During war information can be portrayed in different ways for different needs. Governments use propaganda and censorship to control what the public sees. This was the case in Britain during World War Two. This lesson looks at some of the things that were hidden and some of the information and ideas that were advertised and aims to get your students to think about why certain information as censored or exploited.
This lesson uses sources from World War Two to get students thinking about the purpose of certain evidence and encourages them to make a judgement about reliability.
The PDF presentation has a quick starter activity showing how the same information can be ‘spun’ in different ways for different purposes. The starter gives exam statistics from an imaginary school and the students have to discuss how it might be used by people with different agendas.
The class then have six sources to analyse. They are primary sources but not all were published during the Blitz. In pairs or alone they complete a table scaffold worksheet (printed from the Presentation) describing each source and its purpose, then go on to state wether it was published at the time or censored. They must then explain why they think why each source was treated in the way it was.
The verbal extension activity is on the presentation – what impact would these source shave had if they had been made public at the time?
Contains:
– Worksheet with six sources.
– 5 slide PDF presentation.
