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Introduction
The focus of this assignment is on how I have used Bloom’s taxonomy in order to
challenge my Y7 history group at Rushey Mead High School, Leicester whom I have
been teaching the Romans to for the last half term. This particular group of pupils are
an accelerated science group who also have other lessons together including
history. Whilst this group have been placed together because they are particularly
gifted in science, the group is nevertheless of above average ability in most subjects
and many of them are predicted National Curriculum Level 7s in history by the end of
Y9 and from their verbal class contributions it is clear that many of them have a keen
interest in history. Many members of the class have an excellent general knowledge
and have often been able to tell me many things which I didn’t know, such as the boy
in my first lesson telling me that the last Crimean War ‘veteran’ died in 2004,
because he was a tortoise.
This seemingly high level of general knowledge amongst the pupils though got me
thinking about Bloom’s taxonomy. Whilst this group clearly already ‘know’ quite a lot
about history I realised that a lot of this could be considered low-level knowledge or
even possibly ‘trivia’ and I wondered whether they also had the higher-level thinking
skills such as analysis and evaluation which Bloom’s taxonomy promotes the
development of and which are important skills to have as a historian . I therefore
decided with this group that I would make effective use of Bloom’s taxonomy in order
to develop what is clearly already a good knowledge base towards higher-level
objectives as well.
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Established Literature.
Bloom’s taxonomy is a taxonomy of educational objectives that was devised by
Benjamin Bloom and his colleagues in the 1950s (Bloom et al., 1956). The purpose
of Bloom’s taxonomy is to ‘classify educational objectives into groups in relation to
their cognitive complexity’ (Dymoke and Harrison, 2008: 62). This means that those
objectives near the bottom of the taxonomy (knowledge, comprehension and
application) are cognitively simpler, or lower-order thinking skills, whereas those
objectives towards the top of the taxonomy (analysis, synthesis and evaluation) are
cognitively more complex, or higher-order thinking skills (Dymoke and Harrison,
2008: 63).
Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives
Source: http://ygt.dcsf.gov.uk/Nutshells/NAGTY251_02/NAG251_02f6.gif
It is a widely held view in educational theory that it is important to develop pupils’
higher-order thinking skills in order to develop them intellectually. For example,
Phillips (2008: 93) suggests that, ‘learning a list of dates, while important, is not the
same as the ability to analyse or evaluate’. Bloom’s taxonomy is therefore seen by
many as an extremely useful tool with which to challenge higher ability students.
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There are many researchers of gifted and talented pupils who have stressed the
usefulness of Bloom’s taxonomy for increasing challenge in the classroom. Clark and
Callow (2002: 85) suggest that, ‘with gifted and talented pupils in particular, higher-
order thinking skills as described in Bloom’s taxonomy can be used to differentiate
the curriculum’ and that teachers should give pupils the opportunity to develop their
higher-order thinking skills ‘on a regular basis’. Eyre and Marjoram (1990: 28)
suggest that Bloom’s taxonomy, ‘could, and in some schools does, form the basis of
a school approach to the more able’, and in a later work Eyre also suggests
that, ‘if pressed to identify an approach to extension planning which is particularly
useful, this [Bloom’s taxonomy] would be my choice’ (Eyre, 1997: 67).
Bloom’s taxonomy has therefore certainly made its mark on educational theory. It is
not however a theory which has survived for so long without any form of criticism.
David Krathwohl who worked with Bloom as one of the co-authors of the original
taxonomy produced a revised taxonomy in 2002 (Krathwohl, 2002). In the revised
taxonomy Krathwohl stresses the importance of the subcategories of the original
taxonomy which are often ignored and in his revised taxonomy Krathwohl places
more emphasis on the subcategories. For example, interpreting, classifying and
summarising are some of the subcategories of comprehension (Krathwohl, 2002:
214-215). In the revised taxonomy Krathwohl relaxes the strict hierarchy of Bloom’s
original taxonomy because he argues that some of the cognitive subcategories
overlap one another. For example, he argues that explaining (a subcategory of
comprehension) is actually cognitively more complex than executing (a subcategory
of application) (Krathwohl, 2002: 215). However, despite the fact that Krathwohl in
his revised taxonomy relaxes the hierarchical nature of Bloom’s taxonomy, the
revised taxonomy he creates is still essentially a hierarchy and as the name would
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suggest, the revised taxonomy is more a revision of Bloom’s taxonomy rather than a
major criticism of it.
Others have been much more critical of Bloom’s taxonomy though. One of the
strongest critics of Bloom’s taxonomy has been Ormell, with him going as far to
suggest that Bloom’s taxonomy is ‘epistemologically naive’ (Ormell 1974, quoted in
Furst, 1981: 444). One of the main issues that Ormell has with Bloom’s taxonomy is
what he considers to be the great undervaluing of knowledge or content. Ormell
(1974, quoted in Furst, 1981: 446) argues that, ‘certain demands for knowledge are
more complex than certain demands for analysis or evaluation’, and that, ‘a fact is
not a “logically primitive educational objective”’. Ormell does not suggest that the
higher-order thinking skills are not important to achieve but he argues that if those
higher objectives are to make any sense they must be based on ‘true mappings’ and
reflect ‘what is the case’ (Ormell, 1974, quoted in Furst, 1981: 444). Furst (1981:
446-447) summarises the arguments of those who feel that knowledge is
undervalued in Bloom’s taxonomy by saying that without it we are in danger of,
‘losing one of the essential characteristics of an educated person: that he or she
possesses a rational, connected view of the world’, and that there is a difference
between ‘knowing things as meaningless statements’ and ‘knowing in any important
sense which presupposes certain intellectual skills’.
As a solution to the problems which he perceives with Bloom’s taxonomy Ormell
suggests that as an alternative he would, ‘abandon any pretence of a single principle
of organisation by complexity’, and would instead, ‘split the taxonomy into six parallel
taxonomic categories’ (Ormell, 1974 quoted in Furst, 1981: 446).
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Despite the revisions and criticisms of Bloom’s taxonomy I still believe that the
taxonomy is an invaluable tool in promoting higher-level thought amongst pupils.
Whilst important issues are raised by researchers such as Ormell about the need to
avoid assumptions such as evaluation always being a better skill to promote than
knowledge it is nevertheless clear that higher-order skills such as evaluation are
vitally important for pupils to develop. Even Ormell (1974, quoted in Furst, 1981:
450) praised the taxonomy for ‘opening the issue of classification’, ‘bringing out the
great diversity of objectives’ and ‘helping to avoid concentration on the usual limited
range’. What has become clear from my reading is that whilst we should develop
higher-order thinking skills in pupils we cannot do this at the expense of good
knowledge and that we should be careful of promoting particular skills at the
expense of others.
The rest of this report shall look at how my Y7s responded to the challenge of using
higher-level thinking skills in the classroom and whether any of the above discussed
issues with Bloom’s taxonomy are evident in their work.
Research
The next lesson I decided to prepare for Y7 was one on Roman religion and I began
to look at available resources. Looking at the main textbook that the school had on
the Romans entitled Access to History: Rome and the Empire, I quickly decided that
the activities in it were inadequate for this group. Simply reading the preface of the
book tells you that it only caters for the lowest-order thinking skills of Bloom’s
taxonomy (Appendix A). The main exercise in this textbook on Roman religion was
nothing more than a simple cloze passage in which pupils had to write in the name of
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a Roman god to complete the sentence (Appendix B). This task involved nothing
more than basic comprehension and it was clear to me that my Y7s would complete
this in minutes and feel completely unsatisfied. I therefore decided to produce my
own worksheet on Roman religion which was more challenging and required higher-
order thinking skills (Appendix C).
I particularly liked my ‘Question 1’ which required the pupils to first know the different
roles of the Roman gods but then to also apply this knowledge to different situations
by suggesting which god would be prayed to in particular circumstances and giving a
reason why. I included easier situations such as ‘a soldier about to fight in a battle’
to help them get the gist of it but then included harder ones such as ‘someone
wanting to make sure a party went well’. This last question worked particularly well
because it produced an unintended opportunity for evaluation. I had assumed that
everyone would answer Bacchus because he was the god of wine. However, as I
was walking around the class looking at the pupils’ answers I saw that some had
answered Venus, because she was the goddess of love and you might want to fall in
love at a party and some had answered Vesta because she was the goddess of the
home where the party would be talking place. This gave me an ideal opportunity to
stress to the pupils that often there is not simply a right or wrong answer and that
they could put down several different possibilities so long as they could justify them,
which they were doing.
My worksheet went on to ask higher-level questions which required evaluation such
as asking the pupils to think of advantages and disadvantages of Roman religion and
why they thought that Constantine allowed Christians to worship freely. As can be
seen from my lesson self-evaluation for this lesson (Appendix D) I initially thought
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that the lesson went very well. Very few pupils appeared during the lesson to be
stuck on many of the questions and the pupils all seemed to be on task. This meant
that when I self-evaluated this lesson I found it hard to see any significant problems
with it and I was full of praise for the worksheet I had produced. It was not until a few
weeks later that I actually marked the pupils’ books that I realised that whilst some of
the pupils had answered these questions well, some of the pupils’ written answers
were also not as strong as I had expected. It is clear from these answers that pupils
have obviously made a good effort to think in an evaluative way but there were
clearly some weaknesses in their answers such as them thinking about modern
concerns, being slightly too imaginative, or having answers that were quite short or
underdeveloped (Appendix E).
In all these cases the pupils have clearly thought and carried out the cognitive
process of evaluation but is simply performing evaluation enough? It was clear that
some of these answers were not, as Ormell (1974, quoted in Furst, 1981: 444) would
put it, based on ‘true mappings’ and this made me wonder if the pupils’ had enough
subject knowledge or understood enough to answer these questions. These answers
also support the concern that Gall (1970: 715) raises when he states that one of the
problems with assessing evaluation is that there is no firm agreement on what
constitutes a ‘good answer’. If as he suggests, ‘complexity of the response’ is used
as a measure and ‘it is reasonable to expect at least a moderate correlation between
length of the response and its quality’, then some of these answers clearly need
further development.
When I looked at some of the group’s written answers it made me reflect on the
suitability of relying predominantly on written work as a measure of how well a
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particular group might be developing their evaluative skills. As described in more
detail in a critical incident (Appendix F), I realised when I was marking this group’s
work that they tend to be a lot stronger verbally than they are in their written work. In
a separate lesson I asked the group some evaluative questions (Appendix G)
verbally about Roman democracy and the response on that occasion was very
pleasing with the group answering well. Looking back I think that one of the benefits
of asking such evaluative questions verbally is that as the teacher I was able to
respond to the pupils’ answers on the spot and steer them towards stronger
responses whereas with marking written work later on much of the opportunity
to develop stronger responses is lost. This also shows the importance of good
subject knowledge though because one of the reasons why the pupils were able to
answer these particular questions well was because I had given them the knowledge
about Rome previously being a kingdom and the issues that people had had with it.
Therefore the pupils had a firm base on which to do their evaluating.
Results
My research with Y7 has clearly shown me the benefits of developing higher-level
thinking skills with such a group in order to move away from a very knowledge based
understanding of history and their generally strong verbal responses and the
stronger of the written responses has shown me that many are clearly capable of
this. However, my research has shown me that these higher-level thinking skills
need some developing and that if pupils’ higher-level thinking is to be good then it
needs to be based on firm and accurate subject knowledge, it needs to be well
developed and it needs to be well assessed. Bloom’s taxonomy can be used
effectively to differentiate for more able pupils but it is necessary to make sure that if
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pupils are to engage in higher-level thinking it is good higher-level thinking which is
educationally beneficial.
Recommendations for Revision
This study clearly has some shortcomings. The period I was able to study the class
for for the purpose of the assignment was short and I would have liked to have had
more lessons with them so that I could see how their higher-level thinking developed.
I will carry on teaching this class after Christmas and will make sure that I take into
account the issues that this study has brought up such as making sure that pupils
have sufficient knowledge to evaluate effectively and that I take into account their
verbal strength. For example if the class are doing written work I can ask them to
verbally tell me what they have written. The EAL nature of this particular group also
means that a comparison with non-EAL pupils would be an interesting comparison.
Unfortunately I was not observed for any of these lessons, but it would have been
useful to have input from a qualified teacher on these lessons. Finally I have maybe
been too critical of any weaknesses in the pupils’ work. The pupils are only Y7 and
higher-level thinking is probably quite new to them so it is not surprising if their
answering of evaluative questions can be underdeveloped.
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References
Bloom, B., Engelhart, M., Furst, E., Hill, W. and Krathwohl, D. (1956), Taxonomy of
Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals. Handbook 1:
Cognitive Domain, London, Longman.
Clark, C. and Callow, R. (2002), Educating the Gifted and Talented: Resource Issues
and Processes for Teachers, London, David Fulton.
Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), Young Gifted and Talented
Website, http://ygt.dcsf.gov.uk/Nutshells/NAGTY251_02/NAG251_02f6.gif 02/01/10.
Dymoke, S. and Harrison, J. (2008), Reflective Teaching and Learning: A Guide to
Professional Issues for Beginning Secondary Teachers, London, Sage.
Eyre, D. (1997), Able Children in Ordinary Schools, London, David Fulton.
Eyre, D. and Marjoram, T. (1990), Enriching and Extending the National Curriculum,
London, Kogan Page.
Furst, E. (1981), ‘Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives for the Cognitive
Domain: Philosophical and Educational issues’, Review of Educational Research,
51: 3, 441-453.
Gall, M. (1970), ‘The Use of Questions in Teaching’, Review of Educational
Research, 40: 4, 707-721.
Krathwohl, D. (2002), ‘A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy: An Overview’, Theory into
Practice, 41: 4, 212-218.
Ormell, C. (1974), ‘Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Objectives of Education’, Educational
Research, 17: 1, 3-18.
Phillips, I. (2008), Teaching History: Developing as a Reflective Secondary Teacher,
London, Sage.
Robson, W. (1992), Access to History: Rome and the Empire, Oxford, Oxford
University Press.
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Appendices
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Appendix A
Extract from the preface to Access to History: Rome and the Empire by Walter
Robson which shows clearly that the book is designed with the lowest levels of
Bloom’s taxonomy in mind.
‘The title of this series is Access to History, and accessibility is its keynote...
The exercises, which refer to the text, sources and illustrations, are intended to
extend factual knowledge, promote comprehension, and develop a range of skills, all
consistent with the revised National Curriculum requirements for knowledge, skills
and understanding.’
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Appendix B
Example of the kind of activity on Roman religion in Access to History: Rome and the
Empire by Walter Robson page, 62.
Exercise 12.1
Read Section A, and look at the table. Fill in the blank spaces in the sentences.
a ___________________ was the queen of the Roman gods.
b ___________________ was the goddess of war, and
___________________ was the god of war.
c Minerva was also the goddess of _____________________.
d Romans thought that _________________’s priests could
see into the future.
e Farmers hoped that ___________________ would be kind
and send a good harvest.
f __________________ was the special god of merchants.
g Housewives asked ________________ to keep their fires
alight.
h Saturn was _____________________’s father.
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Appendix C
The more challenging worksheet I produced on Roman religion.
1.) Which God or Goddess might you pray to in the following situations? (Write in a full sentences
and explain your answer).
a.) You are a soldier about to fight a battle.
b.) You are sending a letter to your friend in the opposite part of the country and you want to
make sure that it arrives ok.
c.) You are having a party and want to make sure it goes well.
d.) You are out walking in the forest and you get lost. Night falls are you are scared.
2.) Why did Roman towns have so many temples?
3.) What was one of the things you had to do in order to keep a god happy?
4.) Which 6 planets have been named after Roman Gods?
5.) Why do you think that the largest planet in the solar system is called Jupiter?
6.) Which two gods in the table do you think have had months named after them? Explain your
answer.
7.) a.) This is the Roman god Janus. Which month do you think was named after him?
b.) He has two heads, one looking one way and one looking the other. Why do you think he gave his
name to the month he did?
8.) Can you think of one advantage and one disadvantage of Roman religion?
9.) When the Romans conquered new people they let them carry on worshipping their own gods so
long as they worshipped Roman gods as well. Why would this have been a problem for Christians?
10.) Why do you think Emperor Constantine might have allowed Christians to worship freely?
11.) Look at the blue box on p. 64. In which century did Emperor Constantine give Christians the right
to worship freely?
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Appendix D
My original Lesson Self-Evaluation Form for the lesson on Roman religion.
Lesson Self-Evaluation Form
Subject Roman Religion Group 7BoR Period 1
Observer Room A6 Date 23/11/09
Every Lesson you teach ,should be evaluated by you: Include your decisions when planning the
lesson when you evaluate it
Areas for reflective thought:
What did the pupils learn? How do you know? (specific examples of pupils’ thinking,
speaking and writing here)
The pupils learnt the names of the different Roman gods and their roles. They learnt how
Roman people worshipped gods. They learnt how the planets and the months are named after
the Roman gods. They learnt about Roman attitudes towards Christianity and how these
changed over time and why. I know they learnt these things because when we read from the
textbook I asked them verbal questions which they responded well to and also the worksheet I
designed was specifically written in order to test this knowledge which all the pupils were able
to do.
How did the learning match your objectives?
I think that the learning matched the objectives well as my worksheet worked through Bloom’s
taxonomy. There was very little low level knowledge questioning on my worksheet with
emphasis instead being placed on application in the first questions and working through to
evaluation. I was able to reach higher level learning objectives by producing my own
worksheet more than I would have been able to do if I had simply used questions from the
textbook.
Did the class respond to the activities as you expected / hoped? Why?
Yes the class responded very well to the activities. They responded as I had hoped to a more
challenging worksheet. They found it challenging to the extent that they all had to think, but
not too hard to be able to do it.
If not, what would you change? Why?
Starter
Activity
Plenary
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Which parts were most successful? What made them a success?
The worksheet that I produced was very successful as I wrote it with the higher ability level of
the group in mind. This meant that I purposefully made it challenging without being too hard.
The class responded well to the challenging nature of the worksheet. I had to give some pupils
some help with some of the questions but once they had had it explained to them they
understood and where able to do the subsequent questions. I heard lots of pupils discussing it
with one another and explaining things to each other and felt that throughout the worksheet
the pupils were doing some good quality learning.
Have you identified the causes of any unexpected difficulties for the pupils?
I do not believe that there were any significant difficulties in this lesson. A few pupils needed
some tips and hints but this was enough to get them to understand. None of the pupils
seemed not to understand anything major. I did notice that on a question that said ‘Can you
think of…’, one boy had written ‘No’. When I reinforced the question to him he was able to do
so though. He did not seem the kind of child to try and be purposefully funny so perhaps I
should look at my questioning language.
How effectively did you differentiate this lesson for a G&T, SEN or EAL pupils? What
can you try in future?
I think I differentiated the lesson effectively for the gifted and talented nature of this group by
writing a worksheet with was sufficiently challenging and yet not too hard and which used
higher levels of learning. For example the first question about the individual roles of the gods
worked well because it did not simply require basic comprehension such as, ‘Who was the god
of war?’ which would be far too easy for this group of pupils. Rather I asked them to suggest
which gods might be prayed to in particular circumstances and made the circumstances
trickier. For example, instead of sticking to easy questions such as, ‘Which god might a soldier
pray to before going into battle?’ (fairly easily answered as Mars), I asked questions such as
‘Which god might someone pray to who is throwing a party and wants it to go well?’ (Venus,
Vesta and Bacchus all being possibilities). These questions were particularly good as there
were several possible answers and this allowed the pupils to discuss with me the reasons and
justifications for each of the possibilities.
Was the lesson pace as you expected? Was the time given to your activities
appropriate? Why?
The lesson pace was good. The worksheet was of sufficient difficultly not to be finished early
and there were none of the problems that I had with this group last lesson of having to
improvise to kill time.
Could you apply this teaching and learning style to other lessons / topics, if so,
how?
Yes, it would be an excellent idea to produce my own more challenging worksheets for higher
level groups again as this could be done with many different topics.
Were there any behavioural difficulties? Were these dealt with effectively? Would
you change this approach in the future?
None
Targets to develop my Planning and teaching- implement these straight away
TARGET STRATEGY
1 Continue to stretch this high ability Continue to come up with my
group in order to reach higher own more challenging
levels of learning. worksheets.
2 Avoid misunderstanding of questions. Think carefully about my
questioning language and
possible misinterpretations.
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Appendix E
A selection of answers to some questions.
Question: ‘Can you think of a disadvantage of Roman religion?
Stronger answers Most stronger answers focused on the idea that with so many
gods it might get confusing/ hard to keep them all happy etc.
Some weaker answers
‘No’
‘Statues might cost a lot and your house might get packed with them’. – (Modern
concerns.)
‘They had to go to the temple whereas today we don’t’. – (Modern concerns)
‘An assassin could kill you while you are praying’ - (Historically inaccurate and too
imaginative).
Question: ‘Why do you think Emperor Constantine might have allowed Christians to
worship freely?’
Stronger answers Most pupils took the question literally and said something along
the lines of ‘because he had a vision’, which is accurate enough but is not being as
inferential as I would have hoped. However, one pupil gave a particularly strong
high-level response; ‘He might have allowed them to worship freely because
otherwise Christians might riot on Roman cities’.
Some weaker answers
‘Because he must have thought that Christianity was more accurate than Roman
religion.’ - (Historically inaccurate).
‘So people would worship him.’ - (Historically inaccurate).
‘He might have said yes for praying freely so when Christians were caught praying
he could kill them.’ - (Historically inaccurate and too imaginative).
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Question: Why was Julius Caesar murdered?
Stronger answers Most stronger answers gave an accurate response that the
Senators thought Caesar posed a threat to Roman democracy.
Some weaker answers
‘They’d had enough of him’ – (Not very developed).
‘Caesar was famous and Brutus wasn’t. Brutus wanted to be King. - (Historically
inaccurate).’
Question: Why do you think only one source was written by a woman?
Stronger answers Most stronger answers picked up on the fact that women rarely
received an education or were treated as second-class citizens.
Some weaker answers
‘Maybe because not a lot of women could write’ (Underdeveloped – Don’t explain
‘Because not many women knew how to write’. why women couldn’t write)
There were not many women around (Illogical).
Because there were not many women in that time.
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Appendix F
My ‘critical incident’ with Y7.
My first critical incident came when I took my Y7’s exercise books home to mark.
This group is a particularly intelligent group with many of them predicted National
Curriculum Level 7s in history by the end of Y9. In the few weeks that I had been
teaching these Y7s I was often amazed by the level of their knowledge. Every lesson
they have shocked me with something that they have said that is so intelligent. This
can be something which they have been able to tell me which I myself didn’t know
such as the fact that the last ‘veteran’ of the Crimean War died in 2004 because he
was a tortoise or the fact that Julius Caesar was once captured by pirates.
Alternatively they have told me things which I was very surprised that pupils of such
a young age would know; such as the fact that magistrates don’t get paid, that the
IRA once attempted to assassinate Margaret Thatcher or that you can tell that
Australia and New Zealand have the Queen as their head of state because their
flags still contain the Union Jack. Because they are so bright this class has often
been one of the most difficult to teach because I have had to make sure that they
have challenging work and I never know what they are going to say that might catch
me out.
However, it was several weeks until I took this group’s exercise books home to
mark and when I did so I was quite surprised with how much weaker a lot of the
pupils were in their written work than they are orally. Many of their answers were
good but many were also short, underdeveloped, at times historically inaccurate, at
times nonsensical and with quite a few spelling and grammatical errors. They were
by no means terrible and in any other group of the same age I would not have
thought it was unusual but it surprised me with this group given what I had presumed
about their level of ability and the contrast with what they were like verbally. The next
day I spoke to my co-tutor about it which led to an interesting discussion. He told me
that it was often quite usual to find a group such as that who were exceptionally
strong verbally but maybe not as strong when it came to written work. He explained
that for most of the pupils in the group their first language is Gujarati. Most of the
pupils in this group come from what might be traditionally described as quite ‘middle-
class’ Indian backgrounds where there is a high emphasis placed at home on
educational achievement and their are often lots of books and encyclopaedias at
home. He said however that given that their parents do not necessarily have the
English proficiency themselves, written work can often be weaker than oral work.
The pupils will know a lot about things, will watch the news at home and will have
intelligent conversations at home which is reflected in their strong oral ability but they
may not necessarily have developed that as much in their written English.
I feel that this incident can be seen as very critical in my development as a teacher
because it opened my eyes to a whole new way of thinking about ability, not just for
EAL pupils but for all pupils. Previously I had assumed that verbal and written ability
went pretty much hand in hand. I knew that people could be obviously be stronger in
one area but I had not considered how significant the difference could be.
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Appendix G
Evaluative questions I asked verbally about Roman democracy.
‘Why do you think that there were two Consuls in Ancient Rome?’
‘Why do you think that the Consuls could only serve for one year?’
‘Why do you think there were lots of different jobs in Rome’s democracy?’
‘Why do you think the Patricians ended up having to give the Plebeians a say in the
government?’
‘What problems do you think could develop with Roman democracy because of the
split between Patricians and Plebeians?’