Transform your history classroom
ActiveHistory provides interactive simulations, self-marking quizzes, lesson plans, worksheets and multimedia activities designed by full-time history teacher Russel Tarr.
Build and deliver complete history courses with resources for classroom teaching, remote learning and independent study - from multimedia lectures to interactive games and historical simulations.
World History teaching resources for the high school classroom: lesson plans, worksheets, quizzes and simulation games for KS3, IGCSE, IB and A-Level teachers.
Overview
In Summer 2024, I conducted a road trip around Europe. In the process of putting together the overall itinerary, and individual itineraries for certain cities like this one for Vienna, I learned a great deal about the history of the places I visited.
With this in mind, I started off my IBDP History course that September with a simple induction project in which students were challenged to design a historical trip, complete with an advertising brochure and Google Earth itinerary. 
Students were allowed to choose from one of two formats:
|
Area |
Distance |
Time available |
Walking Tour |
One City / Town |
10 locations within a 5km radius |
One day |
Driving Tour |
One Country / region |
10 places within a 500km radius |
Ten days |
Instruction sheet for students | Sample Tour Planner
Your first task is to choose your favoured location (city, country, region). This might be based on somewhere you have already visited or would like to visit. Ideally, each person in the class should choose a different location for variation. Then you will need to identify 10 places around which to construct your trip. These should be arranged in a numbered ‘loop’ so that the tourist can start and end in the same place.
To do this, you will need to research the most important events, people, monuments, museums and so on in this area’s history. You will then convert this into a final outcome with each of the locations explained carefully (maybe in the style of ‘TripAdvisor’ reviews) such as:
- Paper Map
- Travel Brochure
- Google Earth Tour
- Short video
- ...or something else!
The best of these projects will include a timeline which will provide an introductory overview, in chronological order, of the history of the area, drawing upon each of the places in your tour. In this way the visitor will understand how all the places connect together to provide an overall ‘story’.
Sample Outcomes: A Historical Trip around Paris | A Google Earth Tour of Athens
These projects were produced by my Grade 11 students, and I plan to share these the next time students are given this project as a sample outcome.
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