When it comes to studying life in Nazi Germany it can sometimes feel like ground hog day. Class based work on policies towards women, workers and the young can feel very samey. That is why we have put together a great ICT source based investigation to add some variety and spice up your approach to teaching about Nazi policies to young people.
The enquiry is made meaningful by making the students take on the role of a government inspector. Experience tells us that by using word processing as a vehicle for this enquiry means students quickly become absorbed. By spending their time reading, selecting, copying and pasting information they don’t actually think they are working. In reality they are engaged in higher order thinking and are able to analyse more information than they can using a pen and paper.
You will be amazed at the quality and quantity of the work your students produce in the final report. When Ofsted observed this lesson a couple of years ago they were hugely impressed at the progress they saw all of the students were making.
Ideally you will have class access to pcs for a few lessons. Or you could place the documents on the school website and turn this into a two week homework enquiry. Alternatively, you could use the documents and teach the investigation in a more traditional way.
Download lesson
- Lesson write-up: PDF
- Resource 1 – Nazi policies towards young: DOC
- Resource 2 – Nazi education e-source pack: DOC
- Resource 2 – Youth Group e-source pack: DOC
- Worksheet 1 – Nazi school inspector grid: DOC
- Worksheet 1 – Nazi youth group inspector grid: DOC
- Worksheet 1 – Final Tasks: DOC
