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  • '...trying to count the stars': using the story of Bergen-Belsen to teach the Holocaust

    Article

    Maria Osowiecki's search for the right questions to frame her students' study of the Holocaust was driven initially by the proximity of her school to the site of Bergen-Belsen, and the particular interests and concerns of her students as members of British Forces families. But, as this article richly demonstrates,...

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  • Competition and counterfactuals without confusion

    Article

    Paula Worth was searching not only for a rigorous question, capable of engendering genuine debate, but also for an engaging and enjoyable activity that would secure GCSE students' substantive knowledge. The answer - or rather the question - lay in counterfactual thinking: a carefully crafted game that she devised, based...

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  • Designing an enquiry in a challenging setting

    Article

    The Association for Historical Dialogue and Research (AHDR) is a Cyprus-based organization that works to foster dialogue among history teachers and other educators across the divide in Cyprus. In one of their UN-funded projects, ADHR members worked with UK colleagues to shape a lesson sequence and resources on the Ottoman period...

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  • Triumphs Show 148.2: using pupil dialogue to encourage engagement with sources

    Article

    Using pupil dialogue to encourage sophisticated engagement with source material - even at GCSE! Frustrated by the mechanistic approach that their pupils were using when working with historical sources, Tim Jenner and Paul Nightingale sought to experiment with a method of teaching sources which eschewed practice source questions in favour...

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  • Out went Caesar and in came the Conqueror: A case study in professional thinking

    Article

    A case study in professional thinking Michael Fordham examines the evolution of his own practice as an example of how history teachers draw upon collective, professional knowledge constructed by other history teachers in journals, books, conferences and seminars. Fordham explains how a  particular Year 7 enquiry examining historical change from the...

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  • Hidden histories and heroism: post-14 course on multi-cultural Britain since 1945

    Article

    A school-designed, post-14 course on multi-cultural Britain since 1945  Robin Whitburn and Sharon Yemoh describe the design of a school-generated GCSE course on the challenges that British people faced in forging a multicultural society in post-imperial Britain. Drawing on their own research into their students' experience, they build a discipline-based case...

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  • Cunning Plan 147: Getting students to use classical texts

    Article

    The following plan provides a more detailed practical example of the approaches discussed in the article on using ancient texts. Having puzzled over what ancient texts actually are - carefully constructed interpretations? testimonies? (but testimonies to what?) myths? - I wanted my Ancient History GCSE class to engage in this...

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  • Teaching History 147: Curriculum Architecture

    Article

    02 Editorial  03 HA Secondary News  04 HA Update  08 Beth Baker and Steven Mastin - Did Alexander really ask, ‘Do I appear to you to be a bastard?' Using ancient texts to improve pupils' critical thinking (Read article) 14 Cunning Plan: Getting students to use classical texts - Beth Baker...

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  • A hankering for the blank spaces: enabling the very able to explore the limits of GCSE

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Many of us would love to have the problems encountered by Oliver Knight at his previous school. His students were simply doing too well - leaving him wondering how to stretch them to the limit...

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  • Does the linguistic release the conceptual? Helping Year 10 to improve their casual reasoning

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Does new vocabulary help students to express existing ideas for which they do not yet have words or does it actually give them new ideas which they did not previously hold? James Woodcock asks whether...

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  • The teaching and learning of history for 15-16 year olds: have the Japanese anything to learn from the English experience

    Article

    What would you expect the differences to be between Japan and England in how pupils learn history in the post-14 phase? Perhaps your guess would be: Japanese school students learn a lot of historical facts and focus upon their own identity and English school students talk a lot more in...

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  • Stretching the straight jacket of assessment: use of role play and practical demonstration to enrich pupils' experience of history at GCSE and beyond

    Article

    As in his previous, popular and influential Teaching History articles, Ian Luff has once again provided us with a wide range of high-quality, practical activities informed by a rigorous and persuasive rationale. This time, he has turned his attention to the use of role play and active demonstration at GCSE...

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  • Getting Year 10 to understand the value of precise factual knowledge

    Article

    Up until the early 1990s, historical knowledge sometimes had rather a bad press. Various developments, in National Curriculum, at GCSE and, importantly, in ordinary teachers’ practice and debate, then led to a much closer integration of what we once called ‘content’ and ‘skills’. Tony McAleavy examined changing perceptions of the...

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  • 'Now listen to Source A' : Music and History

    Article

    In Steve Mastin’s classroom, pupils do not just read, look at and observe their historical sources. They listen to them. Steve’s classroom is already full of music. He uses it variously - to focus, settle or simply to expand the cultural curiosity of his pupils. Pupils expect to walk in...

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  • Drop the dead dictator: a Year 9 newsroom simulation

    Article

    Rosalind Stirzaker has big ambitions for her students. She wants them to do more than make a simple list of the key causes of the Second World War. Yes, she wants them to complete a piece of written work, but she wants – and gets – a great deal more...

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  • Triumphs Show 103: Using active learning to motivate GCSE groups

    Article

    Phil Smith demonstrates how active learning can motivate GCSE groups.

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  • My essays could go on forever: using Key Stage 3 to improve performance at GCSE

    Article

    History teachers are waking up to the fact that you cannot raise standards in GCSE by very much if you leave this work until Year 10. To leave it that late is to resort to surface, tactical moves rather than to address the deep reasons why so many pupils find...

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  • Doomed Youth: Using theatre to support teaching about the First World War

    Article

    Many history teachers will have taken their GCSE pupils to School History Scene's Hitler on Trial for a rigorous and inspirational session, using drama, in preparation for the GCSE examination. Josh Brooman has now broadened the work of School History Scene by writing a new play, Doomed Youth, aimed at...

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  • Denis Shemilt's four stages of adolescent ideas about historical methods in a nutshell

    Article

    Denis Shemilt's four stages of adolescent ideas about historical methods in a nutshell.

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  • Emotional response or objective enquiry? Using shared stories and a sense of place in the study of interpretations for GCSE

    Article

    In this article, Andrew Wrenn explores some issues that teachers might consider when supporting 14 and 15 year olds in their study of war memorials as historical interpretations. Tony McAleavy has argued that ‘popular' and ‘personal' interpretations and representations are just as worthy of study at Key Stage 3 as...

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