Gorbachev and the end of the Cold War

Cold War Bundle

I have created these set of resources for the History Key Stage 3 National Curriculum ‘challenges for Britain, Europe and the wider world 1901 to the present day’. These lessons are also useful if you are studying the Cold War at GCSE, where the students will gain an invaluable insight into the key terms, ideologies, events and people post 1945. The central question throughout these eleven lessons is to find out why civilians feared for their lives during the Cold War. They are closely linked together and students continually plot their ideas around the key question, which can be referred back to each lesson (either dated or colour coded) to show progress throughout this unit of work. Pupils will learn the significance and impact of the arms race on the wider world and be able to see the causes and consequences of the Berlin blockade and airlift finally culminating in the building of the Berlin Wall. They will learn key historical terms such as containment, buffer zones, mutually assured destruction and the domino theory as well as understand the differences between the capitalist and communist ideologies. They will be given sources to analyse such as the evidence from the moon landings in 1969 and make historical inferences from them as to whether they are fact or fiction. Furthermore they will be able to write structured accounts and narratives on the Vietnam war as to whether US soldiers committed war crimes by killing innocent civilians or how much of a threat is North Korea to world peace? Each lesson comes with suggested teaching and learning strategies and are linked to the latest historical interpretations and ideas used by current history teachers on twitter. The lessons are fully adaptable in PowerPoint and can be changed to suit. I have included a couple of free lessons to give an idea of what is being offered. I strongly recommend using GCSE style questions from your chosen exam board and markschemes to assess the pupils at the end of this unit, which are always available on line. The 11 lessons are broken down into the following: L1 The defeat of Germany in 1945 L2 Introduction to the Cold War L3 The Arms Race L4 The Berlin Blockade and Berlin Airlift L5 The Berlin Wall L6 The Korean War L7 The Cuban Missile Crisis L8 Man on the Moon L9 The Vietnam War L10 Cold War sports L11 Mikhail Gorbachev (+ Key word History display) Any reviews would be greatly appreciated.