On 2 August 1914 the British Cabinet was split over whether to go to war, and two ministers, John Burns and John Morley, resigned over the next two days rather than support intervention. Each Year 9 student writes a one-page memo to the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, dated that day, arguing for or against British intervention with at least three pieces of evidence from the source pack, such as the 1839 Treaty of London guaranteeing Belgian neutrality, the Entente with France and the 1912 naval arrangement that left France's Channel coast to the Royal Navy. Students draft and write in their own Google Docs on school accounts, using the department's memo layout, with no comments or shared editing. The department set this memo in Microsoft Word until the school moved to Google Workspace, and the teacher marks it after the lesson against the same success criteria, and reads out the strongest argument on each side at the start of the next lesson.
Tools: Google Docs Nine ideas for your own version in Generate
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