This is a full lesson that takes students through Stalin’s rise to power and helps them to answer the enquiry question: How did Stalin take power? I found that my students struggled to answer exam questions on this topic because the Oxford textbook doesn’t make clear enough the specific steps that Stalin has to take in order to end up in control of the Party, and how exactly he achieved each one. This lesson foregrounds this step by step process, looking at how he first managed to survive the 13th Party Congress still in post as General Secretary in spite of Lenin’s damning indictment of him in his Testament, then second how he maneuvered himself to make use of the support of the Right of the Party to remove the Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev from the Central Committee and the Politburo, and then finally how he positioned himself to outvote Bukharin and the Right to take overall control of the Politburo and Central Committee. it looks at how he used three specific tools to achieve this: political alliances; base building in his role as General Secretary; ideological flexibility.

This is a collection of exemplar essay and extract responses that I have produced for my students studying AQA 1C Tudor England 1485-1603

This is a collection of exemplar essay and source responses that I have produced for my students studying AQA 2N Revolution and Dictatorship: Russia, 1917-1953.

A full lesson, with extensive and fully detailed text resource, on Stalin’s Terror. It supports students to answer two key enquiry questions: What was the Terror? and: How did the Terror start? I developed this from a range of historical scholarship in order to go beyond the Oxford textbook which I felt was weak in this area.

This is a detailed and comprehensive textbook chapter equivalent that I’ve written for my students studying Stalin’s Terror as part of their AQA 2N course Revolution and Dictatorship: Russia, 1917-1953. I developed this using a range of historical scholarship in order to go beyond the Oxford textbook which I felt was weak in this area and often left my students (and at times me) with unanswered questions. It gives a narrative of events leading up to and during the Terror itself, and also tries to address some of the historiography of the Terror and the challenges of studying it that make historians’ conclusions about the Terror necessarily tentative.

Two text resources that set out in full detail how the rural economy worked in Late Medieval England, and how it then began to change in the Tudor period. I have developed these to go beyond the Oxford textbook for the AQA A level 1C Tudor England 1485-1603 specification to ensure that my students have a really strong understanding of this aspect of the Tudor economy. I’ve developed this from historical scholarship and I think it gives a really good grounding in the topic. Doing this well when studying Henry VII and Henry VIII in particular equips students to really get to grips with the causes and nature of vagrancy, poverty and the Poor Laws when studying Elizabeth in Y13.

A full set of Core Knowledge Flashcards for the AQA A Level 1C Tudor England, 1485-1603 Contains a comprehensive range of subject knowledge for every topic in the course. Formatted so they can be printed off, cut out, folded over and turned into flashcards - or so that the answers can simply be covered up so you can test yourself on them.

A text resource explaining in detail how Henry VIII governed England from 1509 to 1547, created for students studying AQA 1C Tudor England, 1485-1603 This gives a comprehensive and systematic overview of the topic which makes it much easier to follow than the relevant textbooks - it should equip students to write clearly about change and continuity in government in Henry VIII’s reign.

Two handouts explaining what Lutheranism and Reformed Protestantism were. I developed these from Diarmaid MacCulloch’s book ‘Reformation’ for use with the AQA 1C Tudor England course, but these would be useful for students studying any option that focuses on Tudor England or Reformation Europe at GCSE or A level.

This is a set of profiles of leading noble families that play a role across the Tudor period in England. It is designed for students studying AQA 1C Tudor England but would be useful to students studying Tudor England under any specification. I created this is an end of Y13 revision exercise to help my students to think back across the whole course, to make links across the course and to deepen their understanding of royal government and its relationship to the nobility. It follows the fortunes of the Brandon and Grey, Dudley, Courtenay, Howard and Seymour families as they rose and fell across the generations, and gives students a chance to think about how and why noble families’ fortunes changed and what nobles did for their monarch.

A full set of Core Knowledge Flashcards for the AQA A Level 2N Revolution and Dictatorship: Russia, 1917-1953 Contains a comprehensive range of subject knowledge for every topic in the course. Formatted so they can be printed off, cut out, folded over and turned into flashcards - or so that the answers can simply be covered up so you can test yourself on them.

A full lesson on High Stalinism, with text laying out the key features of the period and lesson activities in a PPT. This was created for the AQA A Level 2N option: Revolution and Dictatorship: Russia, 1917-1953. It would also be useful for other qualifications and lessons.

A fully resourced lesson on Soviet society under Stalin in the 1930s, designed for the AQA A Level History 2N option - Revolution and Dictatorship: Russia, 1917-1953. This is an area where the Oxford textbook feels a bit thin (/ inaccurate) so I planned this to use instead - the emphasis is on the text which provides a good range of detail that will enable students to answer questions about how society changed in the 1930s USSR with confidence.

A text that ties together Stalin’s death, the events leading up to it, and its aftermath, taking in Khruschev and De-Stalinisation This is a useful end to the AQA A Level History 2N option - Revolution and Dictatorship: Russia, 1917-1953 as it ties off the narrative in more detail than the Oxford textbook manages, while also introducing some important ideas about changing degrees of state control and censorship after Stalin’s death which students can make use of when writing about the provenance of sources produced in the USSR after Stalin’s death

A complete lesson outlining the role of the First World War in pushing Russia towards the February Revolution. This is a full lesson, designed to be taught as part of the AQA A Level 2N option: Revolution to Dictatorship: Russia, 1917-1953. It would be useful for other specifications and lessons too. The 2N Oxford textbook isn’t particularly useful for this part of the course, so I wrote this in place of it - it gives a comprehensive and accessible overview of events from 1914 to February 1917, and effectively equips students with the subject knowledge that they need in order to answer exam questions on the February Revolution.

An overview of the artistic and cultural changes in Russia that were brought about by the October Revolution. This lesson includes a text which gives students a brief introduction to a number of key areas of cultural production in the 1920s in the USSR, such as Constructivism and the cinema of Dziga Vertov. There is also a PPT which provides an introduction to what culture looked like under the Tsars, and which also includes some good examples of the movements outlined in the text, along with a final summary exercise. This was designed to provide additional background knowledge to students studying the AQA A Level 2N option - Revolution and Dictatorship: Russia, 1917-1953 but it would be useful to any student studying Russia post-1917 at 16+.

A directory of key people in Russian history between 1917 and 1953 Designed for the AQA A Level History 2N option - Revolution and Dictatorship: Russia, 1917-1953 but useful to any student studying this period of Russian history.

This is a brief enquiry that enables students to get to grips with the contested nature of medieval kingship and some of the contemporary debates about it. It examines four medieval kings, whose stories are used to build a template of what makes a medieval king - literally what does someone need in order to be king. The four things that make a medieval king are: power; inheritance; a coronation; and to be a man. At different times these varied in importance relative to one another. Students then have the chance to express this relationship between the four by arranging the four features into a causal diagram which they annotated. I used this enquiry as a prelude to an enquiry looking at the Wars of the Roses, and it gave students a strong grasp of the nature of the arguments that underpinned that conflict.

This is an assembly I’ve written for my school for Black History Month, entitled ‘Black History is British History’. It gives a whistlestop history of black people in Britain from the Romans, through the Tudor and Georgian periods, up to WWI. It’s intended to challenge the myth that the Empire Windrush brought black immigrants to a white country in 1948, which seems to be quite a dominant narrative. It is set up to be delivered by a non-specialist, with a script, and I’ve timed it at about 12 minutes.

Collected here is a bundle of resources that I have used when teaching a history of the British Empire to Year 9. I used them as part of an enquiry in which we attempted to answer the question "Why are some people proud of the British Empire today?". Having used the background material outlining the nature and purpose of the Empire, I was really impressed with how students took to the extract from Kwame Nkrumah's 'Africa Must Unite' - they had a really clear grasp of exactly what he was angry about and why he was so angry.

A booklet and lesson PPT helping A level historians understand what Marxism is. Could very easily be useful to A level students of other subjects, and could easily be adapted to be helpful for younger students too.