Teaching Industrial Britain at KS3
Industrial Britain 1750-1900: KS3 outstanding lessons
We all know that this is a vast topic and one that some colleagues have difficulty with motivating some students. You will find very little on the Four Field crop rotation here, or mules and Spinning Jennies, but there are a number of really good enquiries on life in Industrial Britain. Now that pupils coming from KS2 no longer have to study Victorian Britain, thanks to Gove’s revisions of the NC, there is an argument for giving coverage of the Industrial Revolution, its significance and consequences even more status.
The outstanding lessons that follow are all enquiry-led and each focus on one of the main second-order concepts such as change and continuity in the case of Did the Factory Act really make much difference?
The third enquiry into the high infant death rate in Bradford involves pupils in a history mystery: if the death rate for adults dropped why did very young infants continue to die in such large numbers? A similar questioning style is used to explain the conundrum of people leaving the countryside in droves (where life expectancy was 38), to work and live in Manchester where life expectancy in 1842 was about 18!
Teaching Industrial Britain to Key Stage 3
We all know that this is a vast topic and one that some colleagues have difficulty with in motivating some students. You will find very little on the Four Field…
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Did London really look like this in 1870? Your chance to test the evidence
Pupils are shown an engraving produced by Gustav Dore in 1872. It is the one you often find in KS3 textbooks as if it were a photograph representing what London…
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What’s the truth behind the Suffragette derby of 1913?
This lesson is always popular. By adding newsreel footage and facsimile artefacts to the usual array of photographs and documentary sources, this lesson aims to capitalise on pupils’ innate interest…
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Did the Factory Act of 1833 make any difference at all? An enquiry
Did the Factory Act of 1833 really improve conditions for factory workers? In this engaging KS3 history enquiry, pupils investigate the problems faced by workers in the factories of Industrial…
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The Peterloo enquiry; who was to blame?
The ‘Peterloo massacre’ was one of the defining events of its age. You could almost draw parallels with Amritsar, Sharpeville and Soweto. This enquiry spans three lessons during which pupils…
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Court of King Cholera: Where am I in the picture?
This activity works in two ways; it activates pupils’ prior knowledge in a fun way and raises questions about conditions at the time the chosen image, A Court for King…
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Smart Task Puzzle Corner – Why did so many infants die when the death rate was falling?
Puzzle corner: SMART thinking skills task on why so many infants continued to die before their first birthday at a time when the death rate was falling rapidly. This short…
Read MoreIndustrial Britain KS3 Smart Task on the changes brought about by industrialisation
This task helps pupils to develop an overview of the changes ushered in by industrialisation. The aim is to get pupils to generalise from the particular, identifying which groups of…
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Industrial Revolution KS3 Smart Task: The Mystery of the Blackburn Cemetery
Why not start your class investigation into life during the Industrial Revolution with a mystery? Based on a recent discovery of 800 child skeletons in a cemetery in Blackburn, pupils…
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Puzzle Corner 2: Analysing Victorian photographs: the puzzle of the Tredegar patch girls.
Beguilingly simple, but actually quite thought-provoking, this short smart task teaches pupils not to take things at face value – a key skill if they are to progress in history. …
Read MoreWritten by Neil Thompson
All content on Keystage history is written and quality assured by Neil Thompson, a former history teacher, county history adviser and Ofsted inspector with more than 30 years’ experience in history education.