Teaching The History of Medicine At GCSE

Fun anachronism-spotting activity set in 1796, for GCSE History of Medicine

Most anachronism activities used in schools are the rather naff ones put before Y7 pupils in an introduction to What is History. You know the sort of thing: Roman soldiers wearing wrist watches. This activity is...

SMART TASK: History of medicine Renaissance physicians; Is the artist taking the piss?

In this short activity students are shown two contrasting images of a physician inspecting a patient’s urine. Students have to guess the provenance and date. It transpires that they are 250 years apart. Does this...

SMART TASK: Medieval medicine. What can we work out from the picture?

A smart task based on an original idea from Lorna Hunter, of Swanmore Technology College. This deceptively simple example of a familiar technique takes students from the known to the unknown. They begin by annotating all...

SMART TASK Revision: name your best squad

To help students remember who the key individuals were in the history of medicine, you might like to present them as members of two opposing football teams.... [private] Team A is clearly the best squad of 11, perhaps with...

SMART TASK: Why was there so much opposition to Jenner’s ideas on vaccination in the 19th century?

This is a short, fun SMART task. All the instructions are on the PowerPoint presentation. Start with slide 2 which sets the puzzle, a paradox. If Jenner was so highly regarded and his ideas paved...

SMART TASK Key Stage 4: GCSE SHP Medicine: 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. ...

Penicillin: From discovery to world-wide use? Who should take the credit?

Students have to divide a $100 million bequest to those people who did most to develop penicillin. But in what ratio? Should Fleming get it all? What about the Oxford team, Florey and Chain, even...

Teaching the new GCSE thematically: 10 approaches that really work

Now that all schools have to teach a thematic study I thought I’d share my experience of observing hundreds of GCSE SHP lessons over almost 20 years. I have distilled them down to just my...