Long-term knowledge plans

While the retention of historical knowledge is obviously important for students who face public examinations at the end of two or three year courses, the retention of different kinds of historical knowledge matters at all stages of young people’s education. Specific details that lend colour and interest to particular topics (and often play a vital role in explaining why events played out as they did) may well be forgotten; but teachers need to think carefully about the kind of ‘residue’ that they want to remain. What broader contextual knowledge will support the next specific study on which students are going to embark? What kind of summaries or essential reference points will help to anchor the over-arching framework that they are constructing? The materials in this section deal with ways in which teachers can plan in the longer-term, across whole key stages and across the whole-school curriculum, to support the retention, retrieval, re-use and refinement of students’ knowledge over time.

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Of the many significant things that have ever happened, what should we teach?

Article

There are three basic strands to our lessons. How should we teach? What skills should we enable our students to build? What content should we use to deliver those skills? In this article Tony McConnell, who has been re-designing the curriculum in his school in response to a changed examination regimen, considers the issue of subject...
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Polychronicon 141: Adolf Eichmann

Article

Almost 60 years ago Adolf Eichmann went on trial for crimes committed against the Jews while he was in the service of the Nazi regime. His capture by the Israeli secret service and his abduction from Argentina triggered a number of journalistic books that portrayed him as a pathological monster...
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Polychronicon 146: Interpreting the history of 'big history'

Article

In recent decades, a novel approach to history has emerged, called ‘big history', which provides an overview of all of human history, embedded within biological, geological and astronomical history covering the grandest sweep of time and space, from the beginning of the universe to life on Earth here and now....
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Raising the bar: developing meaningful historical consciousness at Key Stage 3

Article

Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. How can we help pupils make sense of the history that they learn so that the whole adds up to more than the sum of its parts? How can we help pupils develop and sophisticate...
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Time and chronology: conjoined twins or distant cousins?

Article

Weaknesses in pupils' grasp of historical chronology are a commonplace in popular discussion of the state of history education. However, as Blow, Lee and Shemilt argue, although undoubtedly necessary and fundamental, mastery of chronological conventions is not sufficient: the difficulties that pupils experience when learning history are conceptual, as much...
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Year 9 - Connecting past, present and future

Article

Possible futures: using frameworks of knowledge to help Year 9 connect past, present and future How can we help pupils integrate history into coherent ‘Big Pictures' or mental frameworks? Building on traditions of classroom research and theorising reported in earlier editions of Teaching History, Dan Nuttall reports how his department set...
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Year 9 face up to historical difference

Article

How many people does it take to make an Essex man? Year 9 face up to historical difference Teaching her Key Stage 3 students in Essex, Catherine McCrory was struck by the stark contrast between their enthusiasm for studying diverse histories of Africa and the Americas and their reluctance to...
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