The 4 Mark "Follow-up" Question (Edexcel GCSE History): Revision Note

Summary of Question 2 (b)

• Question 2 (b) tests your ability to:

  • Select relevant content from a source

  • Ask a useful historical question based on that content

  • Suggest a suitable follow-up source

  • Explain how that source would help answer your question

• It always builds on one of the sources from Question 2 (a) and is based on the historic environment: Notting Hill, c1948–c1970

• An example of the type of question you may encounter can be seen below:

• In previous years, this question has focused on the following topics in Migrants in Britain:

Key skills required in the "Follow-up" question

• The "Follow-up" question uses a very different question style from other questions in the Edexcel GCSE History exam

  • It requires students to have some of the following key historical skills:

    • Selecting relevant content from a historical source

    • Creating a relevant historical question

    • Selecting historical sources to support your chosen historical question

Using the content of a source 

• The content is the information presented in the source

• The content could come from a variety of different types of sources, such as:

  • A picture 

  • A photograph

  • An extract from a book 

  • A speech 

  • A political cartoon 

  • A letter 

• You should use the content of the source in the first section of your answer table: "Detail in Source ... that I would follow up"

  • For a written source, use a quote

  • For a visual source, describe a section of the image

Asking historical questions

• The second section is about the "Question I would ask" regarding the source specified in the question

• Your question must:

  • Link to the detail you have just chosen

  • Be relevant to the enquiry in the question

  • Be one question

  • Be written with a question mark

Selecting relevant sources

• In the third section of the table, you will be asked to consider: "What type of source I could use"

• In this section, avoid selecting sources such as:

  • Wikipedia

  • The Internet

  • A historian

  • The same type of source as the source identified in the question

    • For the example question, you should not follow up Source B with another written account

• Versatile sources to consider are:

  • Metropolitan Police records

  • Notting Hill Housing Trust reports

  • National newspapers, such as the West Indian Gazette

  • National TV shows, such as BBC News or ITN

  • Local newspapers, such as Kensington News

  • Speeches by people, such as Oswald Mosley

  • Photographs by Black residents of Notting Hill or in newspapers

  • Oral histories from Black migrants

• Make your source as specific as possible by:

  • Including dates

  • Explaining what it could show

• In the final section of the table, “How this might help answer my question”, explain:

  • What you could learn from your chosen source

  • How it would help you answer the question you asked in Section 2

How to answer the "Follow-up" question

• The "Follow-up" answer space is laid out clearly as four guided sections

• Sections 1 and 2 are connected

  • If you do not provide a detail from the source selected, you will not receive a mark for your question

• Sections 3 and 4 are also joined together

  • If you do not select a relevant source, you cannot receive a mark for how that source can help you to answer your historical question

Worked example of a "Follow-up" question