Survive and Thrive

The ‘Survive and Thrive’ materials are intended as introductory guides to support new history teachers in tackling their most urgent priorities on a day-to-day basis and establishing secure foundations for their continued learning. Although we have drawn a distinction between the initial stages of ‘survival’ in confronting the challenges of the initial training year and learning to ‘thrive’ in your first professional post, the nature of different routes into teaching mean that these two stages may well overlap.

While the units include a great deal of immediate practical advice, they are also intended to help you identify the essential principles underpinning effective history teaching and to map out the key questions that you need to explore as your practice develops. All of the principles of planning, teaching and evaluation that they address can, of course, be followed up in greater depth in other sections of the website.

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  • Guidance for would-be history teacher trainees

    Article

    Are you considering history teaching as a career option? Knowing where to start, what to expect from teaching and whether teacher training is right for you can feel like a leap into the unknown. We spoke to three recently qualified teachers, Ben Kirby, Liam Frondigoun and Alex Schmidt, all based...

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  • Introduction to the Survive & Thrive Units

    Article

    What's the point of the four Survive and Thrive units?Survive:There are today many teacher-training routes into the teaching profession. The teacher-training year is always a difficult balancing act between gaining enough classroom experience and enough understanding of the theories that underpin the discipline's key skills. As a result, each teacher-training...

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  • Teacher Training (Survive Part 1)

    Multipage Article

    There are today many teacher-training routes into the teaching profession. The teacher-training year is always a difficult balancing act between gaining enough classroom experience and enough understanding of the theories that underpin the discipline's key skills. As a result, each teacher-training route has advantages as well as disadvantages. With a...

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  • Teacher Training (Survive Part 2)

    Multipage Article

    Part 2 of our Teacher Training Survival Guide takes you through progression, assessment, levels, marking, inspirational lesson ideas, revision and recap & applying for jobs.

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  • Thrive as an NQT (Part 1)

    Multipage Article

    No matter how good your training was, starting as an NQT is a significant step up in your teaching career. You will still be wrestling with the big ideas about history teaching which you explored in your training year.  You will also have the all too real, day-to-day pressures of...

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  • Thrive as an NQT (Part 2)

    Multipage Article

    Part 2 of our Thrive as an NQT guide takes you through predictions data, planning a school trip, continual professional development and after your NQT year.

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  • Useful Resources for History Teaching

    Multipage Article

    The following are lists of those resources which we have found genuinely useful during our NQT year, or which we feel could be used to good effect, whether as sources, interpretations or stimulus materials. The lists are not exhaustive, and are inevitably skewed towards those topics which we have taught....

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