Please note: this resource pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content and links may be outdated. If you are looking to raise your 3/4 grades into 4s/5s, a big focus is going to be fact retention. This can be in the form of fact based quizzes and organisational activities,...

When the first revised GCSE specifications were launched in 2016, Sharon Aninakwa and her team at the Convent of Jesus and Mary Language College in North London made the decision to change their thematic unit to a study of migration. Some years later, they have a chance to reflect upon...

There are a wide variety of changes happening in relation to GCSE. Current exam specifications (for students sitting exams in 2015) were subject to 'strengthening' measures. The extent of change varies from board to board and specification so you need to check with your own examination board that you are...

As you will no doubt be aware, GCSEs are changing. New specifications (subject to accreditation) will require students to learn history from a range of different time periods. Different specifications will specify different content, but whichever specification you end up teaching, you are very likely to be teaching some medieval...

Comparision of new GCSE Specifications Treatment of Familiar Topics If you, like many other departments are beginning to ask the questions that will determine which of the new history GCSE specifications your department will choose, one consideration may well be looking at the retention of familiar topics that you already...

Using regular, low-stakes tests to secure pupils' contextual knowledge in Year 10 Lee Donaghy was concerned that his GCSE students' weak contextual knowledge was letting them down. Inspired by a mixture of cognitive science and the arguments of other teachers expressed in various blogs, he decided to tackle the problem...

The Department for Education today published subject criteria for both GCSE and A Level History. The new linear A Level History will be ready for first teaching from September 2015 and will retain a 20 percent personal study element. It is still unclear how the two year A Level course...

The helpful guide below sets out links to a range of podcasts, articles and pamphlets that will provide subject knowledge guidance that you may find useful for all of the identified thematic topics of the  GCSE specifications. In addition there are also links to helpful articles dealing with bigger picture...