AQA GCSE Normans Historic Environment 2024 Wales Lessons and Answer Bundle

Set of 4 lessons looking at the 2024 Historic Environment unit focussed on Wales.

I taught these lessons very recently (September 2022) and was delighted with how they turned out. I have a very mixed-ability GCSE group and the knowledge and understanding my group gained from the tasks and the info was very encouraging (and made the hours of work on these lessons feel more worthwhile!).

Throughout the course of these lessons I have embedded and used the sources provided by AQA and used them in context with a drip-feed approach, rather than just hand the kids a pack of sources in one go. The written sources I have The lessons make use of the support material provided by AQA. I have attached used are edited (attached to these lessons) but the full version is freely accessible on their site.

Lesson 1 begins with a recap on the Norman invasion (the class finished studying this in May 2023) and then focusses on giving the students an understanding of Wales and its importance to the Normans. As always we are guessing as to the GCSE question focus but I have tried to introduce some of the themes I will pick up on throughout these lessons, making use of as many of the sources provided by AQA as possible. Towards the end of the lesson the students learn about the 3 main Marcher Earls, using the AQA resources

Lesson 2 focusses on what I think will be the three major ‘factors’ the exam board will be looking at in their upcoming question. I have linked each of these to the students’ prior knowledge (such as their learning on castles) while also trying to tell the story of Wales too.

Lesson 3 is concentrates on what I think the question will be around (can’t see how it can be much else!) and building knowledge around the different factors involved in this question and answer. There is a knowledge organiser task focussing on each of the 3 factors I have thought up. This makes a lot of use of the resources from AQA which, again, I have edited for student use. By the end of the 3 lessons the students should have a good knowledge of the importance of Wales to the Normans and their attempts to keep it under control. They will also have an understanding of how this fits into the wider context of their Norman studies as I have referenced aspects such as castles and the use of land holding to control the country.

Lesson 4 (taught a month later) recaps the different ways in which the Normans established their conquest, using Wales for examples. This was fully covered in previous lessons so this is more of a recap exercise focussed more around the possible question. The lesson then focusses on a possible question (I can’t think of what else they could ask, given the resources provided, other than variations on a theme!). There is a model answer in the ppt and attached as a word file. This is deliberately a bit longer than students would be expected to write but I’ve tried to show a few examples how to answer the question but also to focus on Wales.

There is then an example of how to change the info to fit another question as I have been trying to emphasise the importance of being able to adapt in exams and apply knowledge in different ways.

Please note - I have attached an edited copy of the essay along with the full version so you can get an idea what it looks like in the preview without showing the whole answer.