Our second history coursework piece asks students to analyse different interpretations of why men from Wales went to fight in the Spanish Civil War.
Rather than march through the background to the war (which I’ve done in the past, and did with the content for the first coursework topic) I decided to start with Viva La Quinta Brigada by Christy Moore and see what questions the students had. From there, we were able to cover much of the background we would have anyway, but now they seem to genuinely want to know why these people went and fought, rather than simply trying to ‘learn’ enough to answer the question.
It’ll be interesting to see whether this curiosity follows through into the rest of the work, but I’m hopeful.
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