Jack the Ripper KS3 History Mystery BUNDLE!

LESSON 1

• A starter to ask students to discuss types of crimes that take place in society. crime.
• This will lead on to talk about the environment facilitating crime in Whitechapel.
• A task for students to discuss what they want to find out about Jack the Ripper.
• A visual discussion on-board about the conditions in Whitechapel using maps and a YouTube video.
• A literacy task using ‘The Five’ by Hallie Reubenhold to assess what problems existed in Whitechapel, and how they made the murders possible.

LESSON 2

• A starter to consider how crimes are solved today, and then how crimes may have been solved in 1888. This leads on to the tasks.
• There is a video from Bloody Britain on YouTube that is shown to give the ‘story’ of the crimes and the victims.
• Students then start to profile the killer including what he might do for a job, where he might live, what kind of person (i.e. insane) he might be. These initial thoughts may change as the lessons go on and lead tot he suspects lesson.
• There is an optional task using information cards instead to create a mind map. You can extend this by providing a map of Whitechapel and students also label where the bodies were found.

LESSONS 3-4

• A starter to recap previous knowledge so far in the JTR module.
• A discussion of guilt based on evidence - a picture of a cat is used to facilitate a discussion of how we know there is guilt.
• A task for students to study a large table with descriptions of witness statements. Students put short info in each descriptor box (leave any N/A blank) and begin to theorise what Jack looked like. Students summarise at end.
• Extension - Students can read the Dear Boss letter and analyse the writing for what each part means. Students might be extended to think about what this tells us about the killer (i.e. educated, nice writing, could be a doctor etc.) and it will change some of their theories.

LESSON 5

• A starter to recap past knowledge gained on the course so far.
• An introduction tot he five main suspects (each of them is real).
• Students use the workbook and the information sheet provided to write reasons for an against each suspect. This can often fill an entire page. Some students stick on extra notes. You could get them to write reasons why they could be the Ripper in one colour, and why not in another colour - make sure students explain - E.g. does he know Whitechapel well…therefore could he do the crime then escape easily?
• There is a further extension to consider further evidence in the table. For each piece, students tick the suspect it best relates to. This can give further evidence for the assessment.

LESSON 6
Students bring everything together to plan, in their workbooks, what they will put in each paragraph. You can edit the question to simply be ‘who was JTR’ or keep the ‘how far do you agree’ version.
Students then get 30 minutes to write their essay.