I am a History Teacher with a love for producing high quality and easily accessible history lessons, which I have accumulated and adapted for over 20 years of my teaching career. I appreciate just how time consuming teaching now is and the difficulty of constantly producing resources for an ever changing curriculum.
I am a History Teacher with a love for producing high quality and easily accessible history lessons, which I have accumulated and adapted for over 20 years of my teaching career. I appreciate just how time consuming teaching now is and the difficulty of constantly producing resources for an ever changing curriculum.
Edexcel GCSE Medicine in Britain c.1250 to present.
The aim of the Medicine Revision Guide is to help students with their revision for the History GCSE exam.
This 42 page Revision Guide is broken down into 5 main sections: Medieval Medicine, Renaissance Medicine, Medicine in 18th and 19th Century, Modern Medicine and the Historic Environment, British sector of the Western Front .
This revision guide includes 29 GCSE practice exam questions throughout on the main questions and gives examples on how to answer each using model answers.
This will enable all learners to achieve the higher grades required by the exam board, including the skills of description, explanation, interpretation, change and continuity, source utility and cause and consequence.
The information is also broken down into an easy to use format to aid the students in their revision programme.
This Guide has been designed to be engaging, detailed and easy to follow and comes in Word and PDF format if there is a wish to change.
It can be used for revision, interleaving, home learning as well as class teaching.
Any reviews on this resource would be much appreciated.
Please email me for a free copy of any of my resources worth up to £3.50 if you do.
These nine lessons are designed to cover Britain’s transatlantic slave trade: its effects and its eventual abolition.
This bundle addresses key historical skills: How did slavery show change and continuity throughout its history? What were the causes and consequences of the triangle trade on slavery? What were the similarities and differences in the actions of the slave owners? What was significant about the work of William Wilberforce or the help given by Harriet Tubman to the underground railway?
These skills are addressed in each of the lessons and allow students to be able to make connections, draw contrasts, analyse trends and be able to create their own structured accounts and written narratives.
All the lessons come with retrieval practice activities and suggested teaching and learning strategies, They come in PowerPoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change
The lessons are also differentiated and link to the latest interpretations of slavery from the BBC and other sources.
The lessons are as follows:
L1 The origins of Slavery
L2 The triangular trade
L3 The Middle Passage
L4 The Slave Auction
L5 The Slave Plantations
L6 Punishments and Resistance
L7 William Wilberforce and the Abolition of Slavery
L8 Underground Railroad
L9 Black people in the American Civil War
If you like this resource, please review it and choose any of my resources worth up to £3 for free.
This bundle follows the Key Stage 3 National Curriculum - challenges for Britain, Europe and the wider world 1901 to the present day with a focus on the Second World War and the wartime leadership of Winston Churchill.
The aims of this bundle are to know and understand how people’s lives in Britain were affected by World War II under the guidance of Winston Churchill.
I have created, readapted and used these lessons to challenge and engage students, but also to show how much fun learning about this part of history really is.
Students will learn and understand key historical skills throughout such as continuity and change in the role and use of propaganda in World War II, the causes and consequences of the policy of appeasement, breaking the Enigma Code or the evacuation of children, the similarities and differences of life on the Home Front, the significance of Winston Churchill and interpretations about whether there really was a Blitz spirit.
The lessons are as follows:
L1 Adolf Hitler
L2 Causes of World War II
L3 Appeasement
L4 Winston Churchill
L5 The Home Front - preparations
L6 The Home Front - propaganda
L7 The Home Front - rationing
L8 The Home Front - women (free lesson)
L9 Evacuation of children
L10 The Blitz
L11 The Enigma Code
L12 Prisoners of war (free lesson)
L13 Occupation of the Channel Islands
This bundle on the Second World War includes retrieval practice activities, suggested teaching strategies and differentiated materials.
All lessons come in PowerPoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change.
I have also included two free lessons in the bundle to give an idea of what is being offered.
I would also strongly recommend you assess students on this unit of study based on GCSE style questions from your chosen exam board.
This is the complete bundle in a series of lessons I have created for AQA GCSE 9-1 Britain: Health and the People, c.1000-present.
I have taught this course for more than 20 years now and have decided to completely overhaul my lessons to bring them up to date with the latest teaching and learning ideas I have picked up.
Furthermore I have dispensed with learning objectives to focus on specific enquiry based questions which address skills required for the GCSE questions.
As well as focusing on GCSE exam practice questions, the lessons are all differentiated and are tailored to enable the students to achieve the highest grades. They are also fully resourced and contain easy to print worksheets.
The lessons will allow students to demonstrate (AO1) knowledge and understanding of the key features and characteristics of the periods studied from the impact of Hippocrates and Galen on medieval medicine to the new ideas of the Renaissance, the laissez-faire approach of preceding Governments through to modern day Government and the nanny state.
They will study (AO2) second-order concepts such as change and continuity in the development of ideas about disease as well as the causes and consequences of medical treatment throughout the ages
The analysis and evaluation of sources (AO3) are used in for example, surgery, Public Health and the introduction of the NHS whilst substantiated judgements are made (AO4) on the discovery and development of penicillin, the development of the welfare state and the influence of the seven factors in medicine.
The lessons are as follows:
L1 An introduction to the course
L2 Hippocrates and Galen
L3 The influence of the Christian Church
L4 Islamic Medicine (free resource)
L5 Doctors and surgeons in the Middle Ages
L6 Public Health in the Medieval towns
L7 The Black Death and the Plague
L8 Renaissance Medicine
L9 Medicine in the 17th and 18th Century (free resource)
L10 John Hunter
L11 Edward Jenner and smallpox
L12 Surgery in the 19th Century
L13 Florence Nightingale and hospitals
L14 Pasteur, Koch and Tyndall
L15 Public Health in the 19th Century
L16 Liberal Reforms
L17 Medicine and war (free resource)
L18 Magic Bullets and the Pharmaceutical Industry
L19 Penicillin
L20 The NHS
L21 How to answer the factor question
The lessons are fully adaptable in PowerPoint and can be changed to suit.
Please note that setting a full mock examination in class after completing each unit is strongly recommended (L1-7, L8-15 and L16-21).
All the examination resources and markschemes are subject to copyright but can easily be found on the AQA website.
Unfortunately TES restrict bundles to 20 lessons and therefore please download Lesson 17 separately, which is a free resource.
Cold War and the Olympics
This lesson explores the link between the Cold War and sport.
As with technology and space exploration, sport was an area where rival powers could prove or assert their dominance without going to war.
Students compete a recall, retention and retrieval task on the previous Vietnam War lesson before undertaking a true or false quiz.
They analyse and evaluate medal tally statistics from previous Olympics and make judgement about the anomalies in different years.
They are given an account of the history of Olympic success and are challenged as to why it was so important to do well for your respective country.
As with previous lessons they use the light bulb and key question to continue to annotate around as the fear of losing spurred both nations on to different extremes.
No lesson on Cold War sports would be complete without refence to the Rocky film and the US propaganda machine is in full force as grit and determination to train is pitted against the use of drugs to cheat. Students can then determine which statement to agree with and use argument words to convince their peers.
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The resource comes in PowerPoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change and is differentiated.
I have also included suggested teaching strategies to deliver the lesson.
The English Civil War
The aim of this lesson is to evaluate the devastating consequences that alleged witchcraft had on communities in Stuart England.
Students will be posed questions such as: Why were the Stuarts so obsessed with witches and witchcraft? How and why did the Pendle witch trials cause so much historical notoriety and infamy? and How could you even recognise a witch and why should they be feared in the local community?
These questions will be answered and explained in this lesson, which ultimately focuses on the Pendle witch trials and its results for English society as a whole, who soon lived in fear and terror for their lives.
Activities include evidence collection, a true or false quiz, a literacy challenge as well as video analysis.
The lesson is enquiry based with a key question using a lightbulb posed at the start of the lesson and revisited throughout to show the progress of learning.
The resource includes suggested teaching strategies and differentiated materials and comes in PowerPoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change.
AQA GCSE 9-1 Elizabethan England, 1568-1603
This lesson aims to explain how Elizabeth approached the sensitive subject of religion in a calm and pragmatic fashion.
The first part of the lesson concentrates on the differences between Protestants and Catholics and why Elizabeth should take a different perspective on religion compared to her predecessors.
The second part of the lesson describes and explains the Elizabethan Settlement using a text mapping activity before students answer a GCSE question on the significance of the Settlement in the context of her reign. The lesson is also linked to video footage from the film Elizabeth.
The lesson is enquiry based with a key question using a lightbulb posed at the start of the lesson and revisited to show the progress of learning.
The resource includes suggested teaching strategies, retrieval practice, differentiated materials and comes in PowerPoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change.
Any reviews will be greatly appreciated
AQA GCSE Elizabethan England 1568-1603
The aim of this Revision Guide is to help students with their revision and preparation for the GCSE History exam.
This is a summary of the AQA GCSE History Elizabethan England 1568-1603 unit.
It has also been devised to include the historic environment question for 2025 on Hardwick Hall, with an emphasis on location, function and structure, people connected, design and important events connected to it.
The resource is in booklet form and is ideal for the student who wants a quick recap before the exam as it sets out all the main details in bullet form.
It is also extremely useful and cheap for printing and giving out when the students claim they have forgotten everything they have been taught!
I have included both PDF and Word formats so the resource can be edited and changed to suit.
This bundle is the second part in a series of lessons I have created for AQA GCSE 9-1 Germany 1890-1945: Democracy and Dictatorship.
As well as focusing on GCSE exam practice questions, the lessons apply the skills necessary to enable the students to achieve the highest grades.
The lessons will allow students to demonstrate (AO1) knowledge and understanding of the key features and characteristics of the period studied from the Wall Street Crash and the transformation of the Nazi Party into an electable and indelible force.
They will study (AO2) second-order concepts such as change and continuity in the economic problems facing Germany and the causes and consequences of Hitler becoming Chancellor.
The analysis and evaluation of sources (AO3) are used in for example The Night of the Long Knives lesson whilst substantiated judgements are made (AO4) on the limited opposition in Nazi Germany as it moved from a democratic into a totalitarian state.
The lessons are as follows:
L1 The Wall Street Crash
L2 The rise of the Nazis and the transformation of the Nazi Party
L3 Hitler becomes Chancellor (free resource)
L4 Reichstag Fire and Enabling Act
L5 The Night of the Long Knives
L6 The Nazi Police State
Please note that setting a full mock examination in class after completing this unit is strongly recommended.
All the examination resources and markschemes are subject to copyright but can easily be found on the AQA website.
Each resource gives suggested teaching strategies and are differentiated . They come in PDF and Powerpoint formats and can be amended and changed to suit.
The resources all include suggested teaching strategies, retrieval practice, differentiated materials and come in PowerPoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change.
This lesson was borne out of a necessity to explain and clarify the theatres of war in World War II after teaching this unit of study at Key Stage 3 to my classes.
Having taught this unit last year without this lesson, I found students were getting confused as to where World War II was being fought on a global stage; whether it be fighting in Europe, in the Atlantic, North Africa or in the Far East.
Therefore this lesson aims to simplify the geographical locations covered. Using a world map, they have to plot which countries were involved and who they were fighting for, be it for the Allies or the Axis powers.
This map will also appear throughout this unit of study to pinpoint where in the world the lesson is focused on.
Students will also analyse and study famous photographs of World War II and try to explain why they are significant, such as Hitler at the Trocadero in France, the image of St. Pauls in London during the Blitz or the Soviet flag being waved on top of the Reichstag.
Students are also required to plot a timeline of events using information provided and subsequently noting whether each event was a success or failure for each side.
The subsequent plenary tests students’ general knowledge about the war in an ‘odd one out’ activity.
This lesson is enquiry based with a key question using a lightbulb posed at the start of the lesson and revisited throughout to show the progress of learning.
The resource includes retrieval practice activities, suggested teaching strategies and differentiated materials, and comes in PowerPoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change.
Suffragettes
Why were so many people in the Nineteenth Century prepared to die for universal suffrage?
How had the Industrial Revolution created so many divisions and changes in society where towns such as Manchester, Sheffield and Birmingham had no MP’s and thus went unrepresented in Parliament?
Could Parliament see the injustice of denying the vote to working class men and industrialists who were making Britain the workshop of the world?
Thus the story starts with why having a vote is so important today and who had the vote in the Nineteenth Century.
Students are given a slip at the beginning of the lesson only to realise many of them don’t have a vote much to their annoyance.
The final part of the lesson is to analyse the events of the Peterloo Massacre (named after the battle of Waterloo) and why the magistrates of Manchester were so scared at giving people the vote.
However the battlelines were drawn and so setting the seeds for the Suffragette movement at the turn of the century.
The lesson is enquiry based with a key question using a lightbulb posed at the start of the lesson and revisited to show the progress of learning.
The resource includes suggested teaching strategies, differentiated materials and comes in Powerpoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change.
The Industrial Revolution
This lesson aims to evaluate the problems within Industrial towns and the impact they had on the growing population during the Industrial Revolution.
The lesson starts by analysing the source from Punch in 1852, 'A Court For King Cholera’, which is later annotated to help aid discussion.
Various images, video evidence and headlines allow students to build up a picture, which they then have to explain to a friend in a letter - using scaffolding and a writing frame if required.
Students also evaluate how and why the living conditions became like this and question if this was the case across the country as they are given further evidence from the wealthy in Victorian England, comparing the dwellings of the rich and poor.
Students will therefore be able by the end of the lesson be able to give an effective and balanced answer to this lesson.
The lesson is enquiry based with a key question using a lightbulb posed at the start of the lesson and revisited at the end to show the progress of learning.
The resource comes in PowerPoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change.
I have also included suggested teaching strategies to deliver the lesson and there are differentiated materials included.
The Industrial Revolution
This lesson aims to examine and assess factory conditions during the Industrial Revolution.
The poor conditions and punishments are explored through the eyes of a pauper apprentice, whose story tells us the harsh discipline, rules and punishments for factory workers.
Students have a chance to complete a diary entry and evaluate if life was bad for everyone including using causation equations in the plenary.
The lesson alludes to factory owners like Robert Owen who built quality houses, schools, shops with cheap goods and parks for his workers (although factory reform and reformers is dealt with in another lesson).
The lesson is enquiry based with a key question using a lightbulb posed at the start of the lesson and revisited at the end to show the progress of learning.
The resource comes in PowerPoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change.
I have also included suggested teaching strategies to deliver the lesson and there are differentiated materials included.
The Industrial Revolution
The aim of this lesson is for students to analyse the changes that were happening in the Industrial Revolution and then to question if these changes made peoples’ lives better or worse. (Thus focusing on the historical skills of change and continuity and cause and consequence)
The students are given a picture as they walk into the room which describes an invention that has been introduced during the Industrial Revolution. They then organise themselves into chronological order before discussing who it affected, why it would affect them and how it could transform the lives of people.
They also have to decide in a Britain’s Got Talent Quiz which invention is the most important and would win the Golden Buzzer.
Furthermore they analyse further changes which occurred, how they link together and for extra challenge decide how many of the changes refer to economic, social, demographic, political or technological changes.
The lesson is enquiry based with a key question using a lightbulb posed at the start of the lesson and revisited at the end to show the progress of learning.
The resource comes in PowerPoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change.
I have also included suggested teaching strategies to deliver the lesson and there are differentiated materials included.
The aim of this lesson is to understand why children were evacuated to the countryside in the Second World War.
However, it also questions the success of evacuation through government propaganda, audio records of evacuees and from written sources of evidence.
Students are led through the evacuation process, which on the surface looks amazingly planned and executed by the British Government.
But, using primary evidence of the time, they realise how the Government failed to prioritise the needs of the children over the need to evacuate large numbers.
Students will also learn how other vulnerable groups in society were also evacuated without due consideration of their needs.
By the end of the lesson the students will evaluate the biggest problems faced by the children during World War II and learn some sad facts about the reality of war on the Home Front.
The lesson is enquiry based with a key question using a lightbulb posed at the start of the lesson and revisited at the end to show the progress of learning.
The resource includes retrieval practice activities, suggested teaching strategies and differentiated materials and comes in PowerPoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change.
This lesson aims to introduce the main contenders to the vacant throne of England in 1066 with the deat hof Edward the Confessor. Students have to understand why a chair (a throne) would cause a war and read a script to understand who the main contenders were and the reasons they put forward for having a claim to the English throne.
Diffetentiated bloom’s questions aim to deepen their understanding and get them to analyse who has the best claim and why (thus extracting fact from fiction). A brilliant video link to English heritage and extra work sheets will give them all the knowledge required to create a newspaper report or table to ultimately evaluate these claims of the contenders
The resource comes in PDF and Powerpoint formats if there is a wish to adapt and change. I have also included suggested teaching strategies to deliver the lesson and there are differentiated materials included. The accompanying script for the lesson can be found here: /teaching-resource/medieval-britain-script-for-the-normans-who-had-the-best-claim-to-the-english-throne-in-1066-11456418
If you like this resource, please visit my shop where I have created further resources on Medieval Britain which can be found here: /teaching-resources/shop/PilgrimHistory
The aim of this lesson to find out about the hidden messages in Elizabeth I’s portrait paintings.
Students learn about how Elizabeth manipulated her Tudor portraits and added symbols, each of which had a hidden meaning.
The introduction to the lesson looks at anachronisms and modern day symbols put into portraits to get the students thinking how pictures should not always be seen and taken at face value. Thus inference skills are high on the agenda in this lesson.
Students are then given information about each of her paintings and have to analyse and evaluate their meanings and various symbolic codes.
The lesson is enquiry based with a key question using a lightbulb posed at the start of the lesson and revisited to show the progress of learning.
The resource includes suggested teaching strategies, retrieval practice, differentiated materials and comes in Powerpoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change.
This is the first in a series of lessons I have created on the Tudors.
This lesson is broken down into two parts. The first part describes and explains the events surrounding the Wars of the Roses.
Students learn about the Kings involved and the battles fought through fun tasks, video evidence and role play of which they have to make choices on the victors.
With this new found knowledge they have to explain what they have learnt through a ‘talk like an historian’ quiz.
The second part of the lesson focuses on the previous Tudor perceptions of Richard III. Was he really a deceitful and cunning person, ‘a lump of foul deformity’ with a hunchback according to Shakespeare, More and Virgil?
Archaeological evidence from King Richard’s remains is analysed by the students to prove or disprove some of these popular ‘misconceptions’ about his posture and character.
Students are then challenged to write to the current Education Secretary to make sure correct history lessons are now taught about Richard III in secondary schools.
The lesson is enquiry based with a key question using a lightbulb posed at the start of the lesson and revisited to show the progress of learning.
This lesson is fully resourced includes suggested teaching strategies, differentiated materials and comes in PowerPoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change.
The aim of this lesson is to decide whether Mary Tudor deserved her nickname ‘Bloody Mary’.
Students analyse the nursery rhyme and have to work out the hidden meanings, with two possible versions given to them.
Using video evidence, students build up a picture of Mary before they have to then make their judgements, using differentiated sources of information as to whether she was bloody or not.
For further challenge, they also have to debate and decide if it is weak or strong evidence.
The lesson is enquiry based with a key question using a lightbulb posed at the start of the lesson and revisited to show the progress of learning.
The resource includes suggested teaching strategies, retrieval practice, differentiated materials and comes in PowerPoint format if there is a wish to adapt and change.
This lesson further explores the theme of William the Conqueror’s control and tightening grip on England as rebellion and opposition dominate his early years.
Students will study William’s castle building program, from the Motte and Bailey through to stone keep castles and analyse their strengths and weaknesses.
They will question why the Normans placed their reliance on these eye sores and how their features gave them control and defence against a hostile population.
Furthermore they will evaluate how much control he was able to exert over the population using a control ‘o’ meter.
Finally there is an interactive question and answer session with an Anglo-Saxon castle builder at the time who has some interesting things to say about his compliance in all of it.
This lesson is therefore designed to be fun, challenging and engaging.
The lesson is enquiry based with a key question using a lightbulb posed at the start of the lesson and revisited at the end using a rate ‘o’ meter to show the progress of learning.
The resource is differentiated and gives suggested teaching strategies.
It comes in PowerPoint format which can be amended and changed to suit.
