GCSE History: Source Skills – Medicine and the Western Front

This material trains the source skills that go with the GCSE History thematic study of medicine in Britain – for example Pearson Edexcel's 'Medicine in Britain, c1250–present' with its historic environment 'The British sector of the Western Front, 1914–18', or AQA's 'Britain: Health and the people, c1000 to the present day'. The content of these topics is covered by the medicine materials in this category; here the focus is on how to use evidence.

In the Western Front historic environment, students are asked how useful two sources are for a given enquiry and how they would follow up a detail in a source – which question they would ask and which type of source would answer it. In thematic studies, students need to choose and use evidence to support arguments about change and continuity. This material practises those moves step by step.

Every quiz question contains its own short source, so nothing depends on a textbook. Almost all the sources are practice sources written by Zestly and labelled as invented, modelled on the kinds of evidence historians use – chronicles, plague orders, letters, parish reports, surgeons' notes, hospital registers, war diaries, censored photographs and cartoons. One extract is real: a sentence from the preface to Florence Nightingale's Notes on Hospitals (1863), which is in the public domain.

The quiz covers the whole period from the Black Death to the NHS: making inferences that the source really supports, seeing how the nature, origin and purpose of a source affect its value for a particular enquiry, telling reliability and usefulness apart, recognising the limits of a single piece of evidence, choosing a follow-up question and a suitable type of source, comparing two interpretations of the development of penicillin, and choosing evidence of continuity.

The written work sets full exam-style tasks with model answers and key points – usefulness of two Western Front sources, a follow-up enquiry, inference, and using evidence in a change-and-continuity argument. The flashcards drill source-skill vocabulary and the typical sources available for the Western Front. In the oral exam an examiner reads a short practice source, asks one question at a time and gives brief feedback at the end.

The material is revision practice written by Zestly and is not produced or reviewed by any exam board; question styles are based on the skills named in the specifications, and the wording and marks of real papers may differ.

• Make inferences about medicine and public health that are directly supported by a source
• Judge the usefulness of a source using its content, provenance and own knowledge
• Identify the typical sources for the Western Front and what each can and cannot show
• Frame a follow-up question and choose a suitable type of source to answer it
• Compare interpretations of a medical breakthrough
• Use sources as evidence of change and continuity

Practice material written by Zestly on the source skills in the DfE GCSE history subject content, applied to the medicine thematic study and the Western Front historic environment (for example Pearson Edexcel GCSE History 1HI0 Paper 1, AQA 8145 'Britain: Health and the people'). Real extract quoted: Florence Nightingale, Notes on Hospitals, 3rd edition (1863), preface – public domain. All other sources are invented for practice and labelled as such.