Extended Writing

Although many historians now use the medium of television to advance their arguments and interpretations of history, the construction of written accounts remains fundamental to their craft. It also lies at the heart of current assessment systems, which means that young people similarly need to be able to create effective historical accounts of different kinds. The quality of students’ writing depends on the processes of selection and organisation as well as on effective communication within the appropriate genre, and the materials in this section deal with all three dimensions.  Read more

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  • Thinking from the inside: je suis le roi

    Article

    Dale Banham and Ian Dawson show how active learning deepens students’ understanding of attitudes and reactions to the Norman Conquest. At the same time they build a bold argument for active learning, including a direct strike at the two most common objections to it. Many teachers still see it as...

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  • Getting personal: making effective use of historical fiction in the history classroom.

    Article

    Writing stories in history lessons? But we don’t do things like that in history do we? Strange bedfellows though history and fiction might seem, Dave Martin and Beth Brooke make a strong case for collaboration between the English and history departments in order to introduce students to the challenging task...

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  • 'A lot of guess work goes on': Children's understanding of historical accounts

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated The ESRC-funded Project Chata has collected evidence of children's ideas about the discipline of history and attempted to see if there is any progression in those ideas. Here, Peter Lee describes how Chata has tried...

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  • Frameworks for linking pupils' evidential understanding with growing skill in structured, written argument: the 'evidence sandwich'

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. History teachers are increasingly good at designing exercises which develop skill in evidence analysis. The ubiquitous ‘source' is invariably analysed for utility and reliability. But how do pupils integrate such understandings with extended written work?...

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  • The use of sources in school history 1910-1998: a critical perspective

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. The arrival of sources of evidence into secondary school history classrooms amounted to a small revolution. What began as a radical development is now establishment orthodoxy, with both GCSE and now National Curriculum in England...

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