Principles of planning
The process of planning has been memorably described as a form of ‘professional wrestling’ because of the many brutal choices that it routinely requires: choices about what to include (and what to leave out); about how much attention to give to those elements that have been selected; and about how best to structure them to promote students’ learning. The resources contained in these sections will help teachers to think about all the different elements that are involved in the development of historical knowledge and understanding and about the choices that teachers need to make about how those elements are combined and sequenced most effectively – within individual lessons, across enquiry sequences and schemes of work, and over the course of the key-stage or whole-school curriculum maps (from Year 7 to Year 13!).
Overview & Depth
- The role of takeaways in shaping a history curriculum
- ‘Compressing and rendering’: using biography to teach big stories
- Short cuts to deep knowledge
- Cunning Plan 186: teaching Samurai Japan in Key Stage 3
- Using individuals’ stories to help GCSE students to explain change and causation
- Cunning Plan 179: using TV producers’ techniques to make the most effective use of retrieval practice
Disciplinary concepts
- Film Series: Active Learning & History
- Using metaphor to highlight causal processes with Year 13
- Film: What's the wisdom on... Consequence
- Using individuals’ stories to help GCSE students to explain change and causation
- Deepening Year 9’s knowledge for better causation arguments
- What’s The Wisdom On... Consequence
Substantive Knowledge
- What Have Historians Been Arguing About... youth culture?
- Broadening horizons: using cross-curricular conversations to support historical understanding
- Investigating ‘sense of place’ with Year 9 pupils
- Triumphs Show: The BeBold Network
- What Have Historians Been Arguing About... the impact of the British Empire on Britain?
- What have historians been arguing about... decolonisation and the British Empire?
Using enquiry questions
- Broadening Year 7’s British history horizons with Welsh medieval sources
- How representing women can convey a more complex narrative of the Russian Revolution to Year 9
- Creating a progression model for teaching historical perspectives in Key Stage 3
- Why does anyone do anything? Attempts to improve agentive explanations with Year 12
- Film: What's the wisdom on... Enquiry questions (Part 2)
- Film: What's the wisdom on... Enquiry questions (Part 1)
Diversity in the past
- How diverse is your history curriculum?
- Lengthening Year 9’s narrative of the American civil rights movement
- Cunning Plan... for studying medieval Ghana and Aksum
- What Have Historians Been Arguing About... immigration in French history
- Triumphs Show: Recovering the queer history of Weimar Germany in GCSE history
- Disability history resources
Controversial issues
- What Have Historians Been Arguing About... gender and sexuality
- Cunning Plan 191: diving deep into ‘history from below’ with Year 8
- Decolonising sources: helping Year 9 pupils critically evaluate colonial sources
- Podcast Series: Confronting Controversial History
- How ‘good’ are Key Stage 3 textbooks in supporting the teaching of the Holocaust?
- Telling difficult stories about the creation of Bangladesh
Progression & Assessment
- The role of takeaways in shaping a history curriculum
- Creating a progression model for teaching historical perspectives in Key Stage 3
- What’s The Wisdom On... history assessment?
- Move Me On 168: teaching exam classes
- Cunning Plan 167: teaching the industrial revolution
- Low-stakes testing
Triumphs Show
- Triumphs Show 193: Year 8 imagine the First World War trenches
- Triumphs Show 192: Balancing micro- and macronarratives of the Holocaust
- Triumphs Show: ‘The Strands of Memory’
- Triumphs Show: The BeBold Network
- Triumphs Show 182: A public lecture series
- Triumphs Show 180: From ‘most able’ to ‘mini’ historians
Using historical scholarship
- Disembarking the religious rollercoaster
- How ‘good’ are Key Stage 3 textbooks in supporting the teaching of the Holocaust?
- What Have Historians Been Arguing About... Histories of education – and society?
- What can rituals reveal about power in the medieval world? Teaching Year 7 pupils to apply interdisciplinary approaches
- Deepening Year 9’s knowledge for better causation arguments
- The mechanics of history: interpretations and claim construction processes