History Teaching Smart Tasks for GCSE

This section of the site look at smart tasks: short enquiry-led thinking skills activities. Unlike the outstanding lessons section, they do not attempt to offer a lesson plan but do offer a fully-resourced activity with clear learning objectives that can be used flexibly at different stages of a lesson.  Some are starters, some plenaries but most are simply highly effective ways of deepening pupils’ historical understanding.  At present there are smart tasks on the following.  In time, there will be just as many smart tasks as full lessons, and probably more.  PLEASE NOTE; MOST RECENT UPDATES WILL BE AT THE TOP OF THE LIST IN EACH SECTION

New GCSE source enquiry

A Suffragette procession: comparing the evidence.  British history source enquiry, suitable for SHP or Modern World. Whether you are studying the OCR unit, AQA or Edexcel you should find this activity helpful. 

New GCSE Modern World

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

Smart Task: Working out what the posters tell us about who voted Nazi? Students have to work collaboratively, against the clock to analyse a range of posters produced by the Nazi party in order to work out why people voted for Hitler. How far do the posters really explain the voters' motives? What other evidence would they use? Fully resourced with PowerPoint and teaching notes.

Smart Task: How successful was Nazi policy towards women and families? (Members Only) Thinking skills spectrum activity that focus students’ on the demands of a typical exam question. They make judgements about the value and weighting of 16 pieces of evidence, placing them on a continuum and taking into account change over time. The most able go on to consider how paradoxical or contradictory the policy seemed to be.

Causes of the Wall Street Crash (Members Only)  Students use a set of influence cards to see if they can explain the paradox of the Wall Street Crash.  If people thought they could get rich quick in the 1920s why did it come to such an abrupt end in 1929?  Working on this history mystery, students think through ways of framing an explanation before seeing how their view matches with a that of a TV programme.

At what stage would you say it was obvious that the League of Nations would fail to keep peace? (Members Only)  Interesting 'Beat the textbook' activity in which students consider the importance of different turning points in order to create their own diagram to show the relative steepness of the League of Nations' descent into failure in the 1930s. Can they do better than the great Ben Walsh?

Who said what at Versailles?  (Members Only) A fun competitive team game with a serious purpose.

Weighing up the evidence for who caused the Reichstag Fire.  Stimulating starter, followed by simple task in which students weigh every individual piece of evidence for each of the three main theories as part of preparation for a role play of the trial scene.

Was the Weimar Republic doomed from the start? A glass half empty? Fun lesson in which half the class plays the optimist and half the pessimist. They think through ideas on the cards provided before selecting the three most clinching arguments for both sides. Task ends with creative activity coming up with suitable sub-headings for parts of chapters dealing with 1918-23 and 1924-29.

How significant was the Montgomery Bus Boycott in the history of Civil Rights?  Quick ranking activity in which GCSE/AS students have to consider the relative significance of 11 possible arguments that have been used by historians who claim that the Montgomery bus boycott was the real start of the Civil Right movement in USA. 

Why did the US get involved in the Vietnam War? Three separate short activities help students produce a top grade answer to the question.

Why did communism end when it did in Eastern Europe? A GCSE Diamond 9 ranking activity on the reasons for the fall of communism in Eastern Europe.

Marking the anniversary of the Wall Street Crash Students produce a pictorial guide and then compare their commentary with The Guardian's.

Using history of football to interest boys in Inter-war relations 1919-39. If you have ever found it difficult to motivate boys looking at the Inter-war years from 1919-39, why not try using this simple PowerPoint with photos and video clip to tell the story.

Thoroughly Modern Millie: How do we know this song is about Flappers? A quick musical starter

How popular was the Vietnam War?  Really effective starter in which students compare two photographs, raise five good questions and are provided with quick informative feedback.

Using topical political cartoons to help with GCSE Modern World source analysis
This task adapted slightly from the one provided by Andy Butterworth, Bridgemary Community school, Gosport, engages students with analyzing a topical, fun cartoon and applying the same approach to one about the Treaty of Versailles.

Why was Rohm murdered? (Members Only) A history mystery involving card sort and use of sources.

Stalin and Korea (Members Only) Systematic analysis of a famous Punch cartoon which involves students in: asking initial questions; annotating the features of the cartoon and then writing a high quality caption with the help of an authoritative PowerPoint presentation.

Berlin Blockade Slow reveal of famous birdwatcher cartoon culminates in asking students to work out the date of the cartoon having explored all the contextual clues in the image.

Cold War code (Members Only). Simple activity in which students are given the initial letter of 10 typical features of the Cold War which they have to work out, in pairs, as soon as they come into the room. Provokes interest and discussion and helps students to develop and overall ‘feel for period’.

Russian take-over of Eastern Europe (Members Only) Slow-reveal technique to analyse the Punch cartoonist’s message

Revision quickie on how Hitler rose from Chancellor to Fuhrer (Members Only) using the strategy known as chemical equations.

SHP

18th century surgery This quick activity asks students to explore the detail in Rowlandson’s cartoon called ‘Amputation’. They score one mark for each of the 10 labelled examples of relevant detail and 3 marks each for good inferences. If they can explain the purpose of the cartoon they score an extra 5. First to 20 wins. Accompanying PowerPoint, supported by teacher notes which give you all the detail you need to impress even the most able students!

Smart Task: Why were mining towns such lawless places? (Members Only) This is a very straightforward, yet highly effective task with PowerPoint which asks students to distinguish between the generic and the specific, to speculate about possible reasons from clues, to think creatively about historical myths and just as importantly to know how to get full marks on this GCSE question.

How and why did Victorian prisons change in the first half of Victoria's reign: a Webquest leading to a brief filmed presentation (Members Only) Short smart task to help students explore the changing nature of prisons between 1840 and 1880: includes ICT dimension using a webquest and Movie Maker.

Opening up of the Western frontier by the railroads. A history mystery.  American West Mystery surrounding railroads and opening up of the west. Full lesson plan and PowerPoint to help thinking skills.

The Metropolitan police force in 1830  Very quick introduction to a cartoon from 1830. Using the slow reveal technique, each part of the cartoon is analysed in turn before considering the importance of date and purpose.

Why was the Metropolitan Police Force set up in 1829? (Members Only)  This activity forms the central spine of a lesson on the reasons for setting up the Metropolitan Police Force in 1829. Students work in pairs to come up with a satisfying explanation. Rather than use the textbook directly, they are given a set of 12 cards.

Mountain Men - myth and reality (Members Only)  This task starts with an interesting story, before exploring and explaining two contrasting images of Mountain Men's encounter with the native Indians.

Crime and Punishment starter: Smuggling (Members Only)  This simple smart task uses an unusual source, a famous Kipling poem, to ascertain what students already know about smuggling and what they need to know.

Why did the Indians lose control of the Great Plains?  I want that for my essay (Members Only) Students practise using evidence flexibly to answer two slightly different questions on the same theme.

Renaissance Medicine; is the artist ‘taking the piss’? (Members Only) Students explore a 17th century painting and try to deduce the artist’s attitude to contemporary physicians.

Medieval medicine. Slow reveal of an interesting woodcut, enables pupils to build their understanding of what the image is portraying by small degrees.

Attitudes of the US government to the Native Americans Students milk the meaning of an unusual image of white attitudes to the Native Americans.

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