History · Year 10

Active learning ideas

The Vagrancy Crisis: Criminalising the Poor

Active learning helps students grasp how economic forces and social attitudes shaped vagrancy laws. By handling primary sources, debating motives, and role-playing trials, students move beyond memorising dates to analyzing cause and effect in historical policy.

• National Curriculum Attainment Targets
• GCSE: History - Crime and Punishment Through Time
• GCSE: History - Early Modern England

• 30–45 min
• Pairs → Whole Class
• 4 activities

Activity 01

• Stations Rotation
• 40 min · Small Groups

Stations Rotation: Vagrancy Sources

Prepare four stations with 1547 Act extracts, beggar ballads, enclosure records, and magistrate reports. Small groups spend 8 minutes at each, noting attitudes toward vagrants and economic links, then share findings in a class carousel.

Explain why the Elizabethans feared 'sturdy beggars'.

Facilitation Tip

For Station Rotation: Vagrancy Sources, group sources into categories and rotate students every 8–10 minutes to maintain focus and energy.

What to look for

Provide students with a short quote from a primary source document (e.g., a proclamation or a sermon). Ask them to write two sentences explaining what the quote reveals about Elizabethan attitudes towards vagrants and one potential consequence for a 'sturdy beggar' mentioned or implied.

• Remember
• Understand
• Apply
• Analyze
• Self-Management
• Relationship Skills

Activity 02

• Role Play
• 35 min · Pairs

Debate Pairs: Fear or Morality

Assign pairs to argue if vagrant punishments arose from fear of rebellion or moral condemnation of idleness. Provide evidence cards; pairs prepare 5 minutes, then debate in a class tournament with peer voting.

Analyze how economic change led to new definitions of crime.

Facilitation Tip

During Debate Pairs: Fear or Morality, provide a two-minute ‘thinking pause’ before rebuttals to ensure evidence-based responses.

What to look for

Pose the question: 'Was the 1547 Vagrancy Act primarily a response to genuine social problems or a manifestation of fear and prejudice?' Ask students to support their arguments with specific evidence discussed in class, referencing economic changes and social attitudes.

• Apply
• Analyze
• Evaluate
• Social Awareness
• Self-Awareness

Activity 03

• Role Play
• 45 min · Small Groups

Role-Play: Vagrant Trial

Form small groups as magistrates, vagrants, and witnesses. Present case based on a primary source scenario; group decides punishment and justifies with historical context, followed by whole-class reflection.

Evaluate if the treatment of vagrants was based on fear or morality.

Facilitation Tip

In Role-Play: Vagrant Trial, assign roles in advance and give clear time limits for each stage to keep the trial moving efficiently.

What to look for

Present students with three brief descriptions of individuals from the period. Ask them to classify each individual as likely to be considered a 'sturdy beggar' or a 'deserving poor' based on the criteria learned. They should provide one sentence of justification for each classification.

• Apply
• Analyze
• Evaluate
• Social Awareness
• Self-Awareness

Activity 04

• Role Play
• 30 min · Pairs

Timeline Build: Vagrancy Laws

In pairs, students sequence events like enclosures, 1547 Act, and later Elizabethan laws on cards, adding cause-effect arrows and quotes. Pairs present timelines to class for peer critique.

Explain why the Elizabethans feared 'sturdy beggars'.

Facilitation Tip

For Timeline Build: Vagrancy Laws, pre-print key dates and events on separate cards so students focus on sequencing rather than handwriting.

What to look for

Provide students with a short quote from a primary source document (e.g., a proclamation or a sermon). Ask them to write two sentences explaining what the quote reveals about Elizabethan attitudes towards vagrants and one potential consequence for a 'sturdy beggar' mentioned or implied.

• Apply
• Analyze
• Evaluate
• Social Awareness
• Self-Awareness

A few notes on teaching this unit

Start with the economic context—enclosures, inflation, and population growth—before introducing the 1547 Act. Use contrasting primary sources to show how contemporaries justified harsh measures, then step back to ask whether these were responses to real crises or tools of social control. Research suggests students grasp causation better when they first analyse individual cases before generalising patterns.

Students will identify the difference between ‘worthy poor’ and ‘sturdy beggars,’ explain how fear and morality influenced laws, and evaluate the structural causes of poverty. Expect clear distinctions in source analysis and confident participation in debates and trials.

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Watch Out for These Misconceptions

• During Station Rotation: Vagrancy Sources, students may assume all poor people were treated the same.

  During Station Rotation: Vagrancy Sources, hand each pair a sorting mat and have them place source cards into two columns: ‘worthy poor’ or ‘sturdy beggars.’ Ask students to defend their choices with textual evidence to uncover nuanced distinctions.

• During Role-Play: Vagrant Trial, students may argue vagrancy arose solely from laziness.

  During Role-Play: Vagrant Trial, ask the judge to call for witness testimony on economic pressures like enclosures before deciding guilt. Require each witness to cite at least one structural cause to shift focus from individual character to systemic factors.

• During Debate Pairs: Fear or Morality, students may claim punishments lacked moral justification.

  During Debate Pairs: Fear or Morality, provide each pair with a quotation linking idleness to sin. Ask them to integrate this into their argument, then reflect in a one-sentence written response on how morality and fear intertwined in contemporaries’ minds.

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Methods used in this brief

• Stations Rotation
• Role Play