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Year 8 and interpretations of the First World War
Teaching History article
Dan Smith was concerned that his pupils were drawing on over-simplified generalisations about different periods of the past when they were considering why interpretations change over time. This led him to consider how pupils’ contextual knowledge and chronological fluency might be used more explicitly in order to avoid weak generalisations...
Year 8 and interpretations of the First World War
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Polychronicon 162: Reinterpreting the May 1968 events in France
Teaching History feature
As Kristin Ross has persuasively argued, by the 1980s interpretations of the French events of May 1968 had shrunk to a narrow set of received ideas around student protest, labelled by Chris Reynolds a ‘doxa’. Media discourse is dominated by a narrow range of former participants labelled ‘memory barons’ –...
Polychronicon 162: Reinterpreting the May 1968 events in France
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1939 After Sixty Years
Article
Historians view major anniversaries with a measure of ambivalence. We know that they are artificial, that it is merely a convenient fiction to think that the passage of a round number of years provides a privileged vantage point from which to review the significance of a given event. Yet we...
1939 After Sixty Years
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Polychronicon 161: John Lilburne
Teaching History feature
John Lilburne might have been destined for obscurity in less interesting times. He was the second son of a minor gentry family, apprenticed to a London woollen merchant in 1632. It was his master’s connections that drew him into religious opposition to Charles I and the illegal book trade, resulting...
Polychronicon 161: John Lilburne
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Move Me On 161: Knowledge & Understanding
Teaching History feature
This issue’s problem: Caroline Herschel doesn’t really notice and respond effectively to what the lesson she has just taught reveals about students’ knowledge and understanding.
Caroline Herschel is a hard-working, conscientious trainee who is anxious to feel that she has got things ‘right’. She is well organised and plans lessons well...
Move Me On 161: Knowledge & Understanding
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Disciplining cross-curricularity?
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Why should we think in inter-disciplinary rather than cross-curricular terms when planning collaborative work with colleagues in other subjects? What scope is there for working in inter-disciplinary ways and what is the value of such...
Disciplining cross-curricularity?
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An Olympic Great? Dorando Pietri
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
The Italian confectioner Dorando Pietri is one of the most famous figures from the 1908 Olympics - famous for not winning. His story raises issues of sportsmanship suitable for class discussion. There are detailed accounts readily...
An Olympic Great? Dorando Pietri
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Who's afraid of the Big Bad Bronze Age?
Primary History article
It’s September 1992 and in Dover archaeologists from the Canterbury Archaeological Trust are working alongside construction workers when six metres below ground they find some waterlogged planks. Thankfully, an expert in maritime archaeology is on site and he recognises that this could be a lot more than abandoned timber. Uncovering...
Who's afraid of the Big Bad Bronze Age?
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Planning for 'Changes within Living Memory'
Primary History article
While changes to the Key Stage 1 subject content are not as extensive as Key Stage 2 it is necessary to be aware of the changing emphasis within the different themes. ‘Changes within Living Memory' has a couple of key issues to be aware of. First, ‘living memory' refers to...
Planning for 'Changes within Living Memory'
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Role play and the past
Primary History article
The role-play area is often the most popular feature of a foundation stage classroom. For children, it's a source of great fun; for Early Years teachers, it is a wonderful way to develop pupils' language, communication and social development skills. An effective role-play area can also be instrumental in helping...
Role play and the past
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'You be Britain and I'll be Germany...' Inter-school e-mailing in Year 9
Teaching History article
E-mailing is fast becoming our preferred means of communication and for good reason. It is immediate: we can fire off a few lines and receive a reply within seconds. It is also flexible: unlike a telephone conversation, we do not have to reply there and then; we can go away...
'You be Britain and I'll be Germany...' Inter-school e-mailing in Year 9
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Engaging Year 9 students in party politics
Teaching History article
Sarah Black wanted to remedy Year 9's lack of knowledge about nineteenth-century politics. With just five lessons to work with, she decided to devise a sequence on Gladstone and Disraeli, shaping the sequence with an enquiry question that invited argument about change and continuity. Black analyses the status and function of different layers of knowledge within her sequence, evaluates the interaction...
Engaging Year 9 students in party politics
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Enabling Year 7 to write essays on Magna Carta
Teaching History article
Setting out to teach Magna Carta to the full attainment range in Year 7, Mark King decided to choose a question that reflected real scholarly debates and also to ensure that pupils held enough knowledge in long-term memory to be able to think about that question meaningfully. As he gradually prepared his pupils to produce their own causation arguments in response to that question, King was startled by...
Enabling Year 7 to write essays on Magna Carta
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The Harkness Method: achieving higher-order thinking with sixth-form
Teaching History article
Hark the herald tables sing! Achieving higher-order thinking with a chorus of sixth-form pupils
On 9 April 1930, a philanthropist called Edward Harkness donated millions of dollars to the Phillips Exeter Academy in the USA. He hoped that his donation could be used to find a new way for students to sit around a table...
The Harkness Method: achieving higher-order thinking with sixth-form
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The Shang: What can we tell about an ancient civilisation from one tomb?
Primary History article
The Shang Dynasty of China, based around the Yellow River area, is regarded as the first Chinese dynasty that we have written evidence for. It was established in around 1760 BC when Tang set up his capital in the city of Bo. Over the next 600 or 700 years the Shang Empire grew and shrank,...
The Shang: What can we tell about an ancient civilisation from one tomb?
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Empathy without illusions
Teaching History article
Empathy may have disappeared from official documents but the history teacher who does not still regularly think about it, plan for it and teach it would be hard to find. What is history if not, in part, an attempt to understand how people thought and felt in the past? This...
Empathy without illusions
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Is teaching about the Holocaust suitable for primary aged children?
Primary History case study
Editorial note: While this is a valuable paper, we must point out that the normal ethical procedures concerning such a sensitive, emotional subject must be followed in relation to pupils, their parents/carers and the wider community, i.e. the protocols for permission and clearance to teach such topics must be followed....
Is teaching about the Holocaust suitable for primary aged children?
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Nazi perpetrators in Holocaust education
Teaching History article
The Holocaust is often framed, in textbooks and exam syllabi, from a perpetrator perspective as a narrative of Nazi policy. We are offered a different orientation here. Interrogating and understanding the Holocaust involves understanding why the people who perpetrated the Holocaust did the things that they did. As Wolf Kaiser...
Nazi perpetrators in Holocaust education
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The Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to the Torres Strait 1898-1899: The birth of social anthropology?
Article
Dr John Shepherd reviews the history of a major anthropological expedition one hundred years ago. On 10 March 1898 The Times reported that Cambridge Anthropological Expedition led by Alfred Cort Haddon had sailed from London, bound for the Torres Strait region between Australia and New Guinea. In Imperial Britain, the...
The Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to the Torres Strait 1898-1899: The birth of social anthropology?
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Move Me On 158: Modelling tasks
Teaching History feature
This issue's problem: Arthur Wellesley is struggling to model tasks effectively for students.
Arthur has made a positive start to his training, but remains rather nervous in the classroom. He recognises the importance of well-planned lessons and his outline plans generally have a clear, logical structure. His mentor thinks that he...
Move Me On 158: Modelling tasks
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Triumphs Show 158: interactive learning walls and substantive vocabulary
Teaching History feature
Year 10 use an interactive learning wall to cement their understanding of substantive vocabulary
It is the first term of their GCSE course and Year 10 are already starting to flag a little. They are enjoying studying the Russian Revolution, but are struggling to remember all the new words they...
Triumphs Show 158: interactive learning walls and substantive vocabulary
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Early Islamic civilisation
Primary History article
The Primary National Curriculum pinpoints Early Islamic Civilisation as Baghdad c. AD 900 - yet it was so much more. For approximately a thousand years after AD 700 there was an extraordinary amount of activity that radiated out from Baghdad and along a glittering crescent through North Africa and into...
Early Islamic civilisation
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Duffy's devices: teaching Year 13 to read and write
Teaching History article
Rachel Ward’s intriguing title seems a little out of place in an edition on teaching the most able. The point she makes, though, is that even our very brightest post-16 students need to be encouraged both to engage with the historiography surrounding their course and to learn to write with...
Duffy's devices: teaching Year 13 to read and write
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So, what exactly does an AST do?
Teaching History article
Professional development lies at the heart of any thriving, forward-thinking profession. In teaching, however, despite the government’s recent drive to ‘modernise’ the profession, it can still be a bit hit and miss. What are the opportunities for ambitious and successful teachers of history to widen their horizons and engage in...
So, what exactly does an AST do?
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Securing contextual knowledge in year 10
Teaching History article
Using regular, low-stakes tests to secure pupils' contextual knowledge in Year 10
Lee Donaghy was concerned that his GCSE students' weak contextual knowledge was letting them down. Inspired by a mixture of cognitive science and the arguments of other teachers expressed in various blogs, he decided to tackle the problem...
Securing contextual knowledge in year 10
