A no-prep, 6-lesson history unit on A study of an aspect of British history that extends pupils’ chronological knowledge beyond 1066. Written for Year 5 (ages 9-10). Pick it up at lunchtime, teach it that afternoon - every lesson has a full teacher script, projectable slides, a pupil worksheet, and an exit quiz.
Driving question: What happened when half of England died - and why did it change everything?

What’s included

• 6 x Teacher lesson plans (Word, fully scripted)
• 6 x Pupil worksheets in 3 differentiated tiers (Support / Core / Stretch)
• 6 x Projectable slide decks (PowerPoint, ~22 slides each)
• 6 x Exit quizzes (single-page printable, with answer key)
• 1 x Knowledge Organiser (Word, 2-page A4 landscape)
• 1 x End-of-unit assessment with baseline + mark scheme
• 50+ original illustrations included throughout
• Curated kid-appropriate YouTube videos linked from each lesson’s slide deck

Curriculum links

• UK National Curriculum - KS2 History: A study of an aspect of British history that extends pupils’ chronological knowledge beyond 1066 - the Black Death in England (1348-1350)
• The Black Death 1348-1350 - the pandemic that killed roughly HALF of England
• How a medieval English village faced the plague
• How the disease changed English society for the next 400 years

What pupils will learn

• Pupils know what the Black Death was - a pandemic of the disease we now call PLAGUE (Yersinia pestis bacterium)
• Pupils know that the plague arrived in England via a Gascon sailor at Melcombe Regis (modern Weymouth), Dorset, in June 1348
• Pupils know that the Black Death killed an estimated 30-50% of England’s population in just two years
• Pupils know the three forms of plague (bubonic, pneumonic, septicaemic) and roughly what each did to the body
• Pupils know that medieval doctors did NOT understand how plague spread - they blamed bad air (‘miasma’), God’s anger, and astronomical positions
• Pupils know about real medieval English sources - Henry Knighton at Leicester, Ralph of Shrewsbury at Bath and Wells, the abandoned village of Wharram Percy