History Lessons
History lesson plans for children with SEN
These history and geography lesson plans are adapted to the abilities and knowledge of a child with SEN in a mainstream class. The aim is for the knowledge in these lessons to really reach the child, so that they can explain the cause-and-effect links between different events and phenomena.
The child has a mild intellectual disability and is receiving resource support for the first year. On the whole, the child is easily motivated to work. They use simple sentences, can tell a story from a picture, love listening to stories and draw the moral almost on their own. They can tell the seasons and colours apart. They know the letters and can read in syllables, but still need to learn to blend syllables into words. In history and geography they know some of the main events and phenomena and find dates hard to remember, but when the material is presented well and adapted to their abilities, they show interest and their memory becomes more lasting. The child has a good sense of time and space and, with help, can explain the cause-and-effect links between things. They find geography and history lessons interesting, but need one-to-one work to understand most of the content. They ask questions when something is unclear. Their attention span is about 20–25 minutes, and only when they are interested. They carry out the tasks given to them and do them carefully. Their vocabulary is limited, because at home and with friends they speak mostly Romani, but they still try to put the words of a sentence together correctly.
HISTORY
The school where the history lesson was observed uses the following textbooks:
- History and Civilisation – Prosveta publishing house; authors: Rayna Gavrilova, Plamen Pavlov, Rumyana Kusheva. Topics: Bulgaria – a home of ancient civilisations; the medieval Bulgarian state up to the early 10th century; the Bulgarian state and society in the 10th–14th centuries; the Bulgarian lands under Ottoman rule in the 15th–18th centuries.
- History and Civilisation – Prosveta publishing house; authors: Rayna Gavrilova, Maria Radeva, Evgenia Kalinova. Topics: the Bulgarian National Revival; the political development of Bulgaria from the Liberation to the mid-20th century; economic, social and cultural life up to the mid-20th century; Bulgarian society from the second half of the 20th century to the early 21st century.
- History of the Ancient World – Anubis publishing house; authors: Vasko Arnaudov, Tsvetan Tsvetanski. Topics: Prehistory; the Ancient East; Ancient Greece; Ancient Rome.
- History – Svyat i Nauka publishing house; authors: Hristo Matanov, Georgi Sotirov, Lyudmil Stanchev. Topics: From Antiquity to the Middle Ages; the medieval world; the European West and the European East; In search of new worlds.
The lesson observed and developed here is a history lesson on the world of the medieval Bulgarians.
Aim
To get a picture of how people lived in Bulgaria in the Middle Ages.
Tasks
- enriching vocabulary;
- enriching knowledge of history;
- improving concentration;
- improving memory;
- comparing with how Bulgarians live today;
- building a picture of the life of Bulgarians in the Middle Ages.
Materials
pictures and photos related to the lesson.
1. The role of Christianity in the life of medieval Bulgarians and the place of religion in their everyday life. Show the child photos of old icons and recall the main symbols of Christianity.
2. The difference between the nobility and ordinary peasants, seen in their clothes, where they lived and what they believed. Show the child drawings of the luxury in which kings and nobles lived – their clothes, jewellery and homes.
3. How peasants tried to protect themselves from natural disasters and the forces of nature. Explain what spells and other rituals were.
4. The role and joy of the great Christian holidays for ordinary peasants. The child can talk about a great Christian holiday that is still celebrated today.
Summary
Using questions, the teacher finds out what the child has understood and explains anything that is still unclear. In this case, the child understood how the great Christian holidays were celebrated, and the structure of society in medieval Bulgaria was explained again.
Assessment
At the end of the lesson the teacher gives the child a mark, encouraging good concentration and correct answers.