Six lessons built around structured dialogue — from a prosperous Anglo-Saxon kingdom through the Battle of Hastings to a verdict on whether 1066 changed England forever.

Six lessons. One overarching enquiry. Every lesson built for structured dialogue.

Lesson 1 — Anglo-Saxon England and the Succession Crisis. Gold coinage, a parish system, shire courts, a flourishing manuscript culture — England in 1065 was one of the best-run kingdoms in Europe, not a backwater waiting to be civilised. So when a king dies childless and four powerful men each claim the throne, what exactly is at stake? Lesson 1 opens with a Mystery Image starter and moves into paired investigation: students sort multi-source evidence — population figures, an earldom map, coinage and manuscript culture, images of Anglo-Saxon material wealth — into categories, then rank it by what would most strike a foreign invader about this country. There’s no formal writing in Lesson 1 — the synthesis plenary delivers the lesson’s climax, introducing the four claimants who emerged when Edward the Confessor died in January 1066, and asking students to imagine standing in each man’s shoes. The crucial move: students establish what England was, so the rest of the unit can measure what 1066 changed it from.

Lesson 2 — The Battle of Hastings: Reading the Bayeux Tapestry. The most famous source for the most famous battle in English history — and it was made by the winners. So how much can we trust it? Lesson 2 opens with a Think–Discuss–Share starter, then puts students in jigsaw groups of four, each holding a different account of Hastings: a tile from the Bayeux Tapestry, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a Norman chronicler, and a continental witness. Students then take a set of claims about the battle — how Harold died, what broke the shield wall, what won the day — and sort them into “supported by the sources,” “contested,” and “not in any source at all,” a move that forces them to read every account against the others. They write a source-inference paragraph, and along the way confront the lesson’s big idea: that even the most famous source has an author, a perspective, and things it deliberately leaves out.

Lesson 3 — Why Did William Win? Was it William’s cavalry, the feigned retreat, and the Pope’s blessing — or Harold’s exhausting march south, his tired army, and a fatal arrow? Did William win, or did Harold lose? Lesson 3 opens with an Odd One Out starter — three explanations for the Norman victory — where the one students reject reveals the assumption they walked in carrying. They then work in split-evidence pairs: one partner reads a Norman account stressing William’s tactical and moral superiority, the other an Anglo-Saxon account stressing misfortune and treachery — and neither can judge how useful the sources really are without teaching the other what they hold. The lesson holds the question genuinely open, because the answer students settle on changes how significant the Conquest looks: a victory won by skill turns on a single day, while a defeat caused by deeper weakness was nearer to inevitable.

Lesson 4 — Castles and Norman Control. Perhaps five hundred castles thrown up across England within twenty years — raw earth mounds with timber towers, looming over villages that had never seen anything like them. What was a castle really for? Lesson 4 puts students inside a Norman castle, investigating it as a 360° site rather than reading claims about it. They commit first to a position — were castles built mainly to fight, to govern, or to frighten? — then test that position against what they can actually see, hunting for features across the site and ranking them by how aggressively each one reshaped the landscape around it. They meet the Harrying of the North as the starkest example of how that control was enforced. The castle makes the unit’s strongest physical case for rupture: a student standing inside one can read the argument for power in the earth and timber itself. (Content advisory: this lesson deals soberly with the Harrying of the North.)

Lesson 5 — Domesday Book and the New Landlords. By 1086, perhaps fewer than two dozen Anglo-Saxon nobles still held substantial land in England. The rest had been swept away. How do you measure a change on that scale? Lesson 5 treats students as historians working with real data. They meet the Domesday figures through a Data Encounter — landholders’ names and the value of their estates in 1066 set against 1086 — and build their own criteria for what “displacement” should even mean before applying them. Comparing the country before and after, they discover both halves of the unit’s question in the numbers: the near-total replacement of the landowning class on one side, and on the other the villages, fields and administrative structures that carried on largely unchanged. The plenary draws modern parallels of property-rights upheaval, so the history connects to the present.

Lesson 6 — Did 1066 Change England Forever? (Capstone). Six lessons of evidence. One verdict. Today you commit. Lesson 6 opens with a Prediction Game on five claims about Britain before and after the Conquest, where the pattern of what students get wrong surfaces the unit’s central question. They then annotate a unit-wide timeline — from the prosperous Anglo-Saxon baseline through the succession crisis, Hastings, the castles, and Domesday — and meet a few sources from beyond the unit’s window before staging a Balloon Debate, in which five students each argue that a different dimension of English life changed most decisively: governance, language, landownership, religious life, or the rural everyday. The oral debate is the rehearsal for the unit’s first full extended writing block, where students deliver their own evidenced verdict drawing on at least three lessons. The unit closes with a Verdict Continuum — every student taking a physical position on the overarching question: was 1066 the year England changed forever, or the year the same country got new owners?

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Oracy that improves students’ learning: a taster — try it to believe it.

The Verdict Continuum — Every student commits to a physical position on the unit’s overarching question — did 1066 change England forever, or did the same country simply get new owners? — then tests it against a partner standing at a different point on the line, citing specific lessons and using talk frames to build, challenge, concede, and counter. Why it works: it collapses six lessons of evidence into a single act of reasoned public position-taking, makes thinking visible, and turns dialogue into rehearsal for the formal written assessment — the highest-stakes oracy moment in the unit.

The Statement Sort — Faced with four rival accounts of Hastings — including the Bayeux Tapestry itself — students sort a set of claims into “supported by the sources,” “contested,” and “not in any source,” a move that cannot be completed without reading every account against the others. Why it works: the sort forces consultation across conflicting partisan sources and teaches the lesson at the heart of the unit — that even the most famous source was made by someone, for a reason, with things left out.

Split-Evidence Partner Teaching — Each partner reads a different account of why William won — one Norman, one Anglo-Saxon — annotates it closely, then teaches it to someone who has not seen it, so the judgement task genuinely cannot be completed alone. Why it works: only one partner holds each half of the evidence, so the talk is necessary rather than performed; every student speaks as the source’s expert and listens with a real gap to fill.

Position Commitment Before a Site Investigation — Before students explore a Norman castle, they commit to a view of what it was for — to fight, to govern, or to frighten — then test that commitment against what they actually find when they read the site itself. Why it works: committing before the evidence exposes assumptions, and reading the castle’s physical features as an argument turns “a castle is a building” into “a castle is a statement of power.”

Exploratory Talk with Sentence Stems — Four move-types — justify, challenge, build, shift — give students a shared grammar for productive dialogue. Stems sit visibly alongside the task, so the cognitive load shifts from how do I disagree politely to what evidence supports my shift. Why it works: the EEF evidence base for dialogic teaching rests on making high-quality talk moves teachable. Stems make exploratory talk learnable in a way that open prompts alone cannot.

The Class Thinking Board — A three-column public record — What We Think · What Challenges Us · What’s Next — updated live as pairs share their findings. Students are asked not just to report their own thinking, but to listen for connections, disagreements, and surprises across the room. Why it works: builds the habit of responding to each other rather than to the teacher. The board becomes a collective artefact of how the class’s thinking changed — dialogue as a visible, shared practice.

What’s included:

A complete, classroom-ready pack — built around structured dialogue,
mapped to the oracy framework, and grounded in the EEF evidence base.

Teacher resources

• 6 fully-planned lessons (starter, main, plenary)
• Lesson-by-lesson teacher guidance
• Unit overview with enquiry arc and oracy framework mapping
• Ground rules for talk and exploratory talk stems

Student resources

• Student-facing lesson slides with embedded tasks and talk frames
• Sentence stems for justifying, challenging, building, and shifting thinking
• Evidence cards, source extracts, and data sets
• Modelled writing and structured writing scaffolds

Framework alignment

• Mapped to the four strands of the oracy framework (Physical, Linguistic, Cognitive, Social & Emotional)
• Built on EEF evidence for dialogic teaching – including exploratory talk
• Aligned to the KS3 National Curriculum for History

Format

• Free to download and use in your classroom

• Delivered as a single downloadable pack

• Editable throughout