This session timelines the UK’s political relationship with Europe from 1945 to just after Boris Johnson prorogued Parliament (Sept 2019). There is a little student interaction, but it does require a session leader who has a fair knowledge of UK politics.

Less than a year since this session was written… feels like a lifetime ago…

The students are introduced to some key political figures at the start of the session. The characters are divided among the students who then have to think about how their character might feel about key events throughout this timeline.

If there are students who do not know much about politics, certain terms will need to be explained to them, such as ‘austerity’, ‘socialist’ etc. I found it helped if you invited the students to just put up their hand every time you said a word they didn’t understand.

The session could easily take 2 hours+ if you show every clip and have a lot of discussion throughout, but can be cut back easily enough if you skip bits out. Our session lasted 1.5hrs and we watched about 3 clips in total.

For this session you will need a roll of paper to draw your timeline on, scissors and glue.