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Year 9 use sources to explore contemporary meanings and understandings of appeasement
Teaching History article
After reflecting on the difference between his study of source extracts at university and how he was using source extracts in the classroom, Jonathan Sellin went in search of a new way to help his pupils to situate sources in context. Finding inspiration in the work of intellectual historian Quentin...
Year 9 use sources to explore contemporary meanings and understandings of appeasement
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Why does anyone do anything? Attempts to improve agentive explanations with Year 12
Teaching History article
In this article Sophie Harley-McKeown identifies and addresses her Year 12 students’ blind spot over agentive explanation. Noticing that the examination board to which she teaches uses ‘motivations’ rather than ‘aims’ prompted her to consider whether her students really knew what that meant. Finding that her students’ causal explanations tended...
Why does anyone do anything? Attempts to improve agentive explanations with Year 12
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Triumphs Show 180: From ‘most able’ to ‘mini’ historians
Teaching History feature
Finding ways to stretch and challenge the highest-attaining students has been a long-standing concern of many history teachers, and strategies for doing so have developed far beyond merely bolting on additional tasks. One way in which I have sought to challenge my own high-attaining students has been by setting them...
Triumphs Show 180: From ‘most able’ to ‘mini’ historians
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Primary History summer resource 2020: Historical Fiction
Article
This year's free summer resource for primary members explores historical fiction and how we can use it in our teaching and learning.
Historical fiction can be a potent tool for creating a ‘sense of period’, immersing us in the past through the power of narrative. When studying a particular historical period,...
Primary History summer resource 2020: Historical Fiction
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Perfect liberty and uproar: a short case study
Historian article
Edward Washington gives us a fascinating insight into life on an emigration ship – the John Knox – taking a group of orphan girls to Sydney, through a letter written after the voyage by the man charged with improving their education during the sea voyage.
After his arrival in Sydney...
Perfect liberty and uproar: a short case study
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No more ‘doing’ diversity
Teaching History feature
Catherine Priggs and her history department colleagues were increasingly concerned that their curriculum was too narrow. They feared that major areas of history were being left out and that many of their own pupils were not seeing themselves, in their various ethnic, cultural and world identities, in the past. Priggs...
No more ‘doing’ diversity
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Smooth transitions: Key Stage 2 to 3
Primary History article
Transitions. Pivotal points in a child’s life and a phase in the educational journey that should be celebrated. How do we ensure that transitions are efficiently prepared for, when an ever increasing list of school pressures means that transitions can feel like the poor relation in the list of priorities?...
Smooth transitions: Key Stage 2 to 3
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Historical fiction: it’s all made up, isn’t it?
Primary History article
One of the hardest things for children to develop in history is a sense of period. What was it really like to live in a Stone Age house for example, to get up every morning knowing if you didn’t collect food or hunt something then there would be nothing to...
Historical fiction: it’s all made up, isn’t it?
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Pandemics in history: similarity and difference
Primary History article
I was inspired to put pen to paper to include an article putting Coronavirus in some sort of historical perspective after reading Peter Frankopan’s article in The Times newspaper on 28 March. The article entitled ‘Pandemics are terrifying but they can make the world better’ is written by Peter Frankopan...
Pandemics in history: similarity and difference
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My Favourite History Place: Maiden Castle
Historian feature
In the six years I have been on the editorial board of The Historian I have enjoyed reading about many historians’ favourite places so it is fitting that I write my last contribution about mine. Maiden Castle is the largest Celtic hill fort in southern Europe. I forget when I first...
My Favourite History Place: Maiden Castle
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Move Me On 137: Regards PGCE assignments as unhelpful distractions
Teaching History feature
This issue's problem: Ellen Wilkinson regards her PGCE assignments as an unhelpful distraction from the real business of learning to teach.
Ellen has just had her first PGCE assignment returned to her by her tutor and is furious about the comments she has received and the indicative Masters level mark it...
Move Me On 137: Regards PGCE assignments as unhelpful distractions
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What’s in a narrative? Unpicking Year 9 narratives of change in Stalin’s Russia
Teaching History article
Is it structure or the selection of knowledge that makes writing historical narrative so difficult? Where does a conceptual focus on change, or causation, come in? James Ellis set out to explore the challenges his Year 9 pupils faced in writing historical narratives about change. Inspired by the work of...
What’s in a narrative? Unpicking Year 9 narratives of change in Stalin’s Russia
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Family stories and global (hi)stories
Teaching History article
Teaching in Greece, a country with extensive recent experience of immigration, Maria Vlachaki and Georgia Kouseri were interested to examine how they might use family history as a means of exploring the historical dimensions of this potentially sensitive topic. They hoped that encouraging pupils to explore their relatives’ stories would...
Family stories and global (hi)stories
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Move Me On 126: Setting worthwhile homework
Teaching History feature
Val Messalina is a lively and engaging young student teacher who has come straight to the PGCE course after completing her history degree. She has made a positive start to teaching but is quite nervous and tends to look for very clear guidance and support. She is now half way...
Move Me On 126: Setting worthwhile homework
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Pupil voice: Democratising history lessons in Key Stage 1
Primary History article
Why is pupil voice important? Children are at the centre of everything we do and safeguarding their well-being and ensuring their progress across the curriculum is a key emphasis for schools. Recognising the importance of pupil voice in this is key.
Robin Alexander’s Towards Dialogic Teaching: Rethinking Classroom Talk (2017)...
Pupil voice: Democratising history lessons in Key Stage 1
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Embedding progress in historical vocabulary teaching
Primary History article
The current focus on a knowledge-rich curriculum, in which the intent and impact should be clearly identified, has seen many subject leaders scrutinising and reworking the history curriculum within their contexts.
As part of this, specific vocabulary, be it conceptual or otherwise, has been highlighted, and word lists are appearing...
Embedding progress in historical vocabulary teaching
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History Abridged: Publishing
Historian feature
History Abridged: This feature seeks to take a person, event or period and abridge, or focus on, an important event or detail that can get lost in the big picture. See all History Abridged articles
For centuries the only way the written word could be communicated was by it being...
History Abridged: Publishing
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Linking Law: Viking and medieval Scandinavian law in literature and history
Historian article
Ongoing interdisciplinary developments have cast light on the surprisingly sophisticated world of Viking-age and medieval Scandinavian law and its wide-ranging influence in these societies.
In many ways, the Viking Age and its inhabitants are more familiar than ever before. From video games to television and films, new narrative frontiers and bigger...
Linking Law: Viking and medieval Scandinavian law in literature and history
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Does historical fiction matter for children?
Historian article
Can you remember a book from when you were young that took you to another place that was fascinating, intriguing and felt real but wasn’t Narnia? Quite often those books were historical fiction; sometimes they were more fiction than history and sometimes vice versa. While the Ladybird histories were some people’s...
Does historical fiction matter for children?
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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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Historical scholarship, archaeology and evidence in Year 7
Teaching History article
The stimulus for this article came from two developmental tasks that Barbara Trapani was set during the course of her initial teacher education programme: planning her first historical enquiry and bringing the work of an historian into the classroom. Trapani chose to tackle the two tasks together, using Susan Whitfield’s...
Historical scholarship, archaeology and evidence in Year 7
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Turning technology: making life better in Iron Age Britain
Primary History article
So who were the people living in Britain in the Iron Age?
The Iron Age describes the period in Britain when the use of iron became widespread. It ranged from 800 BC to AD 43 and the invasion by the Roman Empire. The people of Iron Age Britain were part of...
Turning technology: making life better in Iron Age Britain
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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: 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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Primary History Summer Resource 2019: Diversity
Primary History resource
This free summer resource for primary members is designed to help primary subject leaders and teachers consider the implications of developing a school policy for teaching of diversity in history. This comprehensive guide provides timely advice and considers questions associated with teaching diversity and provides a rationale for its essential role in providing an understanding...
Primary History Summer Resource 2019: Diversity
