Card Sort - Why did Great Britain build an Empire?

This beautifully illustrated lesson has been designed to help students understand why Great Britain wanted to build an empire, This can be quite a challenging topic to teach in an interesting and engaging way, but this tried and tested lesson has been refined in the classroom over many years by experienced teachers. It is suitable for the full ability range and includes eight addition activities to the card sort, which can be mixed and matched to suit your curriculum time and students.

When you purchase this resource, you will be able to download a single page Word Document and a twenty six slide PowerPoint Presentation. The Word Document includes includes a learning objective, instructions, ten heading cards labelled 'Technology’, ‘Trade’, ‘Navy’ , ‘Religion’, ‘Raw Materials’, ‘Competition’, ‘Racism’, ‘Slavery’, ‘Population’ and ‘Power’ as well as 19 statement cards that can be cut out and sorted under them. If you are looking to shorten the time spent on the card sort, you could cut out the cards and keep them in envelopes for students to take out and sort, or you could instead create a colour key to help them identify which headings they wanted to sort them under. The PowerPoint includes aims, objectives, differentiated outcomes, starters, plenaries, tasks, activities, information slides, historical sources, pictures, maps, diagrams, templates, feedback sheets and a homework exercise.

Once students have completed the card sort, there is a second activity which gets them to write an extended answer to the core question. I would recommend getting your students to use the headings from the card sort to help them organise their answer. For more information, please see the preview slides

The aims and objectives of this lesson are:

Theme: Industrial Revolution 1750 - 1900
Know: Why did Great Britain build an Empire?
Understand: Why did the British Empire become the largest?
Evaluate: Which factors were the most important?
Skills: Cause, Consequence & Collaboration

WILF – What Am I Looking For?
Identify & describe: Why did Great Britain build an Empire?
Explain: Why did the British Empire become the largest?
Analyse: Which factors were the most important?

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Kind Regards

Roy