History at key stage 3    (Year 9)

• Brainstorm 'freedom'. What does it mean? Freedom from or freedom to? Are we free today? Are people everywhere in the world free? Do different societies today have different definitions of, and ideas about, freedom?
• Brainstorm 'slavery'. What does it mean? Which societies in the past had slaves? Did slaves have rights? Does slavery exist in the world today? If so, Why?
• Ask pupils to write four sentences beginning ' To be free means...' and four sentences beginning ' Slaves cannot ...'. Follow this with a whole-class discussion on which aspects of freedom and slavery were the most important/oppressing/dominant.

• Using a range of maps, ask pupils to establish the size, diversity and complexity of the African continent.
• Through the use of 'factcards' about different indigenous groups, eg Ibo, Hausa ask pupils to establish links between the different groups and their immediate environment as well as the richness and diversity of African cultures. This activity could be extended into a larger scale research activity with groups of pupils investigating different indigenous African tribes and kingdoms such as Ghana, Benin, Ife and Mali.
• Ask pupils to locate the different tribes and kingdoms on a map of Africa and establish, by considering British and European shipping routes, trade winds, etc, which Africans were most likely to be at risk from white slave traders.

• Explain that slavery existed in Africa long before white people arrived. Describe the different ways in which Black Africans could become slaves, along with the different ways the various tribes and kingdoms treated slaves. Emphasise the essentially temporary nature of African slavery.
• Switch the focus from slavery to the slave trade. Emphasise the difference. Describe the impact of the Islamic Arabs and the importance of Islamic teaching about slaves and slavery.
• Ask pupils to begin to construct data-capture sheets about slaves and slavery in Africa by inputting information on the situation before the 1440s.
• Focus on the arrival of the Portuguese and the ways in which, and reasons why, slavery changed once white people became involved.
• Ask pupils to complete data-capture sheets about slaves and slavery in Africa by inputting information about slaves and slavery after the 1440s.

• Tell pupils about the first Black Americans: that, for example, they were not slaves but, in the seventeenth century, indentured servants and black settlers.
• Introduce the idea of the Triangular Trade: the needs of the cotton and sugar plantations, the demand for labour, the availability of labour in West Africa, the economics of ships sailing with a full hold and the general dynamics of trade.
• Use a range of source material relating to buying Black Africans, the 'middle passage' and Black Africans' experiences on arrival in the Caribbean and mainland USA.
• Ask pupils, either individually or in groups, to evaluate some of the sources and use the findings to make substantiated written conclusions about the experience of Black Africans sold into slavery.

• Explore, through mini-case studies, the ways in which slaves, by their own efforts, achieved freedom. These could include:
• Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railway
• Toussaint L'Ouverture and Haiti
• Cinque and the Amistad
• Olaudah Equiano
• Henry Brown and his box
• Using a variety of source material focusing on moral, practical and economic issues, ask pupils to construct arguments that could have been used at the time in support of, or against, emancipation. The presentation of these arguments can take the form of a debate set in 1830s America.
• Tell the story of the Dred Scott case and use this as a starting point to explain the ways in which the USA became divided into a slave-owning south and a 'free' north.
• Ask pupils, in groups, to consider the question Was the Civil War fought to free the slaves? In order to do this they should investigate the causes of the American Civil War and identify how many are relevant to the question before coming to a judgement. The whole class could discuss the question Was the Civil War fought to free the slaves?

• Outline the situation in the south during the Reconstruction period and in particular the independence of state governments versus the importance of the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution.
• Pupils work in groups with information cards, each one of which contains details of organisations, factors, etc that tended to promote or inhibit black peoples' freedom in the years after emancipation, eg sharecropping, Freedmen's Bureau, the Jim Crow laws, Liberia and Marcus Garvey, the Ku Klux Klan, National Negro Business League, Niagara Movement, NAACP and NUL, Negro History Week, the First and Second World Wars, Harlem and jazz, Father Divine.
• Ask pupils to decide which were positive, promoting the wellbeing of black peoples, and which negative. Place these on a 'balance sheet' to determine losses and gains.

• Brainstorm on 'civil rights'. What are they? Who has them? Can they be taken away? Under what circumstances? Do rights imply responsibilities? What might civil responsibilities be? Is there a difference between civil rights and civil liberties?
• Provide visual images and ask pupils to consider the ways in which black people lived in the 1960s in the USA.
• Ask pupils to discuss the responses that were open to black people and investigate the actions of individuals like Arlen Carr, Septima Clark, Elizabeth Eckford and Rosa Parkes, and events like the attempts to end segregation at Little Rock, Arkansas and the Alabama Children's Crusade. Ask pupils to act as 'roving reporters' and prepare copy on one of these events.
• Play the speeches of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, either on audiotape or video. Let pupils analyse the similarities and differences. Introduce the picture of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King smiling and shaking hands. What was the purpose of the picture? How likely was it that the men could work together in the Civil Rights movement? Ask pupils to prepare a case for the approach to civil rights of either Martin Luther King or Malcolm X.
• If appropriate, bring the American Civil Rights issue up to date, eg by considering the race riots of the 1990s and the role of black icons.
• Ask pupils to consider a range of source material, eg newspaper articles, advertisements, video clips, relating to the current situation of Black American people, eg on race riots, a Black American pop singer, evidence of discrimination, sporting achievements, a black President of the USA or a large corporation. Half the pupils use the source material to make a case for black peoples still being far from equal, the other half use it to make a case for black peoples now being as free as whites. The final summative task could take the form of either a structured debate or a structured piece of writing.