Over two lessons, Year 9 work with a partner class at a school in Vienna whose students are learning English, through a shared Google Doc and a Microsoft Teams call, both on school accounts and hosted by the two teachers. In the first lesson each class reads its own country's newspapers from 29 June, 24 July and 1 August 1914: Year 9 from the free Welsh Newspapers Online archive, and the Vienna class, with their history teacher's help, from ANNO, the Austrian National Library's archive, which Year 9 could not read without them. Each class chooses the passages that mattered most in its own papers and adds English translations or summaries of them to the Doc, with notes on the words that mattered, such as how each paper described Serbia and the ultimatum. In the second lesson the teachers host a whole-class call on both boards, where named speakers from each class ask about the other's reading and each class gives its own verdict on how far Austria-Hungary was responsible, and Year 9 finish by writing how the Austrian papers and the Vienna class's verdict change their own judgement.
Tools: Microsoft Teams, Google Docs Nine ideas for your own version in Generate
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