How much did the Black Death of 1348 change life for Peasants in Medieval England?

This is a lesson for HA year 7 students. It gives them the opportunity to write an essay aiming to hit the old NC levels 5,6 and even 7. I have had a 7A essay handed in using this lesson and most were L6 so if you want to challenge your HA, give this a go. Be aware though that this resource covers three lessons and is mostly concerned with essay structure. I haven't indicated in the PP at which point the students write the essay, so here is how I did it:

Lesson 1: students use a card sort to examine the consequences of the black death, they work in pairs and groups to find the most significant/substantial change and the least significant/substantial change. They then choose three pieces of evidence that show significant change, three that show medium change and three that show no change. These will make up their paragraphs.

Lesson 2: Students look at a dummy essay on how much school rules changed life for students. I have labelled a paragraph with structural necessities such as 'point, evidence, explanation' and they use highlighters to spot where the author of the essay has done this.

Students get started on the essay, aim to finish one paragraph in class, then set one for homework.

Lesson 3: You can allow students to peer assess each other's essay so far (in the same way they highlighted the dummy essay), or you can just give them half an hour to finish the essay. They need to have completed their third paragraph before you show them how to write the conclusion. There is a conclusion to the dummy essay that students analyse the structure of before having a go themselves. Most likely, you will want to set this for homework as if your HA class are like mine, they are crazy perfectionists.

Please note, this lesson is not differentiated. You would have to approach this essay in a completely different way for a class that is targetted L3-5 and a L4 student would need support to access it. But if you want to push your HA, this resource is really strong.

Learning Objectives:
ALL students will be able to Describe some of the ways in which life changed using some detailed evidence. Write a conclusion to say how much life changed. (L5)
MOST students will be able to Explain how the black death changed the lives of peasants by thinking about the short term and the long term effects of the changes.
Supporting all comments with detailed factual knowledge (L6)
SOME students will be able to use a lot of detailed factual knowledge to analyse how much change has taken place. This means that you really pick the facts apart to show how much life changed. (L7)