Historical Skills	Historical Knowledge
Academic standard: Year 9: Analyse the causes and effects of events and developments and make judgements about their importance. Year 10: Analyse the causes and effects of events and developments and explain their relative importance.	Academic standard: The environment movement (the 1960s – present) – Significant events and campaigns that contributed to popular awareness of environmental issues

What does that mean? 

In everyday words: 

• Cause: a thing that gives rise to an action, phenomenon, or condition “The cause of the accident is not clear”
• Effect: a change which is the result or consequence of an action “The accident had the effect of Government changing the speed limit in this area”
• Cause and effect: explain why things happened the way they did
• Judgement: the ability to make considered decisions or come to sensible conclusions

So, cause and effect help us, as historians, explain why things happened the way they did and what influence those events had on the world.  

You might be saying to yourself … “but Adam, I am not a Historian, History is boring”. If you tell informative stories about things that happen to yourself or your friends/family then you are a historian. If you’ve ever watched a movie or a show on Medieval Warfare and thought “cool” then you are a historian.

Judgement (and also “explaining their relative importance”) is about how we as narrators of history can make considered decisions about the history and tell meaningful and useful stories to inform and educate others.

In context to Historical Knowledge:

Chernobyl

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDBkMIwb9Mk
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3azNLCo0wyU
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzbOgvWQhHA

Practice makes perfect

• Grab a Chromebook to research Chernobyl
• Find at least 1 video which explains the causes and effects. This may need to be two (or more) videos
• Find at least important 5 causes to the Chernobyl reactor accident and important 5 effects. Each cause and effect should be descriptive enough to educate a layperson and its importance should be evident. 

Example: 

Cause: The reactors were highly unstable at low power, due to control rod design and “positive void coefficient,” factors that accelerated the nuclear chain reaction and power output if the reactors lost cooling water.

Effect: Soviet authorities started evacuating people from the area around Chernobyl within 36 hours of the accident. In 1986, 115,000 people were evacuated. The government subsequently resettled another 220,000 people.

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