This resource looks at the question: ‘“Civil disobedience was more important than legal decisions during the civil rights movement.” Do you agree?’ for an end-of-unit essay.

• Over the last six lessons, pupils have learnt all about the civil rights movement in the USA during the 1950s and 1960s
• Pupils finish the unit by writing their own essay, allowing them to apply the knowledge that they have gained
• We advise taking one lesson to plan the essay, and two lessons to write it
• You can decide whether or not pupils have their booklet available as they write
• If pupils can write from memory it will be quicker, and more individual
• However we need to provide students with the scaffolds they need to all experience success
• The planning sheet below may be useful in helping pupils to chunk their ideas together into paragraphs
• You may like to print the ‘structure strip’ so that pupils can us the questions as prompts, if they are struggling to think about what to write
• For lower-attaining pupils, you may wish to use pictures or images in order as prompts for writing
• For higher attaining pupils, additional paragraphs may be required, and the essay specific vocabulary below could be incorporated

It also includes a selection of example essays.

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