Teaching GCSE History: International Relations 1945 - 1990

>> Added January 2012 Smart Task: How close to World War Three did the world come in the 65 years after World War Two? A task designed for higher attaining Y8/Y9 pupils but relevant here for developing overviews.

>>Added NOVEMBER 2011 Smart Task: The Cuban Missile Crisis: Who was the real winner, Kennedy or Khrushchev?

This section, dominated by the Cold War focuses mainly on teaching its origins, its main crises and the reason why it came to an end.  A mixture of outstanding lessons and smart tasks uses a wide range of interesting sources as well as offering plenty of scope for developing students’ understanding of interpretations.  Lessons have clear objectives and full planning. Both these and the shorter smart tasks have imaginative teaching resources to promote learning.

Outstanding lessons

• Why did the US lose the war in Vietnam? A piece of cake? Students look at novel ways of answering To What Extent questions using a cake as  a visual aid before applying their new understanding to the evaluation, and then improvement, of a GCSE answer
• Who was more responsible for the rise in  Cold War tension from 1945-49, the USA or the USSR? A courtroom trial with both countries in the dock.
  
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Smart Tasks

• ADDED JANUARY 2012 How close to World War Three did the world come in the 65 years after World War Two?  Designed for Key Stage 3 higher attaining Year 8/9 pupils. Helping pupils to develop overviews. This task uses the idea of a class tension graph or doomsday clock to look at these changes in perspective. NB This is a set of sequenced ideas for you to work on, not an actual lesson.
• The Cuban Missile Crisis: Who was the real winner, Kennedy or Khrushchev? (Added 21.11.10)
• Why did communism end when it did in Eastern Europe? A  Diamond 9 ranking activity on the reasons for the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. (Added 17.3.10)
• Stalin and the Korean War: can you interpret the cartoon? This Smart task uses a Punch cartoon as part of a lesson on the Korean War. It carefully steers students through several thinking processes. (Added 18.8.09)
• Deciphering a Cold War cartoon, using the slow reveal technique. The interactive PowerPoint presentation of the famous Stalin’ The Birdwatcher’ cartoon encourages students to add layers of meaning as more and more of the cartoon is revealed.
• Russian take-over of Eastern Europe, 1946-9: Interpreting a political cartoon. This simple activity encourages students to look at all the clues the cartoon provides, one at a time. (Added 20.5.09)
• 10 features of the Cold War.  But can you spot them?  Possible homework activity

Teaching international relations 1945-2005

Now that the new 2009 GCSE specifications have been approved by QCA and OFQUAL new lessons will quickly start appearing.  Expect interesting lessons on the significance of the Iraq war and terrorism, as well as a couple on Eastern Europe 1945-9.

Resources

The Berlin crisis: The BBC archive on Berlin is now available online. There’s plenty of great stuff here, ranging from lengthy Panorama documentaries (more for you, probably) on the one hand, to short highly usable interviews.  I liked the 4 minute interviews with two refugees from the Russian zone n 1953.  They give very graphic accounts of life under Communist control touching on spying, surveillance, contempt for the Soviet controlled press.

Czechoslovakia 1968: For an excellent short (10 minute) revision Youtube video on events of 1968 go to this site.  It clearly explains what Socialism with a human face looked like, covering : censorship; debate amongst the young; western influences (dancing etc); the joy experienced on May Day 1968 and the importance of trust. It captures the mood very well with interviews and interesting archival footage.

Really helpful BBC site on mapping the fall of Communism, 20 years on: Particularly useful for GCSE questions is Brian Hanrahan’s analysis of Gorbachev’s role in the fall of Communism.  He concludes a brief article with these thoughts: “With the Polish precedent to follow, challengers to communism started to pop up all over the Soviet Bloc. The collapse of communism had started and the other leaders could see it.  East Germany and Romania privately canvassed the idea of a Warsaw Pact intervention of the kind which had crushed Czechoslovakia in 1968.  But with Gorbachev in charge, their plans gained no traction.  Thinking back, it's astonishing that one man - though facing stern internal opposition - could give history such a decisive push.  Without him, communism's death throes would have been long, and far more dangerous. “

Why did the Berlin Wall come down?  A Polish perspective

The recent commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin wall twenty years ago has spawned a range of short pieces, written from different perspectives, that could be really useful in your GCSE work on interpretations. Not only will it help with those predictable questions about what was the major factor bringing about the collapse of communism, it also is real. This is what people think today and care passionately enough about to convince others of their views. These are not just sound-bite gobbets lifted from text books, they are the heartfelt views of those involved. But how should we regard them? Do we have a hunch about what they will say before we read them, based on the provenance alone? Do we expect exaggeration to surface early on? Will there be any acknowledgement of ‘other factors’ that all good GCSE students should include.

Let us take an example from today’s Guardian (10 November,2009). Written by Adam Michnick, a journalist and opposition leader who spent 6 years in prison, we might expect a certain stance.

Cold War resource: interactive timeline on nuclear activity.  If you want students to research aspects of nuclear warfare as part of broader Cold War enquiry question then you might want to add this link to www.dailyinterlake.com, to an existing webquest you have already established.

Changing historical interpretations

In his Sunday Times review of a recent book on American involvement in the Korean War called the The Coldest Winter, Max Hastings neatly sums up some of the changing interpretations of the Korea War.

Up next

• Who gained most from the Korean War? Students take on the role of one of 6 countries affected by the War as well as the UN. Using active listening techniques students have to work out the impact of each stage of the war on their own country. Who are the winners and losers?  A fortunes graph is used to summarise the impact on each participant.
• What do these cartoons say about the nature of the Cold War rivalry in the late 1940s? Two Punch cartoons, one on the Soviet take-over of Eastern Europe, one on the Berlin Airlift, are revealed, clue, by clue, for students to reassemble using custom animation on their PowerPoint presentations, to which they must add their commentary and precise dating.

• Which was the greater threat to peace in the Cold War, Korea or Cuba?
  
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