Much of this content is familiar GCSE ground of course. What you will find here are new angles and approaches. You will see from the enquiry into the naval race, that popular topics are given a new twist; students are asked to question bland textbooks assertions. Do all historians really agree that the naval race was a major cause of the war? Clearly not!
When it comes to the peace treaties, students are given the opportunity to participate in different role plays. With the League of Nations crises, such as Abyssinia, they are placed in the role of newspaper editors trying to make sense of the significance of the events for the future of European peace. They also analyse some of the more unfamiliar political cartoons.
There are some really interesting parts to this topic, not least the Drift to War. But there are also some dull ones, the ones we love teaching! such as the structure of the League of Nations. Many students find that some of the post-war treaties and disputes of the 1920s put a strain on their ability and willingness to remember lots of precise detail so we need to try harder with these to make the Aaland Island dispute come alive.
This short but engaging task precedes any detailed analysis of the terms of the treaty itself. It has four distinct elements: prediction; analysis of a rarely seen German poster; attaching significance; and refining ideas based on most recent scholarship.
Firstly, students have to...
