Teach the complete IB History course with confidence
Access comprehensive resources for teaching, planning and assessment - including lesson plans, worksheets, teacher notes, multimedia lectures, interactive simulations and games, and structured activities for classroom learning, remote teaching and independent study.
Use the curriculum maps and syllabus topic guides to build your course efficiently - with dedicated support for the Internal Assessment, Extended Essay, historiography, essay writing and sourcework skills.
Research the History of the Album Cover
An album cover can tell a story before you have even heard a single note. For this project, each member of the class will be given a different album to investigate. Your challenge is to look closely at its cover, discover the history behind the image, and then explore the connection between that history and the music.
You might discover a famous painting, a dramatic photograph, a historical event, a remarkable person - or an image whose story is very different from what you first imagined. Your investigation will take you from the album itself to the original historical source, uncovering what the image shows, where it came from, what it was originally created or used for, and why the musicians chose it for their album.
But you'll also become the class's expert on your album. Once you've uncovered its story, you'll decide which track from the album you would recommend to your classmates, and why.
The finished investigations will then come together as a classroom display, creating a collection of album covers that brings together music, art and history from different times and places.
So, what can an album cover teach us about history?
🎵 Choose Your Album
Each album cover has a story waiting to be discovered. Find your assigned album below, download the worksheet and become the class expert on the history behind its cover.
© 1998-2026 Russel Tarr, ActiveHistory.co.uk Limited (Reg. 6111680)
1 Torrin Drive, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, SY3 6AW, England
Privacy Policy | Contact
