The Spanish Armada

This is a fully resourced and highly engaging lesson that that aims to build a deep understanding of the events of the Spanish Armada. It could be used with either KS3 or KS4 (11-16 years).

The lesson is structured in three progress questions.

First students have to place the causes of the Spanish Armada into a ven diagram in order to work out whether Philip sent to Armada because he was personally angry with Elizabeth, because he was a devout Catholic, or because he wanted to increase his power.

After this students will get to grips with the events of the Spanish Armada by using a map of the Armada’s route to put the events of the conflict into chronological order.

Finally, students will be guided to reflect on the events in order to come to a reasoned judgement as to why the Armada failed; whether it was bad luck, bad planning, or the skill of the English and their Dutch allies. The lesson ends with a write up of this decision which could be used as a formative assessment.

The lesson contains both lots of scaffolding and lots of challenge questions. It will be very easily tweaked for different abilities.

This lesson is part of a larger unit called The Reformation which can also be found on TES.