KS3 History: Ancient India + the Vedic Age

This editable PowerPoint introduces students to the Vedic Age in Ancient India and develops key historical skills, including using sources, evaluating interpretations and creating secondary accounts. Students explore the features of Vedic society and assess how far Ancient India developed compared to earlier civilisations.

The lesson includes:

• Starter activity: analysing images to infer details about the Vedic Age.
• Clear success criteria and learning intentions linked to enquiry skills.
• Background knowledge on Indo-Aryan migrations, the Vedas, and the features of Vedic society.
• “Stop and Think” tasks encouraging comparison with the Harappan civilisation and other societies.
• Learning clip activity with questions on the usefulness of secondary sources.
• Sorting and categorisation task: grouping features of Vedic society into factors (social, political, economic, cultural).
• Challenge task: comparing similarities and differences between the early and later Vedic Age.
• Creative activity: students construct their own secondary interpretation of the Vedic Age (textbook page, article, speech, etc.).
• Example secondary source provided to guide students’ writing.
• Concluding reflection: How far did Ancient India develop since Harappa?

Suitable for:
KS3 History (Year 7–8) world history units.
Thematic skills lessons on sources and interpretations.
Cross-curricular links with RE (religion, gods, texts) and Geography (settlement, environment).

Format: PowerPoint (fully editable).