KS3 History: The Role & Contributions of Women during the First World War

The main focus of the lesson is the role and contributions of women to Britain’s war effort during World War One. Students will examine both the positive and negative experiences of women during the war, be able to describe the various roles that women took on and then carry out their own research into the topic.

This is a fully resources lesson which includes a warmup, starter task, engaging background information, various learning activities, challenge tasks and learning reviews.

The lesson includes the following:
Slide 1: Title slide
Slide 2: Outline of the main lesson aims
Slide 3: As you enter warm up – Discussion about the statement, ‘Most of the History we learn in school is about men’.
Slide 4: Starter Task 1: Women in Propaganda during the First World War.
Slide 5: Starter Task 2: Gender roles in 1914
Slide 6-7: Activity 1: Data analysis (including printable worksheet) about the employment figures of women in work between 1914-1919.
Slide 8-9: Activity 2: The experiences of women in the war – students read statements and mark if they show a positive or negative experience of war.
Side 10-17: Image based background information about the role of women during the First World War.
Slide 18-20: Activity 3 – A guided research task. Links are given to useful websites as well as useful documentary clips. Students are given a number of areas they can research.
Slide 21: Useful websites for the research and further reading
Slide 22: Useful short documentary clips
Slide 13: Challenge Tasks

I would be grateful if you could leave a review for the lesson if you feel the lesson is effective for you. Many thanks if you spend some of your valuable time doing this and your feedback is highly valued.

All images used in this lesson are in the public domain and are therefore copyright free at the time of publishing. Images which require attribution have been attributed in the notes section of each slide where the image appears. If you feel any errors have been made, please contact me at raschoolresources@gmail.com in the first instance to resolve any issues. My lessons are completed using PowerPoint and designed on widescreen formatting. Thank you.