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Racism and equality through the 1936 Berlin Olympics: the Olympics, Nationalism and Identity
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
This article outlines ideas for teaching history with crosscurricular links to citizenship, with a Year 6 class...
Racism and equality through the 1936 Berlin Olympics: the Olympics, Nationalism and Identity
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How can old advertisements be used in the primary classroom?
Primary History article
Advertising is a central part of our everyday lives. There are few ways to escape it and it has a long pedigree. It has long been recognised that it can help sell products through the power of the punch line or the visual image. Trade cards appeared as early as...
How can old advertisements be used in the primary classroom?
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The 1620 Mayflower voyage and the English settlement of North America
Historian article
On the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the Pilgrims in New England on the Mayflower, Martyn Whittock explores the reasons for migration to the New World in 1620 and later, and the significance of those migrants, both at the time and their impact on the evolution of the USA...
The 1620 Mayflower voyage and the English settlement of North America
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Immigration and the making of British food
Historian article
Panikos Panayi explores the way in which immigration has transformed British eating habits over the last two centuries, whether through the rise of the restaurant and the development of eating out, or the culinary revolution at home.
Those people who voted to leave the European Union in 2016 because of...
Immigration and the making of British food
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Polychronicon 172: Health in the Middle Ages
Teaching History feature
The history of medicine, health, and illness between c. 500 AD and 1500 has received a great deal of scholarly attention in recent decades. It’s a fascinating field that can tell us a great deal about medieval people’s everyday lives and their day-to-day worries: after all, everyone is ill or...
Polychronicon 172: Health in the Middle Ages
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Seeing beyond the frame
Teaching History article
History teachers frequently show pupils visual images and often expect pupils to interrogate such images as evidence. But confusions arise and opportunities are missed when pupils do this without guidance on how to ‘read’ the image systematically and how to place it in context. Barbara Ormond gives a detailed account...
Seeing beyond the frame
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Triumphs Show 135: how trainee teachers learned to put history back into GCSE
Teaching History feature
What do you know about how your local museums can help your GCSE planning and teaching? How can your new GCSE courses for September make use of the free resources, artefacts and images that our local and national museums house? That's just what the PGCE history group from Leeds Trinity...
Triumphs Show 135: how trainee teachers learned to put history back into GCSE
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Teaching Time
Primary History article
History is about time, it subsists in time, time is the medium by which it happens. No-one can deny the importance of time in teaching history, yet it is probably the one element that causes more dispute than any other. The meaning of time
Understanding time
There is time we...
Teaching Time
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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... migration and empire
A Polychronicon of the past
In autumn 2019, Kara Walker’s monumental sculpture, Fons Americanus, went on display in the Tate Modern, offering a poignant, troubling challenge to national commemoration. Walker depicts not the lingering vestiges of imperial glory, but sharks, tears, and haunted memories. She brings history into conversation with its contemporary legacies and engages...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... migration and empire
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Victorians
Primary History article
The Victorians is a much-loved unit of work in many schools and some teachers were disappointed to see it had been removed but there are still ways to continue to teach it under the 2014 National Curriculum. In many localities there will be a huge variety of Victorian buildings - including...
Victorians
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In My View: Whatever happened to...?
Primary History article
Older readers of the journal may well remember a classic film, Whatever happened to Baby Jane ? This article asks, and attempts to answer, two parallel questions: "Whatever happened to breadth and balance?" and "Whatever happened to history’s place in the primary curriculum?". The two questions (and their answers) are...
In My View: Whatever happened to...?
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Learning without limits
Teaching History article
Richard Kerridge writes here about his efforts to help students to overcome an experience that was once his own: of being labelled low-ability, with all the attendant lowering of expectations that this entails. He recognises the merits of rigorously ensuring that all students should be able to access their entitlement...
Learning without limits
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Triumphs Show 171: preparatory reading for A-level essays
Teaching History feature: celebrating and sharing success
The first question my A-level students always used to ask when receiving back an essay was, ‘What mark did I get?’ The second question I used to hope they would ask was ‘How could I improve my work?’
I stress ‘used to’ because increasingly I do not give marks when...
Triumphs Show 171: preparatory reading for A-level essays
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The strange power of hats: using artefacts and role play in cross-phase, cross-curricular and community partnership work
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum.
It is a strange phenomenon of history education that the power of hats is little reported and little researched- so here is an article that says hats off to hats in history lessons, as well as hats off to artefacts, sound recordings...
The strange power of hats: using artefacts and role play in cross-phase, cross-curricular and community partnership work
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The Jill Grey collection and Hitchin British schools
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum.
Jill Grey lived in Hitchin and over a period of 25 years, collected over 35,000 items. A11 of the material relates to the history of education and social history of childhood. I am still in the process of cataloguing the collection and...
The Jill Grey collection and Hitchin British schools
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Move Me On 166: getting the right pitch for GCSE teaching
Teaching History feature
This feature is designed to build critical, informed debate about the character of teacher training, teacher education and professional development.
This issue’s problem: Bob Williams is struggling to get the pitch right in teaching topics at GCSE that the school previously taught to Year 7.
Bob Williams, now half way through his training year, is feeling very out...
Move Me On 166: getting the right pitch for GCSE teaching
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Lord North: The Noble Lord in the Blue Ribbon
Classic Pamphlet
In the last weeks of his life Lord North, we are told, expressed anxiety about his place in history - ‘how he stood and would stand in the world'. This, he owned, ‘might be a weakness, but he could not help it'. It was a weakness one suspects that he...
Lord North: The Noble Lord in the Blue Ribbon
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The Olympic Games, Classical and Modern
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Possibly a ‘once in a lifetime' experience will be witnessing the British hosting of the 2012 Olympic Games. Despite the inevitable commercialisation of the event, it will certainly be possible for children to be excited and...
The Olympic Games, Classical and Modern
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William the Silent and the Revolt of the Netherlands
Classic Pamphlet
The Revolt of the Netherlands was the most successful of all uprisings in early modern Europe and had far reaching effects on the course of Dutch and European history. In accounting for its outcome recent research has emphasized the significance of impersonal forces of political, economic or religious nature rather...
William the Silent and the Revolt of the Netherlands
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Do Mention the War' : the impact of a National Curriculum study unit upon pupils' perceptions of contemporary German people
Teaching History article
What preconceptions do your pupils hold about the Second World War and about German people? How far have these been influenced by home background, by personal experience, by film, by sport, by the Key Stage 2 history curriculum? Paul Coman argues that the last of these deserves greater attention, at...
Do Mention the War' : the impact of a National Curriculum study unit upon pupils' perceptions of contemporary German people
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Waking up to complexity
Teaching History article
Waking up to complexity: using Christopher Clark's The Sleepwalkers to challenge over-determined causal explanations
Teaching student to construct causal argument is a staple of history teaching and, in this year, questions about the causes of the First World War are particularly pertinent and once again the public eye. Claire Holliss,...
Waking up to complexity
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Private Lives of the Tudors
Historian article
Tracy Borman explores the distinction between the public and private lives of the Tudor monarchs.
The Tudors were renowned for their public magnificence. Perhaps more than any royal dynasty in British history, they appreciated the importance of impressing their subjects with the splendour of their dress, courts and pageantry in order to reinforce their authority. Wherever...
Private Lives of the Tudors
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The Historian 9
The magazine of the Historical Association
3 Feature: The Past's Living Voice: Coinage as Media, Harold Mattingly
10 Update: Trade Unions in Britain 1875-1939, Chris Wrigley
24 Personalia: Profile of Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr
27 Spotlight: Bangor
The Historian 9
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Reading? What reading?
Journal article
Discussions with sixth-form students about reading led Carolyn Massey and Paul Wiggin to start a sixth-formreading group. They describe here the series of themed sessions that they planned, and the student discussion and reflections that resulted. Listening to their students discuss their reading led Massey and Wiggin to reflect on what is meant by ‘reading around’ the subject, and its role in students’ intellectual...
Reading? What reading?
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Reading the Past: Written and printed sources
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Introduction
Be positive, ambitious and bold
Many teachers, when they realise how deep the literary requirements are which history makes on the young learner, will hastily declare that their own class is either too young or...
Reading the Past: Written and printed sources
