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Unnatural and essential: the nature of historical thinking
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Sam Wineburg's work, in particular his groundbreaking Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts (2001), has a great deal to teach us about the discipline of history, the nature of historical education, and the specific cognitive framework...
Unnatural and essential: the nature of historical thinking
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Place-names and the National Curriculum for History
Primary History article
Place-names, such as house or school names, are infinite in number and all around us. Every place-name may convey a message about the place. Often place-names record and celebrate local and national people, events and incidents, define what a place looked like in the past and how we used to...
Place-names and the National Curriculum for History
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Creating confident historical readers at A-level
Teaching History article
How can we help pupils learn to read historically? Gary Howells explores this question by explaining how he builds reading challenges into the course of his pupils' post-16 studies and by describing some of the tasks that pupils are set and the principles that underpin them. Howells argues that over...
Creating confident historical readers at A-level
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Hidden in plain sight: the history of people with disabilities
Teaching History journal article
Recognising the duty placed on all teachers by the 2010 Equality Act to nurture the development of a society in which equality and human rights are deeply rooted, Helen Snelson and Ruth Lingard were prompted to ask whether their history curricula really reflected the diverse pasts of all people in...
Hidden in plain sight: the history of people with disabilities
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One of my favourite history places: Studland Village
Primary History feature
Studland village is situated in the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset. Purbeck is not an island in the normal sense of being surrounded by sea. However, it is surrounded by large hills to its north and has a coastline to its south, both of which cut it off from the...
One of my favourite history places: Studland Village
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My Favourite History Place: Gladstone’s Library at Hawarden
Historian feature
When I first visited Gladstone’s residential library in 1977 for a pre-university History degree reading week, I barely knew who Gladstone was. I had just come back from a holiday in Italy and the contrast between Florence and Hawarden, a Welsh border town, was startling. I came from the sunny remains...
My Favourite History Place: Gladstone’s Library at Hawarden
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Polychronicon 177: The New Deal in American history
Teaching History feature
Over 50 years ago I read my first serious book on American history. I can still remember the excitement of reading William E. Leuchtenburg’s Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932–1940. His description of FDR and American politics in the 1930s seemed so much more colourful and dramatic than...
Polychronicon 177: The New Deal in American history
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Triumphs Show 172: The history classroom lending library
Teaching History feature: celebrating and sharing success
Tim Jenner and Jessica Angell share how the History Department Lending Library at Cambourne Village College began and developed, and the positive impact it has had on both students and staff.
Triumphs Show 172: The history classroom lending library
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Primary History pull-out posters 85
Migration to Britain through time, and 'The Ejectment' from Illustrated London News 1848
Migration to Britain through time
‘The Ejectment’ from The Illustrated London News, 16 December 1848 Lordprice Collection Alamy
Primary History pull-out posters 85
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One of my favourite history places: Meldon Viaduct
Primary History feature
'One of my favourite history places' is a regular feature in Primary History – see all favourite history places here. In this edition, Tim Lomas explores Meldon Viaduct and its surroundings:
Visiting places you have read about or seen pictures of can sometimes prove an anticlimax. Others far exceed expectations. One such is...
One of my favourite history places: Meldon Viaduct
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My Favourite History Place - Weimar
Historian feature
Neil Taylor explores the changing face and mixed fortunes of Weimar in the twentieth century.
Weimar is a town to which many famous people came, but from which few then left. It is not hard to see why. The locals summarise its appeal in one sentence Weimar ist nur eine...
My Favourite History Place - Weimar
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War memorials as a local history resource
Primary History article
War Memorials Trust (WMT) is the charity that works for the protection and conservation of war memorials in the UK. It defines a war memorial as ‘any physical object created, erected or installed to commemorate those involved in or affected by a conflict or war' (WMT 2009, ‘Definition of a...
War memorials as a local history resource
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Chatting about the sixties: historical reasoning in essay-writing
Teaching History article
An article about essay writing may not seem the most obvious choice for an issue of Teaching History devoted to creative thinking. Yet, as Christine Counsell so richly demonstrated in her work on analytical and discursive writing, the process of crafting an argument is a highly complex and creative challenge....
Chatting about the sixties: historical reasoning in essay-writing
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Re-evaluating the role of statues
Primary History article
Like them or loathe them, statues are excellent learning resources and the recent events in Bristol and elsewhere should not dissuade us from using them to aid children’s historical knowledge and enquiry skills. In fact, in the current climate, statues need a careful re-evaluation of their role within our towns....
Re-evaluating the role of statues
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Good practice in primary history: the Quality Mark scheme
Primary History article
This article aims to cover two separate but related aspects. Firstly, using the evidence of Quality Mark visits to primary schools, Bev Forrest identifies and explains some of the best practice observed on these visits. Secondly, Mel Jones focuses on one specific case study illustrating the type of primary history...
Good practice in primary history: the Quality Mark scheme
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Occult and Witches
Historian article
Occult and Witches: Some Dramatic and Real Practitioners of the Occult in the Elizabethan and Jacobean Periods
One purpose of this paper is to show a correspondence between real-life Elizabethan and Jacobean practitioners of the occult and the depiction of their theatrical counterparts, with particular reference to perceived differences between,...
Occult and Witches
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Helping pupils to view historical film critically
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum.
Introduction: The teaching potential of film
Films about historical events seem like the nearest thing we can give our pupils to a time machine. In commercial film, the physical appearance of the past has often been carefully researched, thus a snippet from...
Helping pupils to view historical film critically
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Community engagement in local history
Teaching History article
This article, by Lynda Abbott and Richard Grayson, offers a fascinating example of collaboration between school and university, focused on the development of a community archive.
The project - run as an extra-curricular activity - was originally inspired by a concern to preserve the personal stories of those whose lives...
Community engagement in local history
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The death of a hero: Vice-Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson
Historian article
Michael Crumplin comments on the injuries and illnesses that Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson suffered during his shortened career. His bold leadership style, much admired by his naval companions, inevitably led to a series of wounds. Using a combination of contemporary accounts and current clinical, anatomical and physiological interpretation, this article...
The death of a hero: Vice-Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson
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The history teacher's craft: Doing local History through the eyes of W. G. Hoskins
Article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Editorial comment: When teaching local history we all have an idea of what it is: both as a body of knowledge - information, dates, facts and substantive concepts - and as what that knowledge is based...
The history teacher's craft: Doing local History through the eyes of W. G. Hoskins
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The history of medicine – warts and all – for Key Stage 2
Primary History article
The story of the history of medicine is HUGE! In fact, it’s a story within story within a story…
You only have to note the substantial amounts that have been written on the subject in the past, to realise that this is a story that could baffle and perplex even...
The history of medicine – warts and all – for Key Stage 2
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The English Domestic Servant in English History
Classic Pamphlet
The history of domestic service in England has yet to be written. Hewers of wood and drawers of water there have always been, but historians have usually been little concerned with them. The material for their history is scattered and difficult to assess; even the word ‘servant' is not easy...
The English Domestic Servant in English History
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The Historian 163: Out now
The magazine of the Historical Association
Read The Historian 163: Ukraine
The third year of Russia’s full-scale invasion into Ukraine is slowly drawing to a close, with no end to it in sight. Putin’s decision to send troops into Ukraine in hope of a quick capitulation was, however, only the last stage of a longer process...
The Historian 163: Out now
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An introduction to Teaching History
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
Teaching History – the HA's journal for secondary history teachers
Teaching History is the UK’s leading professional journal for history teachers at secondary level. Published quarterly with a distribution of over 3,000, Teaching History also boasts a growing international readership. These include teachers, heads of department, trainees, and libraries.
Teaching History is free...
An introduction to Teaching History
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Move Me On 169: Planning a local history enquiry
The problem page for history mentors
This feature of Teaching History is designed to build critical, informed debate about the character of teacher training, teacher education and professional development. It is also designed to offer practical help to all involved in training new history teachers. Each issue presents a situation in initial teacher education/training with an...
Move Me On 169: Planning a local history enquiry
