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How can I improve my use of ICT? Put history first!
Teaching History article
What is the difference between using lots of ICT and using it well? Dave Atkin draws upon work in his own department and with other Gloucestershire teachers in order to identify criteria for effective ICT use. These boil down to ‘putting history first' and getting maximum value out of the...
How can I improve my use of ICT? Put history first!
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Case study: The body in the bog - Red Christian goes missing
Article
Please note: this article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content and references are outdated.
Bog Body mysteries have played a central, seminal role in History Education in Britain since the 1970s. The investigation of the Tollund Man Mystery was the original, introductory investigation for pupils that the Schools Council [aka Schools]...
Case study: The body in the bog - Red Christian goes missing
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Teaching Styles and Pupil Learning: The Nuffield Primary History Project's Creative, Interactive Pedagogy - The Pupil' Voice
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
This article is a tribute to the 20th century’s most inspirational history teacher, John Fines. He embodied the principles of ‘doing history’ in his teaching and in the Nuffield Primary History Project that he directed....
Teaching Styles and Pupil Learning: The Nuffield Primary History Project's Creative, Interactive Pedagogy - The Pupil' Voice
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Spinning with the Brain: Women's Writing in Seventeenth Century England
Article
Norma Clarke and Helen Weinstein consider new approaches to the presentation of women writers on BBC radio. 'True it is, Spinning with the Fingers, is more proper to our Sex than Studying or Writing Poetry, which is Spinning with the Brain; but, having no skill in the art of the...
Spinning with the Brain: Women's Writing in Seventeenth Century England
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Triumphs Show 127: using the Anne Frank House's 'A Family Secret'
Teaching History feature: celebrating and sharing success
The Anne Frank House recently translated its comic book A Family Secret into English. By stressing the choices and dilemmas of ordinary people living in Amsterdam during the German Occupation, the comic seeks to revise the black and white ideas students hold of right and wrong. With five other history...
Triumphs Show 127: using the Anne Frank House's 'A Family Secret'
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Seeing, hearing and doing the renaissance (Part 2)
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
In the last edition of Teaching History, Maria Osowiecki described in detail the fourth lesson in a five-lesson enquiry entitled: What was remarkable about the Renaissance? She also shared her resources for two lively, interactive...
Seeing, hearing and doing the renaissance (Part 2)
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‘You should be proud about your history. They make you feel ashamed’: Teaching history hurts
Teaching History article
As history teachers we are used to encouraging pupils to think; enabling them to express thoughts with clarity both verbally and in written form. Yet, if history as a school subject becomes purely cognitive, then something is missing. History deals with human behaviour and therefore the affective and the emotional...
‘You should be proud about your history. They make you feel ashamed’: Teaching history hurts
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Enhancing temporal cognition: practical activities for the primary classroom
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Research during the last eighty years has suggested that ‘time’ concepts, such as chronology, duration and the usage of dating systems are difficult for children to assimilate. However, my recent research would suggest that temporal concepts...
Enhancing temporal cognition: practical activities for the primary classroom
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'Britain was our home': Helping Years 9, 10, and 11 to understand the black experience of the Second World War
Teaching History article
In this article, Helena Stride shows how the Imperial War Museum responded to criticism that insufficient attention had been paid to the contribution of black and Asian people to Britain’s wars. She focuses on one of two resource-packs produced by the Museum, which highlights the experience of Britain’s colonial peoples,...
'Britain was our home': Helping Years 9, 10, and 11 to understand the black experience of the Second World War
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Transforming Year 7's understanding of the concept of Imperialism: a case study on the Roman Empire
Teaching History article
Those of us in the U.K. know that many of our pupils finish their entire historical education without a satisfactory grasp of basic substantive concepts as they are used in history. Do all our low-attaining or ‘low ability’ 14-year-olds who are pressured to drop history at 14 really emerge with...
Transforming Year 7's understanding of the concept of Imperialism: a case study on the Roman Empire
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'How our area used to be back then': An oral history project in an east London school
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
How can oral history enquiries engage students with the study of history and help them connect their learning about the past to their present lives? How can oral history engage and develop students' understanding of...
'How our area used to be back then': An oral history project in an east London school
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Primary History 14
Journal
4 Not Henry VIII! Ann Darrant
6 History Through the Streets Robin Coulthard
8 We Plough the Fields Patrick Wood & Norma Bell
10 Digging for Victory Erica Pounce
15 An Active Approach to Ancient History: the Greeks Harriet Martin
18 Grace Darling and Reception Children Karen Salter
20 Take...
Primary History 14
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The Historian 70: Myth and Reality: A necessary marriage at 12th Century Glastonbury
The magazine of the Historical Association
Featured articles:
4 Novelty and Amusement? Visiting the Georgian Country House - Richard Wilson (Read Article)
10 The Tower and The Victorians: Politics and Leisure - Peter Hammond (Read Article)
15 The Duke of Wellington and the little man on the cob - Patrick Abbott (Read Article)
18 Myth and...
The Historian 70: Myth and Reality: A necessary marriage at 12th Century Glastonbury
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Three lessons about a funeral: Second World War cemeteries and twenty years of curriculum change
Article
Mike Murray analyses the way in which curriculum development has broadened and strengthened our conceptions of high standards in historical learning for school students. He pays tribute to ground-breaking new theoretical principles from the Schools History Project and from new emphases upon contextual knowledge and ‘interpretations' in the first National...
Three lessons about a funeral: Second World War cemeteries and twenty years of curriculum change
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My Favourite History Place: Petra
Historian feature
Ghislaine Headland-Vanni visits the ancient city of Petra, in Jordan.
When you hear the word ‘Petra’ what images does the word conjure up for you? Maybe you have visited and know it already; if not, then like me you may not fully comprehend its size. I naively thought I could...
My Favourite History Place: Petra
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How do we get better at going on trips: Planning for progression outside the classroom
Teaching History article
School trips are, it seems, always in the news. They are under threat, or vital, or the preserve of wealthier students, or a forum for poor behaviour, or a day out of the classroom to build relationships, or a fantastic learning experience where students learn important life skills (such as...
How do we get better at going on trips: Planning for progression outside the classroom
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Teaching History 90
Journal
4 Editorial
5 Teaching History Briefing
10 A Role for History in Initial Teacher Education by Sally Pearce
12 In Touch with the Past: Music Making and Historical Re-enactments by Penlope Harnett and Liz Newman
17 Appeasement Role Play: the alternative to Munich by Robin Duff
20 Using Information Technology...
Teaching History 90
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Historical significance - the forgotten 'Key Element'?
Teaching History article
How many history departments regularly discuss the quality of their enquiries and teaching processes that relate to historical significance? It would not be unusual, in 2002, for a history department to spend time in a department meeting reflecting upon pupils’ learning about causation or to explore the connection between pupils’...
Historical significance - the forgotten 'Key Element'?
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Maybe they haven't decided yet what is right: English and Spanish perspectives on teaching historical significance
Teaching History article
Historians and history teachers understand well that students, when they ‘answer’ questions, are creating their own interpretation. We take account of this in our teaching too: we do not pretend that, beyond the level of the simplest closed questioning, there is ever a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answer approach to history....
Maybe they haven't decided yet what is right: English and Spanish perspectives on teaching historical significance
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'Really weird and freaky': using a Thomas Hardy short story as a source of evidence in the Year 8 classroom
Teaching History article
Can 25 so-called ‘low ability’ girls access 30 pages of difficult text? Yes, much more easily they can access the tiny, sanitised, made-easy ‘gobbets’ that they are normally exposed to in the name of ‘access’. Mary Woolley makes the point that boring texts are those that tell you only essential...
'Really weird and freaky': using a Thomas Hardy short story as a source of evidence in the Year 8 classroom
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Polychronicon 169: Herodotus
Journal article
You can buy a cheap flight to Bodrum (south-west Turkey), now a popular package holiday tourist destination and in antiquity named Halicarnassus, and visit ancient Greek temples and a theatre dating back more than 2,000 years. In Bodrum’s incomparable Underwater Archaeology Museum, you can admire the extraordinary Phoenician, Carian, Cypriot,...
Polychronicon 169: Herodotus
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Cunning Plan 100: teaching the First World War in Year 9
Teaching History feature
History teacher and head of department stand outside noisy Year 9 class. Bombs (paper ones) fly everywhere; in corner of room mutiny is being discussed ... many pupils are refusing to follow their leader's last minute orders - they will not be opting for history! The war of attrition (excessive...
Cunning Plan 100: teaching the First World War in Year 9
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‘Savages and rattlesnakes’ Washington, District of Columbia: A British Diplomat's view 1823-5
Historian article
Henry Unwin Addington, a nephew of the former British prime minister, Henry Addington, had joined the Foreign Office at the age of 16 in 1806. After serving in various junior diplomatic posts in Europe he learnt in 1822 that he was to be promoted to secretary of legation in Washington....
‘Savages and rattlesnakes’ Washington, District of Columbia: A British Diplomat's view 1823-5
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Flight from Kabul: a historical perspective
Historian article
In this article, Matt Jux-Blayney compares the British retreat from Kabul in 1842 with the most recent flight of NATO from Kabul in August 2021. Matt explores the various similarities between the two campaigns and includes personal recollections from his service in Afghanistan with the British Army.
On 6 January...
Flight from Kabul: a historical perspective
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Primary History 71
The primary education journal of the Historical Association
04 Editorial
05 HA Primary News
06 Using role-play to develop young children's understanding of the past - Helen Crawford (Read article)
08 Whole-school planning for progression: How do we do the best for our children and for history? - Hilary Pegum and Nicola Davies (Read article)
14 Planning for...
Primary History 71
