Interactive Amplify History lessons for middle school.

Year 8 have read the main terms of the 1833 Factory Act: no child under nine in a textile mill other than a silk mill, no more than nine hours a day for children aged nine to twelve, no more than twelve for those aged thirteen to seventeen, no night work for anyone under eighteen and two hours of schooling a day for the children. The teacher runs a ten-question Wayground quiz in which each question is a case an inspector might meet in 1840: a boy of eleven working twelve hours in a cotton mill, a fifteen-year-old on the night shift in a woollen mill, a girl of eight in a silk mill, a boy of twelve hauling coal underground, a woman of thirty working fourteen hours in a cotton mill. Students choose against the Act, allowed by the Act, or outside the Act because it is not a textile mill, and Wayground tells them at once whether they were right. The teacher watches the report and stops to reteach the two cases most students got wrong. Students finish by writing why four inspectors, and no birth certificates for children born before 1837, made even clear cases hard to prove.

Tools: Wayground (formerly Quizizz) Nine ideas for your own version in Generate

Pairs read two short extracts: the opening and clauses 39 and 40 of the 1215 charter itself, and a passage from the chronicle of Roger of Wendover, a monk at St Albans who was hostile to King John and wrote within about twenty years of the events. For each source they post one fact and one sign of the writer's viewpoint to a class Padlet with one column per source. The teacher reads down the columns, places posts that disagree side by side, and draws out the biggest contradiction: the charter presents itself as John's free grant made out of reverence for God, while Wendover shows a king forced to agree. Pairs finish by deciding which source is more useful for explaining why John sealed the charter, and add that verdict to their post.

Tools: Padlet Nine ideas for your own version in Generate

The teacher takes Year 9 through the July Crisis in five moments: the assassination on 28 June, Germany's 'blank cheque' to Austria-Hungary on 5 and 6 July, the ultimatum to Serbia on 23 July, Russia's general mobilisation on 30 July and Germany's invasion of Belgium on 4 August. After each moment, students use a Mentimeter scales question on their own devices to rate how responsible Austria-Hungary, Germany, Russia, Serbia, France and Britain are so far, from 0 to 10, and the board shows the class average for each power, with the previous slide a click away for comparison. When a power's average jumps, or the answers are widely split, the teacher stops and has the class argue it out using the source extract for that moment before moving on. Students end by writing which moment changed the class's judgement most, and whether they agree with the change.

Tools: Mentimeter Nine ideas for your own version in Generate

The teacher sets up a Padlet with one column for each decade from the 1760s to the 1830s and gives each pair five or six event cards for one decade, so two pairs work on every decade, and post approval is on so neither pair sees the other's choices until the teacher releases them. Cards include Arkwright's water frame (1769), the first Boulton and Watt engines at work (1776), Cort's puddling process (1784), the Stockton and Darlington Railway (1825) and the Factory Act (1833). Each pair posts the three events it judges most significant to its decade's column, with a one-line reason linked to how industry changed. The teacher reads along the columns and stops wherever the two pairs on a decade chose differently, and those pairs defend their choices before the class agrees the events for its final chain across all eight decades.

Tools: Padlet Nine ideas for your own version in Generate

The teacher reads aloud an English translation of extracts from Philipp Scheidemann's speech to the National Assembly on 12 May 1919, with the text on the board, including his question of what hand would not wither that bound itself in such fetters. In pairs, students record a Mote voice comment of up to a minute, the free plan's limit, on their row of a shared class Google Doc, naming two emotions in the speech and linking each to a term of the treaty, such as the war guilt clause (Article 231) or reparations. The teacher listens as comments arrive, plays two contrasting ones to the class and asks which is better supported by the text, then records a short spoken reply to each pair. Pairs finish by adding one written sentence under their comment in response to the teacher's feedback. The Doc is shared within the school domain, and recordings are not posted anywhere else.

Tools: Mote, Google Docs Nine ideas for your own version in Generate