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An attempt to make Year 9 Masters of Learning
Teaching History article
‘Much to learn you still have!' An attempt to make Year 9 Masters of Learning
How can history teachers structure learning pathways through historical content in ways that engage and challenge all pupils, that enable them to work at an appropriate pace and that also encourage pupils to self-assess and...
An attempt to make Year 9 Masters of Learning
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Students’ local history stories
Multipage Article
One of the strengths of the HA is our broad interest in all areas of history. So many history themes and narratives focus on the big issues, but for many of us, history starts in the local. That is why we introduced Local History and Community Month for each May...
Students’ local history stories
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Making History Accessible
Multipage Article
My students struggle with...
Every student has an entitlement to learn history and to high quality history teaching. In this section you will find support for helping students who struggle with specific aspects of learning history.
For each aspect of learning history that students struggle with you will find:
A...
Making History Accessible
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Developing sixth-form students' thinking about historical interpretation
Teaching History article
Understanding historical interpretation involves understanding how historical knowledge is constructed. How do sixth formers model historical epistemology? In this article Arthur Chapman examines a small sample of data relating to sixth form students' ideas about why historians construct differing interpretations of the past. He argues that understanding interpretation requires students to...
Developing sixth-form students' thinking about historical interpretation
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Using fictional characters to explore the relationship between historical interpretation and contemporary attitude
Teaching History article
Helping students to understand how and why people in the present interpret the past differently is a challenge. It is also vital if we are to develop an understanding of why the meanings we ascribe to the past are not fixed, but rather are subject to our own prejudices or...
Using fictional characters to explore the relationship between historical interpretation and contemporary attitude
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Dealing with the consequences
Teaching History journal article
Do GCSE and A-level questions that purport to be about consequences actually reward reasoning about historical consequences at all? Molly-Ann Navey concluded that they do not and that they fail to encourage the kind of argument that academic historians engage in when reaching judgements about consequences. Navey decided that it...
Dealing with the consequences
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Using oral history in the classroom
Multipage Article
The Oral History Society has kindly agreed to produce two new films aimed at history teachers who are new to carrying out or using oral histories either in their teaching or with students. These two films will equip teachers with the essential tools and knowledge for using and devising effective...
Using oral history in the classroom
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Helping Year 9 to engage effectively with ‘other genocides’
Teaching History article
In this article, Andy Lawrence returns to arguments made in Teaching History 153 about the importance of teaching young people about other modern genocides in addition to the Holocaust. Building on those arguments with his own rationale, Lawrence also acknowledges the constraints on curriculum time that compel all departments to...
Helping Year 9 to engage effectively with ‘other genocides’
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Film: “The Talk Should Not Be Broadcast”: Homosexuality and the BBC before 1967
Virtual Branch
In the centenary year of the BBC, this Virtual Branch talk from Marcus Collins relates the strange tale of how the BBC did and did not broadcast about homosexuality in the 1950s and 1960s and what it tells us about sexuality, broadcasting and the origins of permissiveness in mid-twentieth century Britain.
Marcus Collins...
Film: “The Talk Should Not Be Broadcast”: Homosexuality and the BBC before 1967
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How my interest in what I don't teach has informed my teaching and enriched my students' learning
Teaching History article
How my interest in what I don't teach has informed my teaching and enriched my students' learning
Flora Wilson argues here for the importance of maintaining a fascination with history as an academic subject for experienced, practising history teachers. Just as medical professionals keep their knowledge up to date by...
How my interest in what I don't teach has informed my teaching and enriched my students' learning
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Creating a progression model for teaching historical perspectives in Key Stage 3
Teaching History article
Jacob Olivey set out to design enquiries which would enable his pupils to reconstruct, using evidence, the perspectives of people in the past. In this article he shares in detail the planning and outcomes of two enquiries: one for Year 7 and one for Year 8. Olivey offers a example...
Creating a progression model for teaching historical perspectives in Key Stage 3
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The return of King John: using depth to strengthen overview in the teaching of political change
Teaching History article
Dale Banham's article in Teaching History 92, ‘Getting ready for the Grand Prix: learning to build a substantiated argument in Year 7' has influenced much debate about extended writing. It has been influential way beyond the history education community. It also raised new questions about the management of historical content....
The return of King John: using depth to strengthen overview in the teaching of political change
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Passive receivers or constructive readers?
Teaching History article
Rachel Foster reports here on research that she conducted into how students engage with academic texts. Unhappy with the usual range of texts that students encounter, often truncated and ‘simplified' in the name of accessibility, she designed a scheme of work which sought to find out how her students responded...
Passive receivers or constructive readers?
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Using an anthology of substantial sources at GCSE
Teaching History article
Struck by his GCSE students’ bewildered expressions when studying source extracts, Liam McDonnell decided to adopt a new approach to source analysis. Inspired by the work of other history teachers, McDonnell decided to use an anthology of substantial sources when studying nineteenth-century Whitechapel in London. By revisiting the sources at...
Using an anthology of substantial sources at GCSE
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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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Film: What's the wisdom on... Extended Reading
Your Virtual History Department Meeting
'What’s the wisdom on…' is a popular feature in our secondary journal Teaching History and provides the perfect stimulus for a department meeting. 'What’s the wisdom on…' provides history teachers with an overview of the ‘story so far’ of many years of practice-based professional thinking about a particular aspect of history teaching.
To...
Film: What's the wisdom on... Extended Reading
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Polychronicon 118: interpretations of Henry VII
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' explores the historical...
Polychronicon 118: interpretations of Henry VII
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Polychronicon 117: interpretations of Douglas Haig
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' considers the historical...
Polychronicon 117: interpretations of Douglas Haig
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Film: What's the wisdom on... Consequence
Your Virtual History Department Meeting
'What’s the wisdom on…' is a popular feature in our secondary journal Teaching History and provides the perfect stimulus for a department meeting. 'What’s the wisdom on…' provides history teachers with an overview of the ‘story so far’ of many years of practice-based professional thinking about a particular aspect of history teaching.
To...
Film: What's the wisdom on... Consequence
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Change and Continuity
Key Concepts
Please note: these links were compiled in 2009. For a more recent resource, please see: What's the Wisdom on: Change and Continuity.
This selection of useful Teaching History articles on Change and Continuity are highly recommended reading to those who would like to get to grip with these key concepts:
1. Michael Riley: Big Stories and...
Change and Continuity
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Film: What's the wisdom on... Extended Writing
Article
'What’s the wisdom on…' is a popular feature in our secondary journal Teaching History and provides the perfect stimulus for a department meeting. 'What’s the wisdom on…' provides history teachers with an overview of the ‘story so far’ of many years of practice-based professional thinking about a particular aspect of history teaching.
To...
Film: What's the wisdom on... Extended Writing
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Using 1980s popular music to explore historical significance
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Scott Allsop helped his students to uncover the implicit criteria informing someone else's attribution of historical significance to past events. That ‘someone else' was Billy Joel whose 1989 song became the focus for deconstructive analysis....
Using 1980s popular music to explore historical significance
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Knowledge and the Draft NC
Teaching History article
Silk purse from a sow's ear? Why knowledge matters and why the draft History NC will not improve it
Katie Hall and Christine Counsell attempt to construct a Key Stage 3 scheme of work out of the draft National Curriculum for history that was released for consultation in England in...
Knowledge and the Draft NC
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Film: What's the wisdom on...Similarity and Difference
Your Virtual History Department Meeting
We’ve been talking to our secondary school members and we know how difficult life is for teachers in the current circumstances, so we wanted to lend a helping hand.
'What’s the wisdom on…' is a popular feature in our secondary journal Teaching History and provides the perfect stimulus for a virtual department meeting....
Film: What's the wisdom on...Similarity and Difference
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Using historical discourse to find narrative coherence in the GCSE period study
Teaching History article
When planning a GCSE period study on the American West, Alex Ford wrestled with reconciling the content demands of the examination specifications with the need to provide his students with a memorable narrative. In this article, Ford shows how he drew on the latest academic scholarship to construct a rigorous,...
Using historical discourse to find narrative coherence in the GCSE period study
