I was quite pleased with today's year 12 lesson. We were looking at the huge number of changes in Germany between 1870 and 1914. In 4 pairs, I gave them 4 big changes - new federal structure, new constitution, economic expansion, population growth - and a set of post it notes. They had 2 minutes to think of as many changes as they could which resulted from their big change. They put each change on a separate post it note. After 2 minutes they rotated groups and either added more changes on fresh post it notes, or added a change to a change - attaching a post it note to another post it note. They then rotated around until they had looked at each change.
They then moved their original big change and post it notes to a big table and arranged them in 4 areas. I gave each pair some coloured strips of paper and asked them to make links or chains between different changes.
We then sat around the table discussing what they saw. They were able to talk about most significant changes, long and short term change, which changes would cause tensions an how German people might feel faced with so many changes.
I was really impressed by the depth of their discussion and the level at which they were thinking about the effects of change. This activity really helped them to appreciate the complexity of change and how effects link together.
I then asked them to do their own version of this diagram. This was unexpectedly effective as they approached it in so many different ways. Some produced colourful versions of it, one did a mind map and one of my mathematicians decided on a vent diagram to show how so many changes overlapped. The next step will be to compare the diagrams to see how they differ and then get them to do a piece of writing based on what were the main tensions in Wilhelmine Germany. Not bad for 5 days from the end of the school year
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