Useful resources

Editable ‘fortune teller’ template for plenaries and peer questioning
A while ago I saw a brilliant resource from Stuart Godman at www.aheadofhistory.co.uk who had created a peer assessment version of the playground paper ‘fortune teller’ game. It’s great to reach these out as a plenary activity at the end of an intense lesson of historical analysis and get the students talking to each other about their work.
I’ve since made a series of ‘fortune tellers’ for different units. The most successful seem to be those which require students to explain the contribution of a specific factor to an event. Students enjoy having a little bit of control over the factor they are going to be asked about, while still maintaining the random element. You can download some examples below.
Nazi Rise to Power ‘Fortune Teller’
Causes of WW1 ‘Fortune Teller’
Causes of WW1 ‘Fortune Teller’ v2
Origins of the Cold War ‘Fortune Teller’
Collapse of Soviet Control ‘Fortune Teller’
I thought it also made sense to share this editable PowerPoint of a fortunate teller so that you can create your own. Instructions on how to fold it, in case you can’t remember back to when you were in KS2, are below!

Great website to find music, sorted by country & decade www.radiooooo.com
The www.radiooooo.com website is definitely worth adding to your ‘Favourites’. A crowd-sourced directory of 20th Century international music, it features a host of tracks categorised by country of origin and decade. With just a couple of clicks you have quick and easy access to a huge range music to play in the background while students work. Great for adding a ‘sense of period’…or just for fun!

History-based Inter-House Form Competition: Timelines
This simple resource, based on events from the excellent About Time boardgame, allows you to run a history-based House / Inter-Form Competition with minimal effort.
Each team is given a copy of the timeline (click to download) which contains events from the entire range of KS2-5 History (as well as some references to other subject areas) so that all students can get involved. Each date has two events associated with it. Teams should be given the dates as a single chronological strip, but the event cards need to be cut out individually.
Students simply match the events to the dates, and at the end you allocate points based on accuracy. I give 3 points for an exact match and 1 point for being one date out. The team with the highest number of points wins. It’s a quick and easy event to set up, and quick and easy to score.
In my experience it works well in a 20-30 minute session, and is surprisingly competitive. As the teams begin to add events they also start to consider the relative contexts in order to add those ones they are less certain of.
http://www.mrallsophistory.com/revision/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Timeline-Competition.pdf

“The Yorkshire Preface to the Bayeux Tapestry”
A great website about a Local Heritage Initiative funded project to create panels in the style of the Bayeux Tapestry to tell the events that took place in Yorkshire prior to the Battle of Hastings.
Overview of the project – http://www.battleoffulford.org.uk/bayeux_project.htm
Photos of the panels in progress – http://www.battleoffulford.org.uk/bayeux_progress.htm

The story of Peter Norman, the Australian in this photo.
This is an excellent article about Peter Norman, the white Australian sprinter who was awarded the silver medal alongside John Carlos and Tommie Smith while they raised their black-gloved fists and bowed their heads as the US National Anthem was played.
http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/the-white-man-in-that-photo/

WW1 European Royal Family Tree graphic from @BrookingsInst
This graphic from the excellent Brookings Essay “The Rhyme of History: Lessons of the Great War” by Margaret MacMillan shows the close family relationship between the three key European monarchs: Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany; King George V of England; and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.
Click the thumbnail below to load the full-size version.

‘We Are History’ photo collage display to download
I created this photo collage as a title for one of my display boards. Each letter is made up of images I collected for my daily HistoryPod podcast so they cover a range of events from the Wild West to the Space Race and the Qing dynasty to Tiananmen Square. The letters make a great display board title when cut out – around it I added front page images from various editions of Time magazine covering the past few decades.
It makes a great conversation starter – students have enjoyed identifying the images, or quizzing me about the events they relate to.
You can download a PDF of the letters below. To give you an idea of size, the word “We” is the width of an A4 sheet.

How do we remember WW1? Royal Mail stamps make a great starter

Map showing extent of WW1 trench movement, Aug 1914-Nov 1918
This fabulous map comes from the Harvard University Map Collection.