IBMT teaching resources in the spotlight

History school teachers are being told about the IBMT’s new online teaching resources on the International Brigades.

The June issue of Teaching History carries a feature on how to teach Year 9 school students about the ‘ordinary people’ who fought in the Spanish Civil War. 

The article is written by Professor Peter Anderson of Leeds University and Alex Clifford, who teaches at Newcastle High School for Girls. Both have overseen the production of the teaching tools for Key Stage 3 pupils that can be downloaded from the IBMT website.

The teaching packages contain lesson plans, PowerPoint presentations, knowledge organisers, marking schemes and reading suggestions. They cover two topics:

– Why did so many people volunteer to fight in the Spanish Civil War?

– Women and the Spanish Civil War.

The module on women has been produced by David Grant, a Leeds University doctoral student.

To view or download the resources, go to https://international-brigades.org.uk/category/for-teachers/. Other teaching and learning tools are also available on the site’s Education page.

Welcoming the article in Teaching History, IBMT Chair Jim Jump said the IBMT Schools Project is one of the Trust’s key priorities. ‘The aim now is to get the message out to the history teaching profession that these resources are available.’

He went on: ‘We’re also telling teachers that they can find out about the volunteers from their area or town who went to Spain by searching the Volunteers page of our website.’

He added: ‘In the longer term we want to build on what has already been achieved and reach out to other age groups in schools.’

Teaching History is the secondary education journal of the Historical Association and is widely read by history teachers.

The IBMT Schools Project was launched four years ago with the aim of helping teachers bring the story of the International Brigades and the Spanish Civil war into the classroom – something that the Trust felt was absent from most textbooks. It has received funding from the Lipman-Miliband Trust.