Lesson video

Hello, and welcome back.

I'm Mr. Hutchinson, this is history, and we've been learning all about 20th century conflict.

Now in our last lesson, we started to write our essay.

You did a really, really great job, and today we're going to get a chance to finish that essay off.

So if you haven't completed the last lesson, you need to go back and do that one first, because that will mean that you have the start of your essay, ready to answer our big question.

Make sure that you completed the quiz.

That's a good chance to recap a lot of the knowledge that we're going to be using in this piece of writing.

So if you haven't already, go back and complete that quiz.

If you did it, you'll see that there are questions from all over our learning.

It's a good chance to constantly revisit so that it doesn't drop out of your head.

Really builds the retrieval strength, the way that your brain brings stuff back to mind.

So well done if you did that.

Don't worry if you got them wrong, it's still really useful for your memory, even if you get them incorrect.

So let's start with today's lesson, lots of writing to do, and we're going to be planning and writing our essay.

The second part, sections three and four.

But before we do, let's get some inspiration from some of you who have done some awesome work already.

So I want to share with you, sorry.

First of all, what we'll do is, is we'll just recap what an essay is and what our question is.

Then we'll plan section three together and write section three, and then we'll plan section four together and write section four.

I got excited, because I wanted to share your awesome, awesome work.

I love that there are so many of you out there, all completing these lessons and doing great work.

So it's a good chance for you to see each other's work, because when you're working on your own, you sometimes forget that there are other people doing the same work as well.

And look at these beautiful notes here with key vocabulary.

Lots and lots of information about everything that we've learned about, including some stuff that I, these are, I didn't ask you to do all these tasks, but this child, Jean, has made sure that they've included everything that they need to know about the period, so they're going to be so ready to write.

Well done, Jean, amazing, amazing work.

Really, really pleased for you and proud of you.

This really great speech came through from the end of our final lesson on the collapse of the USSR.

Well this child, and this was Dara, Dara considering were there any winners in the Cold War.

You'll remember that Gorbachev, the final leader of the Soviet Union, so there were no winners in the Cold War.

Does Dara agree here? Dara does agree, and uses their knowledge of the whole period to be able to answer that really authoritatively.

Really, I think Dara here is really showing that the more you know, the more you are taken seriously, because if you don't know anything, then nobody pays any attention to you, because why would they? And then the more you know, the more you're able to make decisions to persuade other people.

And Dara has really shown that well there, so well done Dara, amazing work.

And the final one comes through from Tom, and Tom has been thinking really, really hard and engaging with all of the lessons.

And I know that Tom's been doing some extra research all about nuclear weapons as well.

And look at all of these notes that Tom has asked to go down to make that, assure that he has all of that knowledge in his head.

So well done, Tom.

I can see you've gone above and beyond there.

Awesome, awesome work.

Let's get started.

You need a quiet place.

You need somewhere peaceful to work.

When I'm writing an essay, I can't do it if there's distractions everywhere.

So find somewhere that's quiet, make sure that you're well-organized, you've got everything that you need.

You might have your previous notes.

You're going to need an exercise book.

You're going to need some paper to write on.

You're going to need a pen, and you'll need a ruler to do your planning sheet.

So remember, an essay, it's a long piece of writing about one particular subject.

In our case, 20th century conflict.

It can be about anything, though.

You can write an essay about sharks.

You can write an essay about the climate emergency.

You could write an essay about the ancient Egyptians, or about reggae music, or about the Cold War like we are.

But what's key is that all of your ideas are well-organized, they're put forward forcefully and clearly, and they together they allow you to make an argument to persuade somebody you're write about this topic, whatever it is that you're arguing.

So let's get started.

You should be really good at this by now.

You need to draw your table for the second section of this essay, and, sorry, for the third and fourth section of this essay.

So I showed you in the last lesson.

So I'm not going to show you again today, but you need to get your ruler out and make sure that you've got a table with those spaces ready to plan and retrieve all of your knowledge.

So three columns, key information, lots of space, key vocab.

If you're going to be using lots of specific vocab, plenty of space.

And don't forget to jot the title down.

Pause the video, and have a go at that now.

Great, you've got your plan in front of you.

Feel good to be organised, you've got everything ready, ready to get going.

You're going to absolutely smash this.

You're awesome.

And this is a reminder of our question.

The world's a safer place with nuclear weapons.

To what extent do you agree with this statement? You might've been having discussions at home with people that you are home with about this question.

Be interesting what their thoughts are.

They might disagree with you, in which case you can use some of that knowledge to try and persuade them, good practise for your essay.

So let's look at section three of our essay.

You might, like I said in the last lesson, you might write more than one paragraph.

You probably will.

You might even write several pages about each section 'cause you've got a lot to say.

And then in section three, we're going to think about that lesson that we did about that policy of peaceful co-existence, or, although it was a policy, we know that it wasn't a particularly peaceful period, even though the idea was that the USSR and the United States, these two ideologies would peacefully live alongside each other.

So why don't you have a go before I show you what I put down, seeing everything that you can remember.

Jot down everything that you can remember.

So pause the video and write down everything you can remember about this period of peaceful co-existence or the policy of peaceful co-existence.

Great, so you might have put down about the war between North Korea and South Korea.

The Korean War, really early on, soon after the Second World War, one of the first flashpoints, the Korean War.

Can you remember who that was? Stalin died in 1953.

Who took over, who was that? Well done, that's Nikita Khrushchev.

And Khrushchev built that big wall because lots of people were leaving East Berlin into West Berlin because they thought the standard of living was better, the quality of life was better.

Khrushchev didn't want that, so he built the Berlin Wall.

JFK didn't do anything.

John F.

Kennedy, the American president, didn't do anything about the Berlin Wall, but when the Cuban Missile Crisis took place and Cuba looked like it might get into ballistic missiles on the Island of Cuba, able to attack the United States directly, possibly with nuclear weapons, JFK did intervene there.

Naval blockade, everybody very tense.

Was this going to spark a nuclear war? Was this going to be a nuclear annihilation of the planet? It didn't come to that.

Thankfully, the Cuban Missile Crisis ended peacefully.

But another war going on around the same time, the Vietnam War, similar to the Korean War, in the North fighting the South, the communists backing the Northern powers and the capitalist backing the Southern powers.

That war went on for a long time, really unpopular, in American homes often known as the war that America lost.

And some key vocab that you might have included there, this idea of proxy wars.

Wars, proxy, wars that take place instead of another war.

So it's not a direct war between USA and USSR, instead there's proxy wars.

Why are there proxy wars? Why do they take place in other places? Because of the idea of Mutually Assured Destruction, or MAD.

Because by 1949 the USSR and the USA both have nukes, they can't directly attack each other because they will completely annihilate each other.

So we get the proxy war of the Korean War.

Khrushchev takes over after Stalin dies.

He builds the Berlin Wall.

Later, there's a Cuban Missile Crisis.

The Vietnam War continues the fighting.

So let's put this down into note form like we did before, so that when it comes to writing our essay, it's going to be really, really easy 'cause we've already got tonnes of ideas down.

It doesn't need to be in full sentences at this stage.

We're just jotting down all of those ideas.

So you can after, there's no direct fighting between the USA and USSR, but there is a war between North and South Korea, the North supported by the USSR, the South supported by the USA and NATO.

You might remember that China also weighs in to support the Northern communists in North Korea.

Read through the rest of those.

So we're in the Cold War proper, both sides have nuclear bombs.

Perfect chance to answer our question, is the world a safer place with nuclear bombs? Thinking about all of these different flashpoints or hot flashes of the Cold War.

Just pause the video and add to any, add to your notes, so you've got plenty to write about, even if you forgot.

And now we're ready to write.

So your steps to success, this is how you're going to write a really top-notch essay, and I know that you can do it.

You're going to make sure that you write in full sentences, obviously.

You're going to include all of your key information and key vocab.

If you start a new idea, then if one idea, and that could be the Vietnam War, for example, if you start a new idea, that needs a new paragraph, so you start a new line.

So you leave a blank line, sorry.

You're really over-explaining this.

Don't pretend you're explaining it to me.

I already know about the Cold War.

Pretend you're explaining it to somebody that hasn't heard of it before.

So you need to explain every detail and why it's important.

Always link your facts back to the question.

Now we're writing these essays in a more sophisticated way.

It's not just putting down everything we know.

It's linking it to the question, applying that knowledge to the question, and you should be forming a judgement.

Do you think the world is a safer place with nuclear bombs? Yes or no, or sort of partially.

Use your knowledge as evidence to justify that view.

So you've got your plan.

You've got your steps to success.

Now it's time to find a quiet place.

Write, write, write, write, write.

You're going to rock it.

It's going to be amazing.

Pause the video and come back when you finish all of section three.

Super work, well done.

Maybe have a little break, maybe a drink, maybe a snack, because we've got section four to write, and then our essay will be done.

Let's get going.

So in section four, we're going to look at our final lesson, which was about the collapse of the USSR and communism in Eastern Europe.

So the Cold War started as soon as the Second World War ended and lasted for decades.

It lasted right through until the late 1980s or the early 1990s.

1991 was when the USSR formally dissolved.

We use that word dissolved even though that sounds like sugar dissolving in water.

If something is to, if a country is dissolved, it means it no longer exists.

So in 1991 it formally legally dissolves, decades after the Second World War.

And you, can you remember who that leader was? We're moving on from Khrushchev now.

Do you remember that leader's name? Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, excellent.

That's Brezhnev.

The American president, Ronald Reagan.

Leader of rebel forces known as the Mujahideen in Afghanistan that person's called, do you remember? Awesome, Osama bin Laden, well done.

Very impressed.

And why are we talking about that? Well, there was a war in Afghanistan, a Soviet Afghanistan war where the USSR thought Afghanistan could turn communist as well.

And Ronald Reagan supporting rebels such as Osama bin Laden to fight against the Soviets.

And we know that decades later in 2001, Osama bin Laden would actually lead terrorist attacks against the United States.

He masterminded the Twin Tower attacks, but was first armed by the Americans to fight against the Soviets.

And after the Afghanistan War went on for years and years, a new leader of the USSR takes over from Brezhnev.

And can you remember who that leader was called? What that leader's name was? The final leader of the USSR? Can you remember his name? Gorbachev, well done, Gorbachev.

And Gorbachev won that special prize, the Nobel Peace Prize, for bringing an end to the Cold War by working with the Western leaders and allowing Eastern States to have free elections.

And so this old flag of the USSR, the Soviet Union flag, that's gone away because now that country turned into modern day Russia.

So some key vocab.

You need to know Brezhnev's name, there's also Reagan and bin Laden, who is a member of the Mujahideen, that rebel group in Afghanistan.

There's a Soviet-Afghanistan War throughout the 1980s beginning in 1979.

Then Gorbachev takes over in the mid-eighties.

He starts reform, glasnost.

He wants a greater transparency so that people could know what was really going on in his country.

Perestroika, political reforms to allow some, get rid of some of the corruption and allow some sort of more capitalist ideas to come in like free trade.

They were his reforms, glasnost and perestroika.

It allows free elections, gets a Nobel Peace Prize for that, but that leads to the USSR dissolving, ending, as those Eastern States choose not to elect communist parties.

Okay, so just as always, jot down anything that you missed and start to put that into note form, start to bullet point that so that you know what you're going to write in each of your paragraphs.

Pause the video and do that now.

Super work.

So it might look something like this.

You can see that I've jotted down a few further ideas all about each of those sections, all about each of those events and those people.

I'll let you just pause the video and read through that and add to your notes anything that you've missed.

So now you have a plan, you're ready to go.

You're ready to write the final section of your essay.

How sad, but also how satisfying that you've got an awesome essay.

So you've got your plan.

You've got your steps to success.

Remember to revisit that question.

Do you think the world is a safe, does this mean that the world is a safer place with these nuclear weapons? Applying all of that knowledge to that idea.

Pause the video and have a really good writing session using all of your knowledge to finish section four.

Well done, awesome work.

Now something I haven't included in the plan here is the conclusion, that's because that's personal to you.

You're going to decide whether you think that you agree with the statement or don't agree, and you're going to say why.

So I'm going to leave that up to you now.

Are you going to finish off this essay by answering the question to say I accept the statement.

I think the statement is correct.

The world is a safer place because there are nuclear bombs.

It was safer during the Cold War because there were nuclear bombs and this is why.

Or are you going to reject the statement and say no, the world is not a safer place with nuclear weapons.

We would be better off without them, and this is why.

Draw on all of your knowledge from the First World War, the Second World War, the Cold War, to make your judgement.

So you can pause the video now and write your conclusion.

And we are done.

I want to see them.

You know that I want to read those essays.

I bet you've done a great job and I can't wait to read everything that you've written and see if I agree with your conclusions.

See if I agree with your judgement , see if you can persuade me.

You can send it in by asking your parent or carer to take a photo of all of your work and post it to Twitter using @OakNational #LearnWithOak #ONAYear6 If you mark it with those hashtags, then I'll be able to see it and read it, and I'll read all of them and love reading them.

So please do send them in.

Well done.

We've come to the end of our unit, and gosh, we've learnt so much.

I hope it sparked some interest.

I hope that it sparked curiosity.

I hope that you think, "Oh gosh, history's a really interesting subject." And I hope that it allows you to see the world now in a bit of a different way.

So if you see perhaps on the news that the USA and Russia are having disagreements, then you'll know this huge long history of the Cold War.

If you look at Eastern European countries in the news, then you'll know the history of Soviet States.

And that's going to allow you to be far better informed and understand the world in a much better way.

So well done, all of you out there, tens of thousands of you working so hard and thinking so hard, and not giving up and always getting to the end of these essays.

You've got one final quiz to do.

It's a long quiz which is going to just check that you've got all of those key facts.

So wrap up this learning with that quiz, even though you've worked so hard already.

I'm really proud of you, well done, and thank you.

And I'll see you next time.