We all know that this is a vast topic and one that some colleagues have difficulty with in motivating some students. You will find very little on the Four Field crop rotation here, or mules and Spinning Jennies, but there are a number of really good enquiries on life in Industrial Britain.
Did Factory Acts make any difference? This exposes pupils to interesting ideas about change and continuity.
The studies of the Swing riots and Peterloo pick up the theme of popular protest linking back to the Peasants revolt. The Peterloo enquiry allows pupils to immerse themselves in contemporary sources and knowledge of prevailing attitudes in order to answer the question of who was to blame. The Swing enquiry on the other hand offers pupils an hypothesis to test.
The third enquiry into the high infant death rate in Bradford involves pupils in a history mystery: if the death rate for adults dropped why did very young infants continue to die in such large numbers?
Similar questioning style is used to explain the conundrum of people leaving the countryside in droves to work and live in Manchester where life expectancy in 1842 was about 17!
The question of the opening up of the franchise is taken well beyond the year 1900, not only to explore the votes for women issue, but also to look at the democratic process today. Why did hundreds of thousands of black Africans queue in the baking heat to vote in the mid-90s, when here in Britain there is so much voter apathy?
KS3 Outstanding History Lessons
These Key Stage 3 history lessons for teaching the history of Industrial Britain have all been judged to be outstanding according to OFSTED criteria. You will find a wide variety of teaching and learning activities and full lesson plans as well as a rich array of teaching resources including PowerPoint® presentations.
The following lessons and smart tasks are all enquiry-driven, placing pupils in the role as historians confronted with a paradox, a contradiction or simply a puzzle that still invites different interpretations.
Please note that there are separate sections on teaching Empire and Black Peoples and slavery which carry key stage 3 lessons from these periods.
- The Peterloo enquiry; who was to blame? Pupils examine the evidence before creating their own plaque to sit on the site of the massacre, voted the second most significant radical site in English history
- Did the Factory Act of 1833 make any difference at all? – an enquiry in which pupils have to think about the nature of the likely source base for answering this question as well as how to evaluate it.
- What really happened at the Suffragette Derby of 1913? Having evaluated artefacts, film and conflicting documentary evidence, pupils create their own version of events.
- Was London life really like this in 1870? Pupils critically analyse a familiar image, but realise all is not what it seems. When they hot seat the painter and read an excerpt of Dickens they understand why.
Smart Tasks
- SMART TASK: Slaughter of the innocents: thinking skills task on why so many infants continued to die before their first birthday at a time when the death rate was falling rapidly.
- SMART TASK: Court of King Cholera. Where am I in the picture?
