This lesson is designed to support History KS 1-2, units 11 and 12 to learn about the past times of the Victorian people.

The early 19th Century saw many advances in science and medicine, in a time where scientific and religious ideas often clashed over what was morally correct. These ideas are explored in nineteenth century literature such as the novel Frankenstein, but the stories in the real world were often as shocking and brutal as the Gothic fantasy. This lesson explores the business of the grave robber and how they furthered the study of medicine through a grey area of the law. This lesson can be used as part of several fields of study for GCSE, including: Crime and Punishment History of Medicine/Health and the People Social Reform of the early 1800s Historical Context of ‘Frankenstein’ by Mary Shelley. The confessions of Bishop and May describe their daily lives in great detail. The full confessions are twelve pages long each, and so have been presented as extracts to provide the most relevant sections describing one particular case. The initial task can be completed as group work, in carousel, or individually as its own lesson before moving on to the rest of the sources. Care should be taken in providing the source describing the murder to students. The final source shows the on going effects of the Act over twenty-five years later, asking students to consider these sources in the context of a larger narrative.

This collection of photographs from The National Archives’ image library has been collated to provide a resource for English Language GCSE. The images can be used for descriptive or narrative creative writing prompts, allowing students to consider a variety of historical scenes as inspiration for their writing. Whilst the resources have been designed with the English Language GCSE in mind, they can be used for other age groups to develop imagination when considering character and description. Each image has been provided with its original document reference and description to offer some context to the image if desired, such as time period and location. However, the descriptions are deliberately brief and there are no correct answers required in creative writing. The photographs are presented as prompts only and students are not required to write creatively about actual historical places, figures or events.

The documents in this lesson relate to Framlingham, Portchester, Stokesay , Berwick and Alnwick castles. Some of these feature in the specification for OCR History GCSE module: Castles Form and Function c1000-1750 as specified sites in conjunction with English Heritage. Framlingham Castle is the first named site for OCR in 2018, followed by Kenilworth Castle in 2019. For AQA, GCSE History, module Historical Environment of Medieval England, Stokesay Castle is the specified site for 2018 and Pevensey Castle for 2019.

This document collection on the reign of James I (and VI) allows students and teachers to develop their own questions and lines of historical enquiry on the nature of monarchical power, challenges to the Church of England and the relationship between king and parliament. A perfect digital sourcebook for students studying the Stuarts. The collection contains thirty-nine documents and transcripts of original documents from the reign of James I, held within The National Archives of Great Britain.

A lesson focusing on why school dinners were introduced as a way of improving public health. Around the year 1900 there was a lot of concern about the physical state of the people of Britain. Even though there had been tremendous efforts in the late 19th century to provide better public health, housing and education, many children were still no more healthy than they had been back in the 1840s. The new Liberal government elected in 1906 passed various measures to try to deal with this problem. They were particularly concerned to try to improve the health of children. They passed laws to ensure midwives were notified of each new-born baby, they introduced School Medical Examinations and, in 1906, they gave permission for schools to offer meals to their pupils. But what kind of meals? These documents show how one city, Bradford, carried out an experiment to see how the system might operate.

What do these documents reveal about life for Caribbean migrants to Britain in the 1940s and 1950s? When the Second World War ended, countries needed to recover and rebuild. By 1948, the Nationality Act was passed which gave people from the Commonwealth the right to live and work in Britain if they wanted. They were citizens of the ‘United Kingdom and Colonies’. Many Caribbean men and women had served in the forces during the war, some wanted to re-enlist into the armed forces or find other employment. After the war, Britain needed people to fill jobs in the health service, transport system and postal system. Britain also used the European Voluntary Workers (E.V.W.) scheme to cope with its shortage of workers. The plan aimed to provide jobs in factories and farming to people from Europe who had been made homeless after the war. At the same time, many people also left their homes in the Caribbean to live and work in Britain. Those on the E.V.W. plan who were classed as ‘aliens’, however those from the Caribbean were ‘Citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies’. Housing for the new migrants, near to their places of work was often provided by National Service Hostels Corporation. At the Causeway Green Hostel in the West Midlands in August 1949, for example, there were 235 Poles, 18 E.V.Ws, 235 Southern Irish, 50 Northern Irish, 65 Jamaicans, and 100 English, Scottish and Welsh. Finding accommodation became difficult for many commonwealth immigrants because of growing prejudice and discrimination in the 1940s and 1950s. In 1958 there were riots in the Nottingham and Notting Hill, London. These involved serious fights between ‘teddy boys’ and new arrivals. The homes of immigrants were also attacked. At this time too, Black people were frequently excluded from skilled employment, pubs, and clubs. Landlords refused to rent to Black families. Other landlords exploited these immigrants by renting them over-priced, overcrowded accommodation. Added to this racial discrimination, the shortage of affordable decent housing and the poor living conditions made matters worse. The following year, Kelso Cochrane, a carpenter from Antigua was brutally stabbed to death in West London. It was a racist murder and not, as the police later claimed, an attempted robbery. These events would lead to increased calls for immigration control, resulting in the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, many argued that the migrants were being blamed for the prejudice directed towards them. Following these events there was a strong effort to improve relations in the area from Black activist Claudia Jones and members of the Caribbean community which eventually gave rise to the Notting Hill Carnival and the start of legislation designed to prevent racial discrimination.

The purpose of this document collection is to make available to teachers and students a wide selection of documents relating to the suffragette movement. The sources include material from the Home Office, Metropolitan Police and prison files, the Women’s Social and Political Union office (W.S.P.U.) which were used as exhibits in the trial of Emmeline Pankhurst and other leaders, including their correspondence and the Suffragette newspaper. We hope that such a collection will offer teachers the flexibility to develop their own approaches and questions and differentiate student tasks. All documents are provided with transcripts. Please note that in many cases we have displayed the whole document and highlighted the extract we have chosen to transcribe. These records support numerous lines of enquiry on a range of significant themes. The link to the document collection can be found in the lesson PDF which also contains our Teachers Notes and an introduction from Dr Diane Atkinson.

The lesson considers the story of Thomas Blood and the questions encourage pupils to investigate the sources and try to work out how and why Thomas Blood tried to steal the Crown Jewels.

This lesson provides pupils with a general introduction to Magna Carta and why it is considered of historical importance. By the end of the lesson pupils will have gathered information that can be used to write a short piece on what makes something of historical importance, and why Magna Carta is such an important document. This lesson is the first in a sequence of three designed to be used with the BETT Awards 2016 and Medea award 2016 winning Magna Carta resource website. These lessons include PowerPoint presentations, teacher’s notes and other material for use in classrooms. The lesson resource website guides students through medieval history and documents with the help of reenactors as students create their own digital chronicle of the creation of Magna Carta.

The lesson supports the new GCSE courses for Key stage 4 and the National Curriculum at Key stage 3, the development of Church, state and society in Britain 1509-1745. This is the first online lesson we have created on Oliver Cromwell using the National Archives State Papers as evidence for a historical enquiry. The State Papers offer a wonderful glimpse into the world of the Protectorate when England was a republic. For example one source reveals the impact of puritan beliefs on the celebration of Christmas. According to a report by Sir Henry Mildmay on 15th December 1650, to Parliament: “Council have received informations that there was very wilful and strict observation of the day commonly called Christmas Day, throughout the cities of London and Westminster, by a general keeping of shops shut up; and that there were contemptuous speeches used by some in favour thereof” Other sources in the lesson cover the nature of martial law, Cromwell’s treatment of royalist supporters, his foreign policy and its effects at home, and the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. There is also material relating to Charles II’s court in exile, where according to a letter in January 1657, “the news from England is of plots and treasons, year of gunpowder treasons, that would have sent the Protector to heaven in a fiery chariot”

Discover the Dissolution is a national enrichment project run by The National Archives for schools and history groups. The aim is to allow students of all ages to practice their research skills. Groups are encouraged to use the Discover the Dissolution resources to locate a local monastery or nunnery that was involved in the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1530s. They can then use the internet, libraries, local archives or other resources available to them to explore the story of the site. Once the research is complete, students can present their findings to others in the school and submit their work to the Discover the Dissolution Schools Map to be published online and made available for other students to use as an educational resource. You can find the main Discover the Dissolution Resource here: http://bit.ly/32k9Mlp

A lesson to develop pupils understanding of how Elizabeth I presented herself to her subjects in the days before mass media. The sources provided support support the study of some of the key ways in which the Queen’s image was conveyed to her subjects and to be compared to the current queen.

This lesson can be used with pupils at key stage 2 to support the teaching of Literacy. It focuses on a photograph of a railway accident in 1868.

The National Archives holds many documents pertaining to the First World War, allowing us to investigate many aspects of wartime life. Within these collections we have gathered together examples of a variety of records that relate to Medicine on the Western Front. The collections cover key examples of the medical issues faced during wartime, innovations inspired by the war, and the triumphs and struggles of those serving as doctors and nurses as well as the soldiers abroad. Both these collections of original sources, Part 1 and Part 2, can be used to support GCSE thematic modules which cover Medicine through Time to the present day and the historical context of the British sector of the Western Front. Teachers have the flexibility to download and create their own resources from these documents, to develop their pupils’ understanding of how to work with sources and prepare and practice for source based exam questions. Each collection includes a wide range of sources to encourage students to think broadly when exploring these topics. With each collection we have suggested 5 tasks based on some of the documents. The tasks can be completed individually or in groups. There is a downloadable pdf of questions to help working with sources. All documents are provided with transcripts. We hope that exposure to original source material may also foster further document research. The following themes covered by the documents in Part 1 include: Type of injury which resulted from trench warfare. Medical treatments received by injured soldiers and some of the medical developments that came with the First World War. Dangers faced by soldiers caused by exploding shells, grenades, shrapnel, gas, personal combat, flooding, noise, acute stress. Type of medical services from transport to hospitals. (For the injured, this could involve initial treatment and transport by a Field Ambulance unit and return to duty or movement to a Casualty Clearing Station. From here injured soldiers could be moved to a Base Hospital before transportation to a British military/civilian hospital at home via hospital ship. Transport itself ranged from stretcher bearers, horse-drawn ambulances, motor vehicles, boats or ships.) Included here also is the personal War Office record of war poet Wilfred Owen (one of a specific record set of notable high-ranking officers in the British Army).

The purpose of this lesson is for pupils to look at some pages from the census and learn how much they can discover about people who lived in the past.

This resource takes a twin track approach to the subject matter. Track 1: The significance of the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement of 1998 The Agreement was clearly an event of huge historical significance. However, it can sometimes be difficult to articulate why this was the case. This collection of documents aims to help students to meet this challenge. In the first instance, they are presented with two documents in which prominent political figures clearly think the Agreement was significant and successful. They are then asked to examine six more documents which all illuminate some aspect of the attempts to implement the Agreement and make it work. In the process the documents also provide evidence of the difficulties faced and the determination of the participants to overcome these difficulties. Track 2: How historians use sources This resource is NOT an examination practice paper. It is designed to take one step back from the exam question-based approach and to explore how historians think about documents and make use of them. The aim is that by understanding this set of fundamentals, students will be better equipped for the inevitably more limited approaches which examination conditions place on them. In this instance, students are introduced to the concept of a line of argument. This is a challenging idea, and it is difficult to master. With this in mind, we have provided some examples of lines of argument relating to the key issue of the significance of the Agreement for relations between Great Britain, Northern Ireland and Ireland. The five possible lines of argument are: The Agreement ended all of the tensions over Northern Ireland between the UK and Ireland. The Agreement failed to ease tensions over Northern Ireland between the UK and Ireland. Some groups actively opposed the Agreement even after it was signed. All sides gave up on the Agreement after it was signed. Despite the problems, all sides worked hard to make the Agreement work and this helped to ease tensions over Northern Ireland between the UK and Ireland. In each source we ask students to consider which argument the document could be used to support. For each document, there are additional questions to aid students in their analysis. Students should complete the table before discussing which of the lines of argument are supported by the sources. It is possible that several are supported so they will then need to make a judgement about which has the most evidence and is the most convincing. Once students have decided on a line of argument, they should develop an extended paragraph in response to the question “What was the significance of the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement?” Their answer should explain why they have chosen the line of argument and what evidence from the sources supports it. Please note, the transcripts of the resources retain any typographical errors included in the original documents.

The lesson considers how changing technology and warfare, showing how new inventions completely change the way war is waged.

This lesson looks at why the Opium Wars happened and how Hong Kong became a British colony. It shows the importance of ports and trade routes for the British Empire around this time, and how economic factors were linked to its growth. In 1997, Hong Kong stopped being a British colony after more than 150 years of British rule. Authority over Hong Kong was transferred to China. Many see this moment as the end of the last significant colony in the British Empire. Hong Kong became a British colony through two wars: the First and Second Opium Wars. The First Opium War broke out in 1839. It is called the ‘Opium War’ because of one of its major causes: the British were smuggling opium from their Indian colonies into Chinese ports against the wishes of the Chinese government. This was to help pay for the large amounts of Chinese tea that they were importing – by the early 1800s, tea was a popular drink with the British public. Britain also wanted more control over their trade with China, as they could only trade with certain officials called Hong merchants. The Opium Wars resulted in two treaties, each expanding the size of Britain’s Hong Kong territory. These treaties were followed by a 99-year lease in 1898 that allowed Britain to control even more land – a lease that ran out in 1997. Use this lesson to find out the causes behind the First Opium War and how Hong Kong became part of the British Empire. How important were economic factors in the growth of the British Empire? How can we explain the unique position of Hong Kong in the world today?

The six documents selected within this package reveal the difficulties of making peace at two selected snapshots of time in the peace process in Northern Ireland: June 1996 and June 1997, as well as how and when progress was made at these points. Although this is ‘packaged’ as a single lesson, it is likely to take at least two lesson periods of learning time to complete if all students use all the sources. Alternatively the sources could be shared within small groups with each student working on a single source and feeding back. Students are encouraged to analyse each document, looking for: any evidence that the talks are going well or that progress is being made; any evidence that there are still challenges or barriers to peace; and the reasons why making peace was difficult Learning objectives By the end of the session, students will: know two of the key moments on the road towards the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement; understand why it was so difficult to make peace; and be able to use contemporary documents to deepen their understanding of the peace process. Please note, the transcripts of the resources retain any typographical errors included in the original documents.