Interactive Replace History lessons for middle school.

Year 7 are learning that sources are arguments, not answers, through the death of William II, known as Rufus, killed by an arrow while hunting in the New Forest in August 1100. The teacher has built a branching Microsoft Form: each section shows a source, such as an extract from William of Malmesbury or Orderic Vitalis, a note on the writer, or a later account, and asks a decision question, such as whether the writer was there or repeating what he heard, and whether he had reason to favour Henry I, the brother who gained most from the king's death. Each answer routes the pair to a different next section, so by the end different pairs have followed different evidence trails and reached different verdicts on accident or murder. The plenary puts two pairs with opposite verdicts at the front to retrace their routes, which shows that the verdict depends on the reliability decisions made along the way.

Tools: Microsoft Forms Nine ideas for your own version in Generate

Year 8 are studying living conditions in industrial towns, and the source is John Leech's cartoon 'A Court for King Cholera', printed in Punch in 1852, between the cholera epidemics of 1848 to 1849 and 1853 to 1854. The teacher sets a Microsoft Form with the cartoon at the top and six long-answer questions below it. The first three ask what students can see: the crowd packed into a narrow court, the heap of refuse in the foreground, the lodging-house signs. The last three ask what they can infer: why the title calls cholera a king and this court his, who read Punch, and what the cartoonist wanted those readers to demand. Students type their answers on their own device while the teacher circulates and asks for the detail behind an inference. The Form does no marking; the teacher reads the answers after the lesson, as the exercise books were read before, and opens the next lesson with two strong answers to question six.

Tools: Microsoft Forms Nine ideas for your own version in Generate

Year 9 read the ten demands Austria-Hungary sent to Serbia on 23 July 1914 with a 48-hour deadline. Each student opens their own copy of a Google Doc holding a translation of the ten numbered demands and a summary of Serbia's reply of 25 July, and highlights each demand in one of three colours: accepted, accepted with conditions, or refused. Beside each qualified or refused demand they add a comment on why Serbia might have found it unacceptable, starting from the example the teacher models, point 6, which asked for Austro-Hungarian officials to take part in the investigation on Serbian soil. The teacher circulates and questions students' reasons, and the lesson ends with a written answer in books to the question: was the ultimatum written to be rejected?

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

Year 9 write their causation essay on the First World War next week, and the essays falter when the factual anchors are vague. The teacher makes one Padlet Sandbox board per pair, set to school login, holding nine cards, each a cause with one fact attached: the Anglo-German naval race after HMS Dreadnought in 1906, the Triple Alliance of 1882, the Triple Entente of 1907, the Moroccan crises of 1905 and 1911, the Bosnian crisis of 1908, the Schlieffen Plan drawn up in 1905, Weltpolitik from 1897, the Balkan Wars of 1912 to 1913 and imperial rivalry in Africa. Pairs drag the cards into a diamond with the most important cause at the top, adding a note beside each card that explains its position. The teacher circulates, pressing pairs on which cause made the others dangerous, and the lesson ends with each pair writing the opening sentence of their essay from their top card.

Tools: Padlet Nine ideas for your own version in Generate