History · Year 12

Active learning ideas

Economic and Social Problems under Mary

Active learning lets students engage with economic and social pressures as lived experiences rather than abstract policies. Handling primary evidence, debating trade-offs, and building timelines turn distant hardship into tangible decisions, building historical empathy and analytical rigor.

• National Curriculum Attainment Targets
• A-Level: History - Mary I: Social and Economic Problems
• A-Level: History - The Tudors: England, 1485–1603

• 30–50 min
• Pairs → Whole Class
• 4 activities

Activity 01

• Hexagonal Thinking
• 50 min · Small Groups

Source Stations: Crisis Evidence

Prepare stations with extracts on harvest failures, sweating sickness reports, and reform proclamations. Groups visit each for 10 minutes, noting causes, responses, and impacts, then share syntheses. Follow with class vote on crisis extent.

Explain how Mary's government responded to the inflation of the 1550s.

Facilitation Tip

During Source Stations, place a mix of quantitative (grain price lists) and qualitative (letters from constables) at each station to force students to connect numbers and human impact.

What to look for

Provide students with a short primary source excerpt describing a harvest failure or price increase. Ask them to write two sentences explaining the immediate economic impact and one sentence connecting it to a government response during Mary's reign.

• Analyze
• Evaluate
• Create
• Self-Awareness
• Relationship Skills

Activity 02

• Hexagonal Thinking
• 45 min · Pairs

Debate Pairs: Reforms vs Crisis

Assign pairs to argue for or against Mary's reforms as Elizabethan foundations. Provide data cards on naval spending and coinage. Pairs prepare 3-minute speeches, then switch sides for rebuttals. Conclude with whole-class evaluation.

Analyze whether the administrative and naval reforms of Mary's reign were the basis for Elizabethan success.

Facilitation Tip

For Debate Pairs, assign students roles as pro-reform merchants or distressed laborers to ensure claims are grounded in the sources they’ve handled in earlier activities.

What to look for

Pose the question: 'Were Mary I's administrative and naval reforms a foundation for Elizabethan success, or simply continuations of existing trends?' Facilitate a debate where students must cite specific examples of reforms and their outcomes to support their arguments.

• Analyze
• Evaluate
• Create
• Self-Awareness
• Relationship Skills

Activity 03

• Hexagonal Thinking
• 30 min · Small Groups

Timeline Build: Economic Timeline

Individuals or pairs sequence 12 event cards on inflation, sickness, and reforms chronologically. Add impact annotations using class glossary. Groups present one segment, linking to key questions.

Evaluate the extent to which Mary's reign was a period of 'crisis'.

Facilitation Tip

When building the Economic Timeline, provide blank slips for each event so students physically rearrange them, revealing how sequencing changes causal stories.

What to look for

Present students with a list of events and policies from Mary's reign (e.g., coinage debasement, sweating sickness outbreak, naval dockyard expansion, enclosure legislation). Ask them to categorize each as primarily an 'economic problem', 'social problem', or 'government response', and briefly justify one categorization.

• Analyze
• Evaluate
• Create
• Self-Awareness
• Relationship Skills

Activity 04

• Hexagonal Thinking
• 40 min · Small Groups

Council Role-Play: Inflation Response

Form council groups with roles like chancellor and advisors. Present scenario of 1557 price spike; groups propose and vote on policies from source menu. Debrief compares to actual decisions.

Explain how Mary's government responded to the inflation of the 1550s.

Facilitation Tip

In the Council Role-Play, give advisers distinct agendas (finance minister vs. social welfare advocate) to surface trade-offs in real time.

What to look for

Provide students with a short primary source excerpt describing a harvest failure or price increase. Ask them to write two sentences explaining the immediate economic impact and one sentence connecting it to a government response during Mary's reign.

• Analyze
• Evaluate
• Create
• Self-Awareness
• Relationship Skills

A few notes on teaching this unit

Start with the concrete: use grain price graphs and sweating-sickness mortality tables to anchor analysis before introducing policy debates. Avoid framing Mary’s reign as a failure narrative; instead, guide students to assess problems in context, noting what succeeded (coinage reform) and what did not (enclosure controls). Research shows students over-generalize Tudor inflation; slow them down by forcing them to calculate triple-price increases on sample baskets of goods.

Students will trace how harvest failures, disease, and inflation interacted with government responses like coinage reform and enclosure controls. They will weigh evidence, debate causality, and sequence events to explain outcomes, not just recall dates.

---

Watch Out for These Misconceptions

• During Source Stations, watch for students attributing all hardship to Mary’s religious policies.

  Ask students to sort sources into two columns: one labeled 'circumstance' (harvest, disease) and one 'policy' (coinage, enclosure), using the station’s evidence to justify each placement.

• During Debate Pairs, students may claim all of Mary’s reforms failed.

  Direct pairs to use the reform cards from the timeline activity to tally successes (coinage output stabilized) and setbacks (enclosure grievances persisted), anchoring arguments in measurable outcomes.

• During Timeline Build, students may understate inflation’s scale.

  Have students post price increases next to key events; when a price doubles or triples, ask them to mark it visually with a bold arrow to force attention to magnitude.

---

Methods used in this brief

• Hexagonal Thinking