending slavery in Jamaica
There are a range of activities contained, these include:
- a very brief overview of Jamaican history up to colonisation
- individual reading task that can be adapted to move students around the room
- paired peer to peer teaching task
- a worksheet that encourages additional detail to be used in answers (old NC level 5)
- opportunity for students to set their own criteria to assess significance
- opportunity for debate
- ideas for homework task and plenary
This lesson is ready to go once downloaded for the majority of learners, just minor tweaks needed if you want to differentiate down, or refer back to the prior learning of your class. Teacher notes included with slides.
Feedback gratefully received,
Ruth
All necessary resources included, this lesson includes a music based starter, questions on a British Pathe clip, a cart sort exercise, a structured literary task and a guided research homework task that asks them to assess the prediction they made in the plenary. The big question that students can answer following this lesson is 'Why did people migrate to Britain after the Second World War?' The lesson covers both push and pull factors and examines why Britain wanted immigrants to come in the first place.
Lesson Objectives:
ALL: Will be able to identify reasons why Britain wanted immigrants and why people in the West Indies wanted to emigrate
MOST: Will be able to describe the push and pull factors and come to a conclusion as to why people migrated in the 1950’s
SOME: Will be able to bring their ideas together to explain why so many people migrated in the 1950’s and predict what effect this might have on communities in the UK
Suitable for all KS3, HA KS2 or LA KS4
All activities are differentiated and resourced, this lesson can be a standalone lesson or part of a series of lessons on either migration, race or post war recontstruction.