‘He’s rediscovered his love for history’

In this article, Jonty Haywood shows how his pupils have used literacy and oracy to create their own history. By giving them engaging (and age- and attainment-appropriate) secondary source material, Haywood enabled his pupils to create something of their own about an area of history that interested them. He shows how valid historical outcomes emerged from the choices the pupils were trusted to make, and how pupils’ ownership of their material – about which, in some cases, they had far greater knowledge than Haywood did as their teacher – helped them to produce and share their own historical responses. He also shows how much they enjoyed the process of talking about history...