A cabinet. Politicians not included.

Whenever I teach Nazi Germany as a topic at GCSE, I dread going over the political changes in 1932 and 1933. The simple reason being that the students find it very confusing and I find it frustrating having tried a few ways (invariably involving the staple timeline activity) to make it ‘click’ for them. The time was coming up to go over this topic with a new group and I really wanted the students to get to grips with it. After staring at the textbook and trying to think of exciting activities within the time I had (always a problem), I remembered a presentation given by Oliver Knight at Cambridge Uni a few months ago on how to create a classroom environment where English language learners could access History as a subject. Oliver used one simple but effective technique. He had produced pictures matching the events of the narrative and gave them to the students. As they listened to the story, they would move the pictures into the correct sequence. At the end of the story, they had to retell the sequence of events using only the pictures as prompts. Would this technique allow my students to access the complexity of the political deals made during the last days of the Weimar Republic?

Using the prompts from the text book, I got a number of images to represent the main actors (and a picture of an actual cabinet to represent the Weimar political cabinet which they all loved amongst the various Weimar politicians). I cut them into small portraits and gave a set of around 10 images to each group. After we went through the information on the pages and I emphasised key points, I got the students to close their text books, sequence the pictures together and to retell the events using the pictures as prompts. Our Teaching Assistant (who is a wonderful woman and not because she is married to my Head of Department!) and I went around to check understanding. I was a little surprised by the result. The majority of the students could remember the sequence and tell me the story of what happened whilst a few got the sequence right but the story slightly muddled. The class helped to correct the mistake and for an activity that used pictures, listening skills and was completed in about 15 minutes, I was impressed with the result. They enjoyed the challenge of trying to come to grips with this complex political narrative.

I then wheeled out the ‘faithful’ task of the timeline to make sure they had the events covered so they could answer a cause and consequence exam question. Groans emanated from the class but they were purposeful in constructing their lines o’time.

Maybe I have cracked my Weimar problem. I guess I will find out from their answers to the examination question and when we look at the topic again in a few weeks, but I am hopeful.

I will, of course, put it all down to the use of the cabinet.

Cabinet image by Tom Raftery @ Flickr

Front image by Sarah1rene @ Flickr

This post is tagged GCSE, Modern World, Weimar, Year 10