I am a History Teacher with a love for producing high quality and easily accessible history lessons, which I have accumulated and adapted for over 20 years of my teaching career. I appreciate just how time consuming teaching now is and the difficulty of constantly producing resources for an ever changing curriculum.
I am a History Teacher with a love for producing high quality and easily accessible history lessons, which I have accumulated and adapted for over 20 years of my teaching career. I appreciate just how time consuming teaching now is and the difficulty of constantly producing resources for an ever changing curriculum.
American Civil RIghts
This lesson analyses and evaluates the part Rosa Parks played in the Civil Rights Movement.
Modest to the end, her one action inspired a generation and she is still talked about with reverence in American society today. (NB - Oprah Winfrey’s Golden Globe speech on 7th January, 2018.)
Students learn about Rosa Park’s background and events leading up to her refusal to move seats on a bus, brilliantly shown through some video footage as well as documentary evidence.
The learning tasks and the accompanying resources are differentiated to suit all abilities as students reflect and evaluate her most important significance to American society today.
Students also have the opportunity to use a bus to show in the windows the problems she faced (at the front and in the doorway) and what she achieved (in the back windows).
The lesson is enquiry based with a key question using a lightbulb posed at the start of the lesson and revisited to show the progress of learning.
The resource includes suggested teaching strategies, differentiated materials and comes in Powerpoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change.
Elizabethan England 1568-1603
This Revision Guide is aimed to help students prepare fully for their GCSE exam in this unit of study
Within this 45 page Revision Guide, there are 18 GCSE exam questions and guidance of how to answer them throughout.
At the start of the Guide, there are tips on how the students can access the four main questions and advice on how to put this into practice with model answers given from the exam board.
There are also eight new pages in the Guide dedicated to the 2024 Environmental Study, Americas and Drake's Circumnaviation with a focus on knowledge and understanding and second order concepts.
Six possible exam questions have been included which AQA could ask focusing on the main themes from the AQA guidance given.
This Guide has been designed to be engaging, detailed, easy to follow and allows the students to access the higher grades in the examination.
It comes in PDF and Word format and can be adapted and changed to suit.
Any reviews on this resource would be much appreciated.
Rise of the Dictators
This lesson aims to challenge preconceptions and assumptions that Hitler was a monster from birth, determined to commit mass murder and genocide.
Growing up with his parents, his schooling, his move to Vienna and his life as a soldier are scrutinised as students have many opportunities to make judgements which are ultimately challenged at the end.
The lesson starts with finding out what the students know about Germany after World War 1 and which statements Hitler could have said or supported during his life.
The lesson includes a lot of visual evidence (such as Hitler’s propaganda posters) and well as video evidence of his life as a young boy.
There is a differentiated research activity in which there is a chance for students to conduct their own independent investigations before reporting their final conclusions to the class.
This lesson would also be ideal for a non specialist or as preparation for GCSE if you are embedding source skills, teaching the interwar years or World War 2 at Key Stage 4.
The lesson is enquiry based with a key question using a lightbulb posed at the start of the lesson and revisited to show the progress of learning.
The resource includes suggested teaching strategies, differentiated materials and comes in PowerPoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change.
AQA GCSE 9-1 Britain: Health and the People c1000 to present
The aim of this lesson is to make the factor question (4) more accessible to students.
A question that we think is an easy one for them to answer in fact causes the students the most difficulty.
I find students begin to panic and forget everything they have learnt over the course; many answers become scrambled into meaningless waffle or into a few sentences on some individual stories.
Sadly I begin ask myself where are all the individuals we have learnt about over the whole unit of work and their breakthroughs and impact on medicine?
This lesson can be delivered over two as there is quite a lot of information to get through.
A ‘model’ answer is given to them, only for it to be dissected and the ‘waffle’ identified and highlighted.
Some key assessment tips and advice from the exam board to their markers is shared to show students how to create a model answer reaching the higher boundary grades.
Students can be properly assessed using recent specimen questions which come complete with an up to date mark scheme from the exam board and my own student friendly mark scheme to peer or self assess in class, where they are shown how they can improve.
Further activities include revision on how to categorise the factors and topics which could possible come up in forthcoming exams.
It is inevitable that this question will undoubtedly become more demanding and specific as the course embeds itself.
The lesson is enquiry based with a key question using a lightbulb posed at the start of the lesson and revisited at the end to show the progress of learning.
The resource comes in Powerpoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change.
I have also included suggested teaching strategies to deliver the lesson and there are differentiated materials included.
This is a fun, entertaining as well as a challenging lesson, designed to question and evaluate the causes of the Great Fire of London in the summer of 1666.
The hook is Samuel Pepys; why did he bury his cheese and why did he bury it alongside items that were surely more valuable?
The lesson comes complete with differentiated resources as students have to plot the causes and consequences of the fire on a visual display using logs,flames and smoke.
Notes have been put on each slide on how to deliver the activities and answers to some of the questions posed as well as suggested teaching strategies.
This lesson is active, exciting and engaging and would also suit a non specialist. It is aimed at key stage 3, but can be delivered to key stage 2 pupils also.
The lesson comes with suggested teaching and learning strategies and are linked to the latest historical interpretations, video clips and debate.
The lesson is enquiry based with a key question posed at the start of the lesson and revisited at the end to show the progress of learning.
The lessons are fully adaptable in PowerPoint format and can be changed to suit.
This resource (in booklet form) sets out the OCR Medicine unit, The people’s health, c.1250 to the present day in two sides of A4.
This is ideal for the student who wants a quick recap before the exam as it includes all the main details in bullet form. It is also great for quickly printing and giving out for revision lessons, especially when the students claim they cannot remember anything they have been taught!
This resource can also be used for interleaving and homework.
This resource is editable and can be changed to suit. If you like this resource, please check out my Summary Revision Guide for Conflict and Cooperation at : https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/ocr-gcse-9-1-conflict-and-cooperation-1918-1939-summary-revision-guide-11769163
Elizabethan England 1568-1603
This is a Summary Revision Guide tailored to the AQA GCSE 9-1 Elizabethan England 1568-1603 unit.
It has also been revised to include the historic environment question for 2024 for the Americas and Drake’s Circumnavigation, with an emphasis on location, function and structure, people connected, design and important events connected to it.
The resource is in booklet form and is ideal for the student who wants a quick recap before the exam as it sets out all the main details in bullet form.
It is also extremely useful and cheap for printing and giving out when the students claim they have forgotten everything they have been taught!
I have included both PDF and Word formats so the resource can be edited and changed to suit.
This is a summary revision guide tailored to the OCR Conflict and Cooperation 1918-1939 unit for GCSE (International Relations: The Changing International order 1918-2001).
The resource is in booklet form and is ideal for the student who wants a quick recap before the exam as it set out all the main details in bullet form.
It is also extremely useful and cheap for printing and giving out to the students who can also use it for interleaving and homework.
The resource is editable and can be changed to suit with PDF and Word formats included.
Any reviews of this resource would be extremely welcome.
AQA GCSE 9-1 Germany 1890-1945: Democracy and Dictatorship
This 33 page Revision Guide is broken down into 3 main sections: Germany 1890-1918, the Weimar Republic 1918-1933, Nazi Dictatorship 1933-1945
This Revision Guide includes practice exam questions and gives examples and tips on how to answer each.
It will enable all learners to achieve the higher grades with clear guidance on how to achieve them. The questions target the main questions in the exam from interpretations and source analysis, cause and consequence, change and continuity, significance and evaluation.
The Guide also gives the students some useful mnemonics to remember some of the key details such as the Treaty of Versailles, problems in the Weimar, recover under Stresemann and Hitler’s consolidation of power for example.
The information is also broken down into an easy to use format to aid the students. The Guide can be used for revision, interleaving, home learning as well as class teaching. For home learning, each student taking GCSE History in my school has a copy assigned to them on the google drive and it is used frequently when using google classroom assignments, such as homework and revision for assessments.
This Guide has been designed to be engaging, detailed and easy to follow and can be edited and changed to suit, It comes in both Word and PDF format.
Any reviews on this resource would be much appreciated. Please email me for a free copy of any of my resources worth £3.00 if you do.
I have also made similar revision resources for AQA GCSE 9-1 include Britain: Health and the People c.1000 to the present day, Elizabethan England c,1568-1603, Conflict and Tension and Power and the People.
This resource (in booklet form) sets out the Edexcel GCSE 9-1 Modern Depth Study, Weimar and Nazi Germany 1918-1939 in two sides of A4.
This is ideal for the student who wants a quick recap before the exam as it includes all the main details in bullet form.
It is also great for quickly printing and giving out for revision lessons, especially when the students claim they cannot remember anything they have been taught!
This resource can be also used for homework and interleaving or for quickly recapping topics.
This resource can also be easily emailed to parents to help students with their revision studies at home or put on the school’s digital platform.
I have included both PDF and Word formats if there is a need to change or adapt.
This resource (in booklet form) sets out the WJEC GCSE Germany in Transition 1919-39 course in two sides of A4.
This is ideal for the student who wants a quick recap before the exam as it includes all the main details in bullet form.
It is also great for quickly printing and giving out for revision lessons, especially when the students claim they cannot remember anything that has been taught!
The resource can also be used for interleaving and homework tasks.
I have included both PDF and Word formats if there is a need to change or adapt.
American Civil Rights
What were the Jim Crow Laws in America? Who was Jim Crow? Why did this fictional character significantly impact on American society, especially in the south in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? What happened if you did not adhere to these laws?
These questions and more will be answered in this lesson.
Students analyse how black people in America were treated and why discrimination was inherent in some parts of American society and backed up by statute.
They also have to recognise how these laws affected education, family life, social time and employment and prioritise the severest of these laws in their judgement.
The lesson ends with some challenging questions using de bono’s 6 thinking hats.
The lesson is enquiry based with a key question using a lightbulb posed at the start of the lesson and revisited to show the progress of learning.
The resource includes suggested teaching strategies, differentiated materials and comes in Powerpoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change.
These nine lessons are designed to cover Britain’s transatlantic slave trade: its effects and its eventual abolition.
This bundle addresses key historical skills: How did slavery show change and continuity throughout its history? What were the causes and consequences of the triangle trade on slavery? What were the similarities and differences in the actions of the slave owners? What was significant about the work of William Wilberforce or the help given by Harriet Tubman to the underground railway?
These skills are addressed in each of the lessons and allow students to be able to make connections, draw contrasts, analyse trends and be able to create their own structured accounts and written narratives.
All the lessons come with retrieval practice activities and suggested teaching and learning strategies, They come in PowerPoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change
The lessons are also differentiated and link to the latest interpretations of slavery from the BBC and other sources.
The lessons are as follows:
L1 The origins of Slavery
L2 The triangular trade
L3 The Middle Passage
L4 The Slave Auction
L5 The Slave Plantations
L6 Punishments and Resistance
L7 William Wilberforce and the Abolition of Slavery
L8 Underground Railroad
L9 Black people in the American Civil War
If you like this resource, please review it and choose any of my resources worth up to £3 for free.
World War II
The aim of this lesson is to evaluate the reasons why the RAF won the Battle of Britain.
With Hitler having conquered France, he soon began his preparations to invade Britain. But with a numerical advantage in planes and skilled fighter pilots, how were the RAF able to defend Britain so effectively? How were they able to overturn another certain disaster into a victory?
Students analyse video footage and a ‘top secret report’ to evaluate how the RAF gained an advantage.
They also judge how effective the Government’s poster campaign was to convince the public they were in safe hands with the RAF.
Ultimately students decide and explain why the RAF won, be it through pilot skill, fuel advantage, the technology of radar, winning the propaganda war or through sheer determination and grit.
The lesson is enquiry based with a key question using a lightbulb posed at the start of the lesson and revisited throughout to show the progress of learning.
The resource includes retrieval practice activities, suggested teaching strategies and differentiated materials, and comes in Powerpoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change.
Why was the slave trade finally abolished in Britain and her Empire and why did it take so long to achieve?
Why were arguments in the eighteenth century challenged so rigorously and overturned in the nineteenth?
Which people inspired its abolition and who was against this?
Students decide which arguments were being put forward to the plantation owners, racists, people who were ignorant and law makers to end the slave trade.
They then prioritise the most important arguments in challenging these peoples’ staunch perceptions.
The second part of the lesson is a case study of William Wilberforce. Through video, audio and source work, students build up a history of the great man and decide how and why he is significant (this is a differentiated task dependent upon ability).
The final part of the lesson uses an interactive spinning wheel with key words used throughout the course, which the students have to define and explain their links to slavery.
The lesson is enquiry based with a key question using a lightbulb posed at the start of the lesson and revisited to show the progress of learning.
The resource includes suggested teaching strategies, retrieval practice, differentiated materials and comes in Powerpoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change.
The aim of this lesson is to analyse life in a slave plantation.
What was a typical day like? How hard was the work? Was it made easier by the invention of the cotton gin? How did they relax if at all in the evening and what were their living quarters like?
Learning tasks include comparing a day in their school life with the day of a plantation slave and recognising the hardships endured.
Students also have to use a number of sources, which are differentiated according to ability and challenge a statement which suggests a slave’s life wasn’t really that bad.
The plenary asks them to use four letters and come up with as many associated words as they can from their learning.
The lesson comes with a retrieval practice activity, suggested teaching and learning strategies and is linked to the latest historical interpretations, video clips and debate.
The lesson is fully adaptable in PowerPoint format and can be changed to suit.
This lesson is split into two parts; the first part explains the triangular trade and the various goods and transactions that occurred in the slave trade.
Students are required to find this out through documentary and video evidence before plotting it on a table. A mini plenary checks their understanding and uses a ‘what if’ question to challenge their thinking.
The second part analyses the story of Olaudah Equiano and how his life was before and after he was captured.
However the students are challenged to question his version of events and how there is conflicting evidence in his account.
The final part of this lesson analyses how the slaves were captured by whom, prioritising which were the most common forms of capture and using sources of evidence to extract further information.
The lesson is enquiry based with a key question using a lightbulb posed at the start of the lesson and revisited to show the progress of learning.
The resource includes suggested teaching strategies, retrieval practice, differentiated materials and comes in Powerpoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change.
The lesson introduced the concept of slavery and how it has been active throughout the centuries.
Students have to categorise the reasons why the transatlantic slave trade was justified by many of our contemporaries and evaluate the most important reasons for their views through differentiated tasks.
They also analyse a number of sources about slavery from the Ancient Egyptians through to the present day and reveal their findings in a summarisation pyramid.
The lesson is linked to the latest historical interpretations, video clips and debate.
The lesson is enquiry based with a key question using a lightbulb posed at the start of the lesson and revisited to show the progress of learning.
The resource includes suggested teaching strategies, retrieval practice, differentiated materials and comes in Powerpoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change.
World War II
The aim of this lesson is to understand how the British Government prepared for war.
The lesson leads students through a wealth of primary sources from path𝑒 news, government films and information leaflets.
It analyses how the government used propaganda to rally and convince the nation to stand firm against Hitler and how they could endure and eventually win the war.
How effective and convincing their messages were is up to the students to unpick and judge for themselves.
Primary evidence, which not surprisingly gives a positive outlook on events such as the evacuation of Dunkirk, Churchill’s radio broadcasts and the bombing of cities, is used; but how effective is their message and will the nation adhere to their warnings about spying and what not to say?
Students are questioned throughout the slides and complete some independent research on the types of propaganda posters published.
A summarising pyramid at the end builds upon the evidence and judgements they have made.
The lesson is enquiry based with a key question using a lightbulb posed at the start of the lesson and revisited throughout to show the progress of learning.
The resource includes retrieval practice activities, suggested teaching strategies and differentiated materials, and comes in Powerpoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change.
World War II
The aim of this lesson is to question whether Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union was doomed from the start.
The invasion is a fascinating piece of history to study. Why, when one of the greatest ever military commanders Napoleon failed, did Hitler think he could succeed?
Students are posed this question and using a causal spider diagram link the reasons why invading the Soviet Union could create many problems and challenges to the Nazis.
The confidence of Hitler and his Generals can be seen when analysing sources about the Nazi-Soviet Pact which clearly show Hitler believed he held the upper hand.
However no study of the invasion would be complete without looking at the Battle of Stalingrad and using video footage to show the plight of all those involved.
There is a choice of two differentiated tasks; in both students decide the most important reasons for the failure and final defeat of the Wehrmacht as they categorise the reasons for this.
A literacy plenary asks the students to define some of the key words used in the lesson.
The lesson is enquiry based with a key question using a lightbulb posed at the start of the lesson and revisited throughout to show the progress of learning.
The resource includes retrieval practice activities, suggested teaching strategies and differentiated materials, and comes in Powerpoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change.