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Big Stories and Big Pictures: Making Outlines and Overviews Interesting
Teaching History journal article
An examination, with practical strategies, of the teaching of 'outlines and overviews' by Michael Riley.
Why teach overviews?
One of the problems of the first phase of National Curriculum history was the percieved overload of content. Some teachers felt obliged to race through the Programme of Study, treating issues in...
Big Stories and Big Pictures: Making Outlines and Overviews Interesting
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Polychronicon 114: interpretations of Oliver Cromwell
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' investigates the differing...
Polychronicon 114: interpretations of Oliver Cromwell
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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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Drop the dead dictator: a Year 9 newsroom simulation
Teaching History article
Rosalind Stirzaker has big ambitions for her students. She wants them to do more than make a simple list of the key causes of the Second World War. Yes, she wants them to complete a piece of written work, but she wants – and gets – a great deal more...
Drop the dead dictator: a Year 9 newsroom simulation
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Meeting the historian through the text
Teaching History article
Edna Shoham and Neomi Shiloah describe a process by which they taught their 15-year-old students to read historians’ accounts for sub-text, meaning and assumptions. In its emphasis on ‘meeting the historian’, their work overlaps with much of the thinking about teaching pupils about historical ‘interpretations’ as specifically required by the...
Meeting the historian through the text
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Move Me On 132: Already the best teacher in the department
Teaching History feature
This issue's problem: Phyllis Wheatley already seems to be the most effective teacher in the department. How can her mentor ensure that she goes on learning?
Phyllis Wheatley is several weeks into her second placement and her mentor, Selina, is acutely aware of how impressive her teaching is already. A degree in...
Move Me On 132: Already the best teacher in the department
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Teaching History 20
Journal
Editorial, page 2
The Contributors, page 2
Residential Courses for Sixth Formers - Tony Taylor, page 3
What is History? Two Conferences - Brian Scott, page 5
Structured Sixth Form Study - David Killingray, page 8
16+ Feasibility Study and Oral Assessment - John Hamer, page 10
Comment, page 13...
Teaching History 20
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Democracy is not boring
Teaching History article
Seán Lang argues that whilst history teachers have expressed much support for the citizenship education proposals, and whilst their practice already addresses the skills of evidence-weighing, debate and argument, there are huge gaps in our coverage of relevant content. He argues that the freedom with which teachers may currently interpret...
Democracy is not boring
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Polychronicon 112: The Angevin Empire
Teaching History feature
Polychronicon was a fourteenth-century chronicle that brought together much of the knowledge of its ownage. 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 the 'Polychronicon' concentrates on the...
Polychronicon 112: The Angevin Empire
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Exploring change and continuity with Year 7
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
A great deal has been written about causation in the pages of Teaching History. From camels to linguistics, this is a second-order concept that teachers and pupils frequently deliberate.
Departments balance the need for substantive knowledge with explicit...
Exploring change and continuity with Year 7
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Exceptional performance at GCSE
Teaching History article
In the last edition of Teaching History (February 1999, Issue 94) Kate Hammond used her own planning and classroom practice to extract some principles for stretching the very able pupil at Key Stage 3. How should history teachers build on this at GCSE? One way of defining goals for such...
Exceptional performance at GCSE
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Using this map and all your knowledge, become Bismarck
Teaching History article
Understanding the past is not an abstract exercise. Historical questions revolve around decisions made by real people under real pressure. As historians, we factor psychological pressure into our analysis. How, though, are we to enable our students to do the same? To study why Bismarck began a programme of overseas...
Using this map and all your knowledge, become Bismarck
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Short cuts to deep knowledge
Teaching History article
Sam Pullan explains how a chance encounter has helped him to improve his introduction to the modern themes and founding documents of US politics. Working with a professional historian whom he met, by chance, over dinner, he was able to produce lessons at the cutting edge of subject knowledge to...
Short cuts to deep knowledge
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Conceptual awareness through categorising: using ICT to get Year 13 reading
Teaching History article
When presenting their practical approaches to post-16 teaching in Teaching History 103, both Richard Harris and Rachael Rudham argued that students need to ‘do’ things with information, to process it, play with it, classify it, if they are ever to understand or remember it. They made a case for not...
Conceptual awareness through categorising: using ICT to get Year 13 reading
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Move Me On 108: Reconciling sources and stories
Teaching History feature
This Issue's Problem: Indira is having problems reconciling sources and stories in teaching history.
Move Me On 108: Reconciling sources and 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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Move Me On 122: Catering for different learning styles
Teaching History feature
This Issue's Problem: Maria Monte has decided that catering for different learning styles will solve all her problems of differentiation in history.
Move Me On 122: Catering for different learning styles
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Teaching History 19
Journal
Editorial, page 2
The Contributors, page 2
The Genesis of the History Teaching Film - B. J. Elliott, page 3
Film and the History Teacher - J. Duckworth, page 8
A Select List of Feature Films of use in the Teaching of History - T. Gwynn, page 11
New Approaches...
Teaching History 19
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Move Me On 119: Teaching EAL students
Teaching History feature
This Issue's Problem: Beth is worried about how to make history accessible to the students with English as an Additional Language (EAL) in her classes.
Move Me On 119: Teaching EAL students
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Basket weaving in Advanced level history...how to plan and teach the 100 year study
Teaching History article
The current specifications for AS/A2 history require students to study change over a period of at least 100 years. Given that the 100 year study represents just one module out of six and also that it may not complement any of the other modules selected and may therefore be wholly...
Basket weaving in Advanced level history...how to plan and teach the 100 year study
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Polychronicon 121: interpretations of the American Revolution
Teaching History feature
Polychronicon 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 the American Revolution.
Polychronicon 121: interpretations of the American Revolution
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What have historians been arguing about... decolonisation and the British Empire?
Teaching History feature
Decolonisation is a contested term. When first used in 1952, it referred to a political event: a colony gaining independence; it has since come to describe a process. When, where and why this process began, however, and whether it has ended, are all fiercely debated. Is it about new flags...
What have historians been arguing about... decolonisation and the British Empire?
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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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Polychronicon 120: The past as analogy in popular music
Teaching History feature
Polychronicon is a regular feature helping school history teachers to update their subject knowledge, with special emphasis on recent historiography and changing interpretation. This edition focuses on the interpretations of popular music.
Polychronicon 120: The past as analogy in popular music
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Narrative: the under-rated skill
Teaching History article
‘Mere narrative’, ‘lapses into narrative’, ‘a narrative answer that fails to answer the question set’. These phrases flow in the blood of history teachers, from public examination criteria to regular classroom discourse. Whilst most of us use narrative in our teaching methods, we have demonised narrative in pupils’ written answers....
Narrative: the under-rated skill
