Dying for the Vote

This is History! is the Schools History Project's Key Stage 3 scheme of work for National Curriculum history. Through a combination of in-depth and overview units, it offers a varied, relevant and challenging scheme of work for the whole Key Stage 3 history programme of study. This text is a depth study about the Chartists and the Suffragettes. The main task is for pupils to create an advertising campaign to persuade some apathetic couch potatoes to vote in an election. Their campaign is to be built around the historical example set by the Chartists and the Suffragettes, some of whom were prepared to die to win the right to vote. The task builds steadily through the book as, unit by unit, pupils work on a poster, then a leaflet, then a web page and finally a short television advert to add to their campaign. The campaign has a strong literacy element with persuasive writing being analysed and modelled and pupil writing being carefully structured. The book also has a strong citizenship thrust providing the third episode (after King John and 'King' Cromwell?) and summarising the development of parliamentary democracy in Britain. PLEASE NOTE: The accompanying teacher's resource book for this title can be downloaded for free at www.hoddereducation.co.uk/thisishistory