Key Stage 4 Smart Tasks

Smart tasks are imaginative learning activities of varying lengths that exemplify the best features of outstanding lessons. They come fully-resourced, often differentiated, and are sure to inspire even better strategies within your own lessons.

SMART TASK: A history puzzle – Opening up of the Western frontier by the railroads. A history mystery

This history puzzle focuses on a well-known painting, Across the Continent, but one which is actually more puzzling than might at first appear. The task starts simply and then becomes complex. Initially, all students have to do is to annotate a copy of the 1868 painting of...

Why were mining towns such lawless places?

This is a very straightforward, yet highly effective task 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...

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 a couple of substitutes. The ‘second team’ would be the next...

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 the way for the eventual eradication of smallpox, why then...

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...

The lesson starts with a glass of water which you have filled to roughly half way. Students have to say whether they would describe the bottle as half full or half-empty. Use this to introduce the notion of historians who take the optimistic and pessimistic points...

Fascinating starter in which students have to spot and then explain the differences between three pairs of photos of Soviet leaders Lenin and Stalin taken between 1920 and 1930. Excellent material to promote discussion of manipulation of leaders’ image and the cult of the personality.

Resources

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Smart Task: How popular was the Vietnam war? What can we learn from just two photographs?

This simple starter uses just two contrasting photographs, one showing the popularity of Johnson’s policy towards Vietnam, the other opposition to it. How can we explain the difference? Students generate questions to ask about each source before being given the answers on the PowerPoint presentation. ...

Three separate short activities help students produce a top grade answer to the question.

Task I - brainstorming early ideas

This first introductory task simply asks students to consider the various reasons why the US got involved in Vietnam, going over what has already been learned. Students...

Quick ranking activity for GCSE/AS students. Students are asked 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. The 11 arguments and full...

Influence cards: If the price of stocks and shares continued to rise year by year in the 1920s, why did the Wall Street Crash happen suddenly in 1929?

Students are given a set of influence cards which help them to work out the answer to an apparent paradox. If people were getting rich quick in the 1920s, why then was there such a crash in 1929? Here the focus is on students making their...

This Smart task uses a Punch cartoon as part of a lesson on the Korean War. It carefully steers students through several thinking processes. To start with they have to raise good historical questions. They then annotate a copy using the guidelines provided. When you...

This task is run along the lines of a newsroom simulation. Students take on the role of an editorial team whose job it is to make sense of a complex situation, in a little known part of the world, and to assess it likely impact...

This section, dominated by the Cold War focuses mainly on teaching its origins, its main crises and the reason why it came to an end. With the recent 'strengthening' of GCSE specifications many schools who had hitherto taught Inter-war International Relations alongside Germany 1918-39, now...

This activity is great for getting students off their feet and talking to every other students in the class - with a clear purpose! The idea is that every student is given a role card. You will want to differentiate these, matching the complexity of the...

This smart task works as a starter. Students are given 7 reasons why Hitler came to power. In just 5 minutes, and working in pairs, they have to see if they can find and explain any links between the reasons given on Resource Sheet 1...

In pairs, Y9/GCSE students visit 9 different cartoons posted around the wall. They have to work out: a. Which cause is being ‘covered’ in each cartoon - sometimes two. b. Which causes are NOT covered. They are given a textbook diagram explaining the causes in the form of an...

small illustrations of reasons for failure of prohibition

In this varied series of activities, students predict from pictures, categorise influence cards, and create a tweet before structuring an answer that will impress a GCSE examiner.

Starter

Project slide 2 which is a pretty dramatic image. What does it show and how does it help answer...

In this short starter smart task students are given two contradictory accounts of the start of the Korean War, both emanating from Korea. But which account do they think is more plausible and which extract goes with which book? Students look for loaded language and...

Fun lesson in which small groups have to predict punishments meted out for specific crimes in 1786 using original documents and then see if they were correct. They then try to work out why so few executions took place, prioritising their ideas with support to...

1949 German Poster showing benefits of Marhsall Aid

The activities in this very varied lesson ask students to raise questions, place sources on a continuum, add analysis to a short descriptive account and quickly tweet a caption to three contemporary cartoons. Starter Show slide 1 which is a German poster from 1949 advertising an exhibition...

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...

This simple smart task uses the rather unusual source of a famous Kipling poem to ascertain what students already know about smuggling and what they need to know. The lesson starts with you quickly reading the poem aloud to help with motivation and encourage the lower-attaining...

Throughout history, people have had different views of poachers. Were they: a. Starving labourers, snaring game to keep body and soul together, OR b. Members of gangs targeting places such as deer parks in order to sell on what they caught? Pupils are give just a couple of minutes to...

Webquest leading to a brief filmed presentation Introduction: The Chief Examiner’s report for OCR June 2008 examination made the following point: “A number of reports have identified 19C prison reform as an area of difficulty, because : a. there was no clear pattern b. it was seemingly contradictory”. For...

Schools have been teaching the American West as part of the SHP course for over 30 years. I introduced it myself in the first department I led. There have been so many examination questions set on this module and so many good textbooks now available...

The simple PowerPoint presents students with an image which has six separate panels for them to investigate. Only by exploring each in turn can the true meaning of the document be established. Groups of three or four work on each and either annotate their own...

Students work in pairs to answer a GCSE question. They have cards of relevant information to sort through to help prepare their answer. But there is a snag. The questions they have been given look similar but are not the same. The students have to...

Having looked at the role of Indian trappers who had been supplying skins to British, French and Spanish traders on the Missouri river for decades, students now turn their attention to the Mountain Men. What were they really like? The lesson starts with a funny story...

This smart task looks at iconic moments in Irish history and then challenges students to think how well each event is known by the Catholic and Protestant communities. 1. Start by asking students in pairs (one to be a Catholic student, the other a Protestant to...

Recap

This is the concluding lesson on the Easter Rising. If you want a good recap so that students hit the ground running this short Open University film fits the bill very well, lasting just 2 mins 30 seconds. To help students get a feel for the...

If Ernst Rohm was one of Hitler’s closest allies, as you can see in this photo, why then did he have him and other members of the SA murdered in June 1934? On the cards you have been given are several ideas that have been put...

This simple task engages students in thinking for themselves why people voted for Hitler in the 1930s. It uses the simple but visually appealing medium of election posters. Students work in teams of three to see if they can be the first to find 6...

Germany 1920-23. Can you spot any pattern in the uprisings during that period?

This activity was designed for more able students working towards a Modern World History GCSE in Year 10. It leads towards the election poster lesson that features on the outstanding lessons section of the website. This is not a full lesson as such: rather, it...

New GCSE 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. The activity builds on an initial idea from the revised Edexcel Teacher’s Guide for the new SHP GCSE course. ...

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. Kennedy was a young president. Khrushchev thought he could push Kennedy around. The Bay of Pigs of April 1961...

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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 then attempt to date the cartoon using their contextual knowledge. This proves a really good...
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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 to guess the date from the internal clues, before seeing a detailed animated version. Cartoon reproduced...
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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 the Soviet Union. To stimulate discussion they are shown a short extract from Khrushchev’s motives...
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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. What makes this more fun is that students work in teams of 4. They have...
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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 shown by the facts produced by Niall Ferguson on PowerPoint slide 2. Now ask students...
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SMART TASK: Germany 1933-34 Revision Quickie

Which factors played their part in establishing Nazi dictatorship in 1933-4? [private] This activity presents the factors in the form of an equation.
f C t D = F + V + PS + P + L + M + WO + PoS

from Chancellor to Dictator
where: F= V= PS= P= L= M= WO= PoS= Power of...
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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 1955. They are introduced to the standard, simplified, textbook version that all young Americans are...
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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 by a fully illustrated PowerPoint (with photos and video clips), uses football to mark out...
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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 and then compare their commentary to the one on the Guardian site In the featured...
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SMART TASK: 10 features of the Cold War but can you spot them?

Students often learn about the Cold War in chronological order. This activity offers them an opportunity to explore 10 aspects of the Cold War. You could make this into a Blockbuster game as used on other websites such as www.burntcakes.com You could also make your own...
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Thoroughly Modern Millie: How do we know this song is about Flappers? A quick musical starter

Students are given the lyrics of a song about flappers (copy provided) and have to find 10 references that prove the connection. The first is done together as a whole class; the other 9 can be found quickly. To help students visualise what flappers look...
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GCSE SHP Crime and Punishment: The Metropolitan police force in 1830: SMART TASK

This quick starter uses the slow reveal technique which encourages students to explore parts of a cartoon in a particular sequence, before revealing the whole. Using the animated PowerPoint presentation of a British Museum cartoon, students have to consider the significance of each part of...
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