Edexcel GCSE History: Black Death and Great Plague Comparison Lesson
Compare responses to the Black Death and the Great Plague with this editable GCSE History lesson for Edexcel Medicine in Britain, c1250-present.
Pupils identify changes and continuities in beliefs about causes, treatments and prevention, then practise a four-mark similarity question about government responses.
Included:
A five-slide PowerPoint with a retrieval starter, key vocabulary, a colour-coding task, a Venn diagram activity and two levels of sentence support for the comparison question.
A one-page Word comparison sheet with detailed information about both outbreaks.
A one-page reduced-text Word version of the comparison sheet.
Use either handout for the main activity. Pupils highlight similarities and differences, discuss how far responses changed, then organise their knowledge and write a supported comparison.
The lesson assumes some prior knowledge of medieval medicine. No specific textbook, subscription or video is needed for the activities. Teachers explain the background to plague and lead discussion. No answer key or model answer is included. The Venn diagram is supplied on a slide for pupils to copy; there is no separate Venn worksheet.
Please note: this lesson is drawn from my Full GCSE History SOW - Medicine Through Time - Edexcel Spec resource, with small corrections for this separate edition. It is not additional lesson content. If you already own that course, you do not need to buy this lesson. The PowerPoint and Word files are editable. This is an independent teaching resource, not endorsed by Pearson Edexcel.




