Teaching Year 8 to create and refine a narrative of the interwar years

The major aim of this sequence of lessons was to teach Year 8 how to create and refine a narrative. I chose a period I was substantively confident on, which lent itself well to the narrative form, had a number of prominent academic narratives published about it and followed neatly on from the previous enquiry that had been studied by the students. The conceptual focus of the enquiry would be predominantly causal – with a central enquiry question ‘How did World War I lead to World War II?’ The enquiry question was intended to be uncomplicated and uncontroversial so that students had the opportunity to explore fully the possibilities of historical narrative writing without being prompted down a certain path.