Outstanding History Lessons at GCSE

ks3 classroom There is probably more material already on the web for GCSE history teaching at KS4 than for any other key stage. Much of it is written for students.

This section of the site is for teachers. The long and growing list of lessons on most sections of most specifications has been created from actual lessons, in the hope that it will stimulate even better ideas in your department. These lessons were taught by teachers whom I have seen in action and with whom I have discussed the lesson. You will find no lessons that have not been carefully validated by a highly experienced expert – me.

GCSE History Topic	Historical focus
American West GCSE History	Westward expansion, Native Americans, settlement and conflict
Britain 1890–1975 GCSE History	Political, social and economic change in modern Britain
Crime and Punishment GCSE History	Crime, law enforcement and punishment through time
Elizabethan England GCSE History	Elizabeth I, religion, society and challenges to Tudor rule
Germany 1919–1945 GCSE History	Weimar Germany, Nazi rise to power and life under Hitler
Historic Environment GCSE History	Using sites, buildings and landscapes as historical evidence
International Relations 1890–1945 GCSE History	World War One, peace settlements and international tension
International Relations 1945–1990 GCSE History	Cold War origins, crises, conflict and the end of communism
Medicine Through Time GCSE History	Change and continuity in medicine, surgery and public health
Migration GCSE History	Migration to and from Britain and its causes and consequences
Russia 1905–1990 GCSE History	Revolution, Lenin, Stalin and the Soviet Union
USA 1900–1990 GCSE History	American society, economy, civil rights and political change

How much did the Gestapo really control people’s lives in Hitler’s Germany?

This enquiry-based lesson acquaints students with a live political controversy using an excerpt from ‘The Nazis: a warning from history’ video to stimulate students to consider how they would set about checking…

Did all Germans benefit equally from life under the Nazi regime 1933-45?

This GCSE lesson , which could also work at AS level, uses two principal activities, known as ‘market place’ and ‘spectrum’ to help students to work out how individuals, and…

SMART TASK: A Suffragette procession: comparing the evidence

Whether you are studying the OCR unit, AQA or Edexcel you should find this activity helpful. The activity builds on an initial idea from the revised Edexcel Teacher’s Guide for…

Why did some women get the vote in 1918? How do YOU see it?

This lesson provides an excellent example of active learning, combining thinking skills and work on interpretations. Students start with one historian’s construct. They have to read the historian’s mind, that…

Children queuing for their Farthing breakfast ©National Archives

How far did the Liberal government of 1906-14 improve the health of children?

This highly relevant lesson offers a major contribution to the Every Child Matters agenda on staying healthy, as well as picking up the Jamie Oliver’s school meals initiative. After a…

How serious was the German naval threat before the First World War?

This lesson launches an enquiry in which students work in teams to arrive at their own answer to this question. Following a very brief introduction, students are introduced to the…

How have cartoonists portrayed the Liberals Old Age Pensions reforms?

This lesson takes a familiar cartoon but gives it an original twist. Instead of seeing the cartoon all at once, students see it in four separate parts, which in pairs…

Reasons for reliability. How reliable a witness would Charles Booth make in an investigation into living conditions at the end of the 19th century ?

This lesson focuses on encouraging students to evaluate the testimony of just one man, Charles Booth. It opens with an analysis of the reasons why the Liberal government introduced its…

Should the statue to Haig be taken down from Whitehall?

This active lesson asks students to work in teams to weigh up the arguments for and against the proposal of the title. Initially students are either researchers or witnesses, i.e…

Downfall of the Tsar

This lesson, taught to a group of poorly motivated Y10 students followed a description of events leading to the February revolution of 1917. The overarching question was ‘Why was the…

Lenin the Final Verdict

This lesson makes students active participators in the debate over Lenin’s contribution to the Russian Revolution. It comes at the end of the students study of the period 1917-24. Using…

German cartoon of Stalin analysed image by image. See PowerPoint

Interpreting a political cartoon of Stalin

This lesson revolves around a cartoon annotation and inference activity leading to a detailed and authoritative caption. It concludes the unit of work on Stalin’s purges and is used as…

Why did the Reds win the Russian Civil War? A history mystery to explain why the reds were able to SLUG it out

This lesson encourages students to take their understanding of the events of the Russian Civil War to a new level by ‘making their own meaning’. They use history mystery cards…

SMART TASK Key Stage 4 – Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis

With the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile crisis in the news, it is worth spending time reviewing Kennedy’s reputation. Here is a short task to get GCSE students thinking….

New Deal or No Deal? How has the New Deal been criticised?

This lesson is an active one in which students co-operate in order to put the best case they can against the New Deal. It is the first lesson on opposition…

Why was there a boom in the US economy in the 1920s?

This lesson was designed for Y10 students on the C/D borderline who were underachieving and were falling down on the factual recall required. The students were used to being spoon-fed…

Roosevelt and the 1936 election: can you write his manifesto?

It is the year 1936 and Roosevelt wants to be re-elected. Students work in groups to create his campaign manifesto pulling together all the work they have done in previous…

Recommended Resources

The main headings focus on the historical background to Bloody Sunday and are organized as below. Division & Peace Ireland’s Bloody Past 1 – Lower Ireland’s Bloody Past 2 –…

SMART TASK 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. As they work through them students discuss the nature of irony and…

SMART TASK Key Stage 4 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. They then have…

SMART TASK Key Stage 4: The Cuban Missile Crisis. Who was the real winner, Kennedy or Khrushchev?

Coming at the end of a study of the Cuban Missile crisis, students have to consider the ways in which the crisis might have been viewed by the USA and…

Cartoon used in plenary to test understanding

Who was more responsible for increasing Cold War tension between 1945 and 1949, the USA or the USSR?

This lesson challenges students to prepare a court case against both countries. The case against the USA will be made by one half of the class. That against the USSR…

Why did the US lose the war in Vietnam? A piece of cake?

In this lesson students focus on moving their understanding of the reasons for US defeat from simply listing and grouping, to prioritizing and linking. They are shown a variety of…

SMART TASK: Who said what at Versailles? A fun competitive team game with a serious purpose

This simple activity asks students to think who would be the most likely person to make this statement at the Paris peace conference that led to the Treaty of Versailles. …

How could you improve Ben Walsh's diagram?

SMART TASK: At what stage would you say it was obvious that the League of Nations would fail to keep peace?

This short task and associated homework asks students to beat the textbook. First they are reminded of the record of the League. It was not a complete laughing stock as…

Could the Treaty of Versailles be justified at the time?

This lesson was taught by Claire Conley-Harper and her excellent team of history teachers at Court Moor School in Fleet, Hampshire. Context This lesson is taught at KS4, as part…

Animation of labels for this cartoon allow understanding to be built progressively

Was it the Manchurian or the Abyssinian crisis that spelled the end of the League of Nations?

There is a website that offers GCSE students this essay but at a cost. It is fairly accurately called www.cheat.com. We don’t want to cheat, and we certainly don’t want…

Why did the League of Nations fail?

It’s a piece of cake (F.A.I.L.U.R.E. is not an option) Students have already studied the major episodes in the history of the League up to 1939 and in passing have…

Invasion of the Rhineland 1936 – a study in political cartoon analysis

All too often when the students see political cartoons in textbooks they focus on an oval shape in the centre of the picture, often missing peripheral detail and occasionally ignoring…

Outstanding Lessons: Key Stage 4

There is probably more material already on the web for GCSE history teaching at KS4 than for any other key stage. Much of it is written for students. This section…

Explaining why there were so many casualties on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. SMART TASK

This task, suitable for KS3 Year 9 or KS4 students, presents them with something of a conundrum. When the Allies had far more men than the Germans and had fired…

Why are these accounts of the Battle of the Somme, written by the same person, so different? SMART TASK

This task, suitable for Y9 in KS3 or KS4, drives at the heart of source evaluation. Students explore two sources, authored by the same journalist, Philip Gibbs, but written 4…

Vesalius’ claim to fame. Using the B.A.D formula to prepare for a BBC interview

The BBC is making a documentary on Renaissance medicine in which they have devoted two minutes to the work of Vesalius. Unfortunately, their Vesalius expert is ill and they thought…

Prehistoric Medicine: Getting your GCSE course off to a great start

This lesson was taught by Mike Herrity when Head of History at Wildern School, Hedge End, near Southampton. On an OFSTED inspection the lead inspector pronounced the lesson quite outstanding…

Why was this World War One painting censored?

Students studying Britain during World War One, whether it be for AQA, OCR or Edexcel, need to know about censorship. This deceptively simple lesson asks penetrating questions which both engage…

Battalion 101. Why did they shoot? A history mystery

This lesson could be used as part of a Year 9 course or with the Germany module of Y10/11 SHP or Modern World. Students are confronted with moral issues and…

SMART TASK: Germany 1933-34 Revision Quickie

Which factors played their part in establishing Nazi dictatorship in 1933-4? Subscribers only: You must be logged in to view this content in full. Please Login or register

SMART TASK: GCSE questions on Renaissance Medicine

Using Zones of relevance to answer two possible questions on Renaissance Medicine. Have you ever despaired of GCSE history students who answer the question they want to answer rather than…

Rosa Parks – the true story

This open-ended enquiry explores one of the most abiding stories of American Civil Rights. Students are invited to advise a film director on what actually happened in Montgomery in December…

Smart Task: How close to World War Three did the world come in the 65 years after World War Two?

Helping pupils to develop overviews of different timescales is central to the Key Stage 3 curriculum. When so few carry on post-14 to study the 20th century (probably only 1…

GCSE Modern World history: 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 football to tell the story. This quick activity, supported…

Marking the anniversary of the Wall Street Crash

To mark the 80th anniversary of the Wall St. Crash in 1929, the Guardian produced a simple guide to the crash told using 9 photographs. Could students do the same…

Were medieval crimes and punishments as brutal as people think? Two smart tasks

First students work collaboratively to distil from 16 pieces of evidence provided, the ones they think give them the most significant information they need to work into a 6 sentence…

Outstanding Lessons for teaching GCSE history

Login

Search

★ Curriculum health check

★ My bookmarks

Recent added

Recent searches

Written by Neil Thompson