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Building meaningful models of progression
Teaching History article
Setting us free? Building meaningful models of progression for a ‘post-levels' world
Alex Ford was thrilled by the prospect of freedom offered to history departments in England by the abolition of level descriptions within the National Curriculum.
After analysing the range of competing purposes that the level descriptions were previously...
Building meaningful models of progression
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Ideas for Assemblies: Lest we forget
Primary History feature
Over the next three editions of Primary History our assemblies pages will be linked to the theme of commemorating the First World War. We have found that while many teachers wish to remember these events in school, they are unsure how to approach the subject with primary aged children. It...
Ideas for Assemblies: Lest we forget
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Rigorous, meaningful and robust: practical ways forward for assessment
Teaching History article
How do we know how good our students are at history? For that matter, how precisely do we really know what ‘good' at history even means? Even harder, how does our assessment of our students' attainment fit in with the National Curriculum Levels for Key Stage 3? Simon Harrison has...
Rigorous, meaningful and robust: practical ways forward for assessment
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A history of the world - 100 objects that tell a story
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Editorial comment: A History of the World is the most creative, imaginative and dynamic development in primary History Education for thirty years. It ties in perfectly with and supports the government's re-vitalisation of primary education that...
A history of the world - 100 objects that tell a story
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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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Teaching History 183: Race
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
02 Editorial (Read article for free)
03 HA Secondary News
04 HA Update: History For All – a wider view – Gabrielle Reddington (Read article)
08 Inventing race? Year 8 use early modern primary sources to investigate the complex origins of racial thinking in the past – Kerry Apps (Read...
Teaching History 183: Race
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Magna Carta: oblivion and revival
Historian article
Magna Carta was to go through a number of revisions before it finally took its place on the statute book. Nicholas Vincent takes us through the twists and turns of the tale of the Charter's death and revival after June 1215.
The Charter issued by King John at Runnymede is...
Magna Carta: oblivion and revival
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How history teachers can support their own and others' continued professional learning
Teaching History article
‘If I wasn't learning anything new about teaching I would have left it by now!' How history teachers can support their own and others' continued professional learning
Katharine Burn has a longstanding interest in history teachers' professional learning - not just the ways in which experienced teachers can support beginners,...
How history teachers can support their own and others' continued professional learning
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Drama - Choosing an approach
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
There is a range of drama strategies that we use all the time. The important point is to select a strategy with which you feel confident. For example, the collective making of a map by the...
Drama - Choosing an approach
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Old age care in the time of crisis: London in the sixteenth century
Historian article
In her lecture to the General Strand of the HA Conference, Christine Fox describes the successes and failures of London institutions in dealing with the sixteenth-century crisis of poverty and elderly care.
In late medieval and early modern thinking, human life was divided into three stages; youth, maturity, and old age. The latter...
Old age care in the time of crisis: London in the sixteenth century
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Polychronicon 112: The Angevin Empire
Teaching History feature
Polychronicon was a fourteenth-century chronicle that brought together much of the knowledge of its ownage. Our Polychronicon in Teaching History is a regular feature helping school history teachers to update their subject knowledge, with special emphasis on recent historiography and changing interpretation. This edition of the 'Polychronicon' concentrates on the...
Polychronicon 112: The Angevin Empire
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Case Study 6: Bristol Blitz - Writing in an interactive environment
Primary History case study
Introduction - Educational Visits
Educational visits are often the most memorable parts of primary schooling, and those that as teachers of primary history we hope provide rich, thought provoking experiences of educational worth. Often, it is these trips that are capable of providing a sphere for the immersive, explorative teaching...
Case Study 6: Bristol Blitz - Writing in an interactive environment
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Using the concept of place to help Year 9 students to visualise the complexities of the Holocaust
Teaching History article
Inspired by the work of the social and cultural historian Tim Cole, Stuart Farley decided to look again at the way he teaches the Holocaust. He wanted to focus on the geographical concept of place as a way of enabling his Year 9 students to build far more diverse narratives,...
Using the concept of place to help Year 9 students to visualise the complexities of the Holocaust
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'Be bloody, bold and resolute': Two possible interpretations of 'local history'
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
As a pre-Plowden primary teacher who queued to get my copy of that report in 1967 and as a contributory author to the Cambridge Primary Review (Alexander, 2009) forty-two years later I can claim, not an...
'Be bloody, bold and resolute': Two possible interpretations of 'local history'
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The shortest war in history: The Anglo-Zanzibar War of 1896
Historian article
At 9am on 27 August 1896, following an ultimatum, five ships of the Royal Navy began a bombardment of the Royal Palace and Harem in Zanzibar. Thirty-eight, or 40, or 43 minutes later, depending on which source you believe, the bombardment stopped when the white flag of surrender was raised...
The shortest war in history: The Anglo-Zanzibar War of 1896
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Resources for courses: ideas for your history curriculum
Primary History article
In times of tight budgets and with the new financial year on the horizon in April, now might be a good time to look at different ways to resource your history curriculum effectively. Alongside all the resources for teachers available from Primary History and the HA website, the following list...
Resources for courses: ideas for your history curriculum
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Why are there so many ‘mummies’ in Western museums?
Primary History article
Richard Harris invites us to consider how the teaching of ancient Egypt can be decolonised by considering non-Western perspectives. The article provides a fascinating viewpoint on this popular period of history and shares examples of how this can be explored with children.
One of the joys of working in history...
Why are there so many ‘mummies’ in Western museums?
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The potty timeline: an effective way of using timelines
Primary History article
Timelines are a constant source of fascination. Rows of events and time periods all jostling for position on an eternal line, cramming together or strung out with wide gaps between them. In our primary classrooms, however, the vastness of timelines can be diminished as we crop them on computers and...
The potty timeline: an effective way of using timelines
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Exploring pupils' difficulties when arguing about a diverse past
Teaching History article
Wrestling with diversity: exploring pupils' difficulties when arguing about a diverse past
How can we develop students' ability to argue about diversity? Sarah Black explores this question through classroom research that set out to help students think in complex ways about diversity, drawing on Burbules' work on conceptualising difference and...
Exploring pupils' difficulties when arguing about a diverse past
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Tracking pupil progress
Primary History article
Assessment issues crop up with regularity in the pages of this journal. They have also been mentioned frequently in inspections and in the schools assessed for the Quality Mark.
The problem with some of the recommendations is that they anticipate massive amounts of time and energy being devoted to it...
Tracking pupil progress
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Elizabethan times: Just banquets and fun?
Primary History article
Although much of the Key Stage 2 history curriculum relates to the period before 1066, we are expected to include 'a study of an aspect or theme in British history that extends pupils’ chronological knowledge beyond 1066' (DfE, 2013,p.5)
This raises two questions:a) How can a post-1066 topic be related...
Elizabethan times: Just banquets and fun?
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Teaching History 193: Out now
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
Read Teaching History 193: Mediating History
David Lowenthal writes that history is both less than and more than the past. It is less because ‘only a tiny fraction of all that has happened can ever be recovered and recounted’.1 Yet it is also more because ‘it is a new and...
Teaching History 193: Out now
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Bringing an information text to life: Pets in the Blitz
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Editorial comment: The in-service course had focused on how to read information texts in a stimulating, engaging and intellectually rewarding way, and how to take Bruner's concept of transforming information from one mode to another...
Bringing an information text to life: Pets in the Blitz
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The International Journal Volume 12, Number 2
Journal
Editorial
New Zealand - Developing an Historical Empathy Pathway with New Zealand Secondary School Students - Martyn Davidson, University of Auckland
Cyprus - Deanna Troi and the Tardis: Does Historical Empathy have a Place in Education? Lukas N. Perikleous, University of Cyprus
Brazil - An Investigation of the Ways in which...
The International Journal Volume 12, Number 2
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Using role-play to develop young children’s understanding of the past
Primary History article
Unknown, interesting artefacts can really capture a child’s enthusiasm for learning. In the Foundation Stage, children want to use all their senses to explore and play with objects, and so the planning of practical, hands-on activities is important.
The activities in this article were completed by Reception children in a...
Using role-play to develop young children’s understanding of the past
