Exercises & Worksheets
This section features various exercises, worksheets, and handouts you can download and use in your class. If you do so, please do not remove the michaelanklin.net bar.
Students struggling with dyslexia often find words printed on white pages more difficult to read. Hence, all the materials here are in color.
The first section lists general materials one might use in any subject. General history materials are in the second section, and each subsequent section focuses on other humanities subjects or on a specific history topic.
I try to upload new material on a regular basis.
Content
1. General teaching materials
2. General history teaching
3. Ethics & philosophy teaching
3. AS & A2 Soviet history
4. Key Stage 3/(I) GCSE Weimar Republic
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General teaching materials
Time management exercise
General history teaching
Historical actor exercise—What was it like to live during a certain time period?
Description
How did individuals who lived in a specific time and place experience this time and place? What were their every-day lives like? How did they view their world? What were their hopes for the future? Did they have any?
This worksheet might help students answer these questions. One can use it for any history topic. There is a male and a female version. There is a general version and a version for people who lived during a conflict.
Students can enter the era; the beginning and end dates of this era; the person’s age, status, and ethnicity.
There is a silhouette of a person on the left-hand side. Students can add a face, hair, clothing, and hats, tools, objects, or weapons, when appropriate. And they can of course add a name, if they want.
Creative students will enjoy this, and it will help visual learners. Many students will also be familiar with the concept of creating a character from video games.
There is a version with a separate larger figure and a version with a larger figure on the back of the page for students who would like more space to create their character.
Students also have to fill out a table describing the person’s daily routine. And, finally, there are questions about social class or about which side in a conflict the person would have supported; what her or his hopes for the future would have been, etc.
This worksheet could be assigned as a research project or one could have students fill it out after every module, based on what they have learned about what people’s lives were like during the time they have studied.
Edexcel/Pearson AS & A2 essay exam worksheet
Description
This worksheet may help students prepare for the essays they have to write for the Pearson/Edexcel AS and A Level history exams.
The questions for the Pearson exams tend to follow the same format, i.e. “How far do you agree that…?” This worksheet was created with this in mind. It should be helpful to students sitting the British or the international examinations.
A handout describing the differences between primary and secondary sources.
Ethics & philosophy teaching
“The Trolley Problem in the Real World”
Most ethics and philosophy teachers will be familiar with the “Trolley Problem“. However, as useful as the latter is for a discussion about ethics, it describes situations few will ever encounter. I have therefore come up with a group exercise I call “The Trolley Problem in the Real World” which could be used to complement a discussion about ethics based on the Trolley Problem.
AS and A2 Soviet history
A quiz about the different contenders for power after Lenin’s death
Key Stage 3/(I) GCSE Weimar Republic
Reaction to Treaty of Versailles and hyperinflation exercise
Description
This exercise describes different (fictional) individuals in Weimar Germany and asks how each would have reacted to the Treaty of Versailles and to hyperinflation.