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New, Novice or Nervous? 159: Writing history essays
Teaching History feature
Until the 1990s, it was unusual for the majority of England's secondary school students to write history essays. The traditional essay was a staple of the old History O Level examinations, but fewer than 20% of pupils did these history exams. In the 1980s, various history teachers became increasingly concerned...
New, Novice or Nervous? 159: Writing history essays
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Move Me On 159: Writing Frames
Teaching History feature
This issue's problem: Hannah Mitchell would like to wean pupils off the use of writing frames.
Hannah Mitchell has embarked on her PGCE training after a year spent working as a Teaching Assistant. Her varied experiences in that role - sometimes working one-to-one with young people, within a targeted intervention programme,...
Move Me On 159: Writing Frames
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Using timelines in assessment
Teaching History article
Bridging a twenty-year gap in their practice, Elizabeth Carr and Christine Counsell bring out the similarities in their use of timelines in their planning, teaching and assessment. What they also have in common is the fact that their experimentation with timelines as a way of strengthening cumulative knowledge emerged in...
Using timelines in assessment
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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
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Triumphs Show 157: What makes art history?
Teaching History feature: celebrating and sharing success
What do 14 Year 7 students, an art teacher, a history teacher and the Victoria and Albert Museum have in common? They are all part of the ‘Stronger Together' Museum Champion project run by The Langley Academy and the River & Rowing Museum and supported by Arts Council England, designed to...
Triumphs Show 157: What makes art history?
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Triumphs Show 133: Little Miss Cold War
Teaching History feature
Students can find it hard to understand and remember the differing schools of interpretation that they encounter at A2. The process of studying differing historiographic claims can also seem rather dry and tedious. It is crucial that they grasp differences in interpretation if they are to succeed in their examinations,...
Triumphs Show 133: Little Miss Cold War
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Cunning Plan 96: teaching citizenship through KS3 history
Article
Big theme: dissent and the formation of the concept of ‘rights'
You can teach citizenship not only without compromising National Curriculum content, processes and concepts, but in such a way as to improve them. Review your department's ‘whole Key Stage' planning. Secure rigour and high levels of challenge by remembering...
Cunning Plan 96: teaching citizenship through KS3 history
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New, Novice or Nervous? 152: Describing Progression
Teaching History feature
'New, Novice or Nervous?' is for those new to the published writings of history teachers. Every problem you wrestle with, other teachers have wrestled with too. Quick fixes don't exist. But if you discover others' writing, you'll soon find - and want to join - something better: an international conversation...
New, Novice or Nervous? 152: Describing Progression
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Why we would miss controlled assessments in history
Teaching History article
A place for individual enquiry? Why we would miss controlled assessments in history
Most history teachers will, at some point, recognise the tension between teaching an engaging history course while at the same time meeting the requirements of an exam specification. Mark Fowle and Ben Egelnick reflect here on how...
Why we would miss controlled assessments in history
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Polychronicon 123: Gladstone and Disraeli
Teaching History feature
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 'Polychronicon' focuses on the interpretations of Gladstone and Disraeli.
Polychronicon 123: Gladstone and Disraeli
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Cunning Plan 94: Study Unit 2: Crowns, Parliaments and Peoples, 1500-1750
Article
Flesh and blood people bring history to life. Capture the interest of our Year 8 pupils by making sure they engage with human dilemmas and dangers. A focus on individual people as the starting point for enquiries helps pupils to tackle the ‘big' stories (overviews) and difficult concepts.
Cunning Plan 94: Study Unit 2: Crowns, Parliaments and Peoples, 1500-1750
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Enquiries to engage Year 7 in medieval anarchy
Teaching History article
Wrestling with Stephen and Matilda: planning challenging enquiries to engage Year 7 in medieval anarchy
McDougall found learning about Stephen and Matilda fascinating, was sure that her pupils would also and designed an enquiry to engage them in ‘the anarchy' of 1139-1153 AD. Pupils enjoyed exploring ‘the anarchy' and learning...
Enquiries to engage Year 7 in medieval anarchy
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Improving Year 12's extended writing
Teaching History article
From Muddleton Manor to Clarity Cathedral: improving Year 12's extended writing through an enhanced sense of the reader
Mary Brown recognised that her A-level students were finding extended writing difficult, particularly in terms of guiding the reader through the argument with appropriate ‘signposting'. To help her students manage this, Brown...
Improving Year 12's extended writing
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Move Me On 149: how to provide appropriate support for particular students
Teaching History feature
This issue's problem: Helen Troy is uncertain how to provide appropriate support for certain students without restricting what they can achieve.
Helen showed considerable determination in securing her teacher training place. Her own education had been within a highly selective school system and her first application was unsuccessful because of...
Move Me On 149: how to provide appropriate support for particular students
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New, Novice or Nervous? 149: Getting pupils to argue about causes
Teaching History feature
Every problem you're wrestling with in the history classroom, other history teachers have wrestled with too. This page is for all those new to the published writings of history teachers in Teaching History. It shows how to make a start in understanding how others have explored and discussed common and...
New, Novice or Nervous? 149: Getting pupils to argue about causes
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Competition and counterfactuals without confusion
Teaching History article
Paula Worth was searching not only for a rigorous question, capable of engendering genuine debate, but also for an engaging and enjoyable activity that would secure GCSE students' substantive knowledge. The answer - or rather the question - lay in counterfactual thinking: a carefully crafted game that she devised, based...
Competition and counterfactuals without confusion
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Cunning Plan 139: Victorian debates about progress
Teaching History feature
How can we interest students in the world of ideas? How can we help them to see how important ideas were in shaping and reflecting the world of the Victorians? Working with the overarching enquiry question, ‘Why did some Victorians believe in progress in the nineteenth century and others did not?’ I devised...
Cunning Plan 139: Victorian debates about progress
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Developing pupil explanation through web debates
Teaching History article
Kathryn Greenfield became dissatisfied with her pupils' written responses, particularly the rather limited explanations that they were giving in support of points that they made. Drawing here on recent work in using Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) to develop pupil historical argument and reasoning, Greenfield explains how she used web debates...
Developing pupil explanation through web debates
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Move Me On 147: Making Analogies Meaningful
Teaching History feature
This issue's problem: Emma Norman finds the analogies that she's using to make historical ideas meaningful end up distracting or confusing the students.
Emma has come into history teaching after a number of years at home looking after children. Her previous work was as a fundraiser for an environmental campaign group,...
Move Me On 147: Making Analogies Meaningful
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Move Me On 145: Uncomfortable with Storytelling
Teaching History feature
This issue's problem: Claudia Jones is very uncomfortable with any kind of sustained story-telling.
Claudia Jones is a quietly spoken and rather nervous trainee. She struggled from the beginning of the PGCE to establish a strong presence in the classroom, and although she has become more assertive about insisting on basic...
Move Me On 145: Uncomfortable with Storytelling
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What Have Historians Been Arguing About… climate history
Teaching History feature
Although some historians object to ‘presentism’ – studies of the past that are explicitly driven by present-day concerns – climate history as a field would probably not exist otherwise. Expensive technology is required to gather the raw data for research into past climates. Interdisciplinary collaboration is needed to develop robust...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About… climate history
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Polychronicon 113: slavery in 20th-century America
Teaching History feature
Polychronicon was a fourteenth-century chronicle that brought together much of the knowledge of its own age. 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 'Polychronicon' is on 'Interpreting...
Polychronicon 113: slavery in 20th-century America
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Move Me On 143: Trying to tackle everything at once
Teaching History feature
This issue's problem: Emily Hobhouse seems to feel obliged to implement all the new ideas she is learning about at once.
Emily Hobhouse has made an impressive start to her PGCE course. She switched to teaching after several years' work in legal practice which meant that she was already used to...
Move Me On 143: Trying to tackle everything at once
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Cunning Plan 142: Why do historical interpretations change over time?
Teaching History feature
History teachers have been talking about the need to teach broad narratives, overview and chronology for a long time. They have also recognised how essential it is for students to have an opportunity to study the ways in which the past has been interpreted, and the reasons why these interpretations...
Cunning Plan 142: Why do historical interpretations change over time?
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Historiography from below: how undergraduates remember learning history at school
Teaching History article
What do our students make of the history that we teach them? As part of an introductory module on historiography, Marcus Collins asked his undergraduate students to analyse the history that they had been taught at school and college using historiographic concepts. The results make for interesting reading. What do...
Historiography from below: how undergraduates remember learning history at school
