This lesson was made for my GCSE History students studying the Cold War. It is made in a way that it will cover the content of the any GCSE History spec - it is a concise and clear account of the agreements at Yalta and foreshadows the disagreements that come later at Potsdam in it plenary. It is designed to last an hour - I made this because other resources on the Yalta conference out there seemed unwieldy and lacked focus. This is designed to be the opposite and will prove invaluable to students who sometimes aren’t so quick to embed learning when presented with new information. For that reason, my students like these types of lessons because they are completely dual coded and easy to follow - they reduce cognitive load meaning that students can access the learning far more easily than through other resources which are ‘all singing, all dancing’ (!) or unnecessarily complex. There is a worksheet included as a slide to be printed off A4 that students add their notes on to as the lesson progresses and there is a sound clip that students listen to as a starter and jot a few notes down, and a summary video clip is also included (hence the larger file size) which prompts a few lines of questioning that will prove useful when studying the Potsdam conference. Thanks for taking a look :-)

Contained within the .ppt file are 19 separate handouts which detail each important event in AQA’s ‘Conflict and Tension 1945-72’ History GCSE unit on the Cold War. Each handout focuses on causes of the event, the event itself, and its consequences within the context of the Cold War. These can be used as a support in lessons or as a revision aid. Each sheet also has one or two challenge/thinking questions which encourage students to engage with the information they are reading and form an opinion on the event one way or another, backed up by specific examples. Handouts are mixture of information and helpful images/sources which can also be used as a basis for discussion. These have proved particularly useful in my lessons when printed a5 size, stuck in the middle of a page in an exercise book and get highlighted and annotated by students as the lesson progresses. Being able to answer the challenge/think questions also gives students an instant sense of achievement.

These detailed course / revision notes were specially written to give OCR A Level History students a comprehensive overview of the key knowledge from the specification for Unit Y209: African Kingdoms c.1400–c.1800: four case studies 1) The Songhay Empire c.1450–1591 2) The Kingdom of Kongo c.1400–c.1709 3) The Kingdom of Benin c.1500–c.1750 4) The Kingdoms and Empires of Oyo and Dahomey 1608–c.1800 These extensive notes are especially useful for students whose note-taking in lesson isn’t as good as others, or whose organisational skills mean they are missing notes/handouts on certain topics / areas. These notes will certainly help reduce the time it takes them to catch up with their peers, and also students like to use these as a checklist of topics to go into in further detail. They give peace of mind that every corner of the specification/syllabus has been covered. Hopefully these notes help to save your students (and you!) some time in the hectic run up to exams. Thanks for taking a look :)