Tolo Taylor, who teaches in Bath, has created a website providing a bundle of resources for KS3 History.
The bundle contains 102 lessons-worth of material based on many years of his experience and which is on sale for £14.99 the lot! There’s sample material on the site to help you evaluate the material.
Tolo’s site is
Ian
Brought to Life website at The Science Museum
I’m feeling very proud of myself as I type this as I managed a full set of ‘Correct’ answers on the Brought to Life website’s Black Death animated activity! Maybe it was worth writing all those medicine books after all.
The animation has entertaining graphics and is good for developing students’ understanding of the thinking that lay behind treatments. You’ll find it (fleas, rats, chickens and all) at
www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/themes/diseases/black_death.aspx
There’s a vast amount to explore and use on this site and it was developed specifically to support teaching GCSE ‘Medicine’ so if you haven’t already sampled this site have a lengthy exploration at
www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife
Ian
Anyone looking for details of individuals or groups who visit schools to provide ‘hands-on’ activities, role-plays and re-enactment may find this website useful. It lists workshop providers by subject and identifies, topics, regions and website links.
The one such provider I can highly recommend from personal experience is Happening History as I’ve worked with Wel and Karen on resources for GCSE and on an A level workshop on the Wars of the Roses.
And they have the best Home Page photo you’ll find anywhere!
My Dad was one of the ‘Forgotten Army’, the men who fought in India and Burma during World War Two. He wasn’t a POW but even so he never spoke of his experiences.
This website however, based on an oral history project does capture the memories of over 60 POWs, both of their experiences in wartime and of adapting to release and freedom.
The website provides audio clips and examples of work undertaken in a secondary school on the Wirral after students met two of the men involved.
Kate Brennan’s site is a doorway into a potentially very effective way of learning – scripted drama.
Forget the boredom of a class sitting round, not really listening as others stumble listlessly through a tedious script. This is lively, humorous drama with a strong commitment to improving students’ understanding of how History is studied, not just the facts, though they’re there aplenty. There’s also important explanations of why such methods help students learn – not a million miles away from the rationale for much of the material on Thinkinghistory. The drawback is that the cost of the scripts looks high but in a department staffed by like-minded convinced teachers and with students who benefit from getting out of their seats and becoming involved and who therefore learn more and improve their results then the costs may not seem so high.