Russia before 1917

I found it odd, ever since I was at school, that historical chunks had a beginning and and end but teachers always made reference to previous processes to explain the topic under study clearly. It bothered me that our topic was "the First World War" but we had to talk about two previous Balkan wars to understand the big picture and even travel back to 1870 to explain French resentment over Germany.

Source

If I ever became a teacher, I promised myself, I would never make that kind of mistakes.

When I had my chance to plan the secondary curriculum at one school, I remembered that promise. Therefore, I designed a quite dense syllabus for Year 9 so that when we got to Year 10 students knew what was communism, revolution, German Empire, Archduke and other concepts which GCSE text books take for granted.

Russia, however, is a different thing.

Dealing with Russia is quite challenging mainly because it is the least relevant place for our (Argentine) history. If Europe is quite abstract or young students, Russia is out of this world. Reading about it can't be fun. Since I wanted my students to really understand the 1917 revolution and its meaning, I made a summary of the introductory pages of Ben Walsh GCSE Modern World History so that students could concentrate on sources. It is not something that I would do a lot because I do not like my talking and students' listening. But it was worth the shot.

Find here the presentation from Prezi.