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Polychronicon 149: Interpreting the Persian Wars
Teaching History feature
Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon The trivial skirmish fought near Marathon.
So begins Robert Graves' poem, The Persian Version. The conceit of the poem is to invert the standard narrative of the Persian war of the early fifth century BC - a narrative drawn from Greek sources such as...
Polychronicon 149: Interpreting the Persian Wars
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Cunning Plan 149.1: a Year 7 lesson on Gladiators
Teaching History feature
This seemingly straightforward question will prompt correspondingly straightforward answers from your mixed-ability Year 7 class, such as ‘they were slaves who fought with swords until one of the men died for the crowd's entertainment', as one of my pupils answered. Scratch the surface, and almost every word in this response...
Cunning Plan 149.1: a Year 7 lesson on Gladiators
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The Reformed Electoral System in Great Britain, 1832-1914
Classic Pamphlet
The struggle for parliamentary reform between 1830 and 1832 has long been regarded as one of the decisive battles of British political history. The Tories lamented that the passage of the Reform Bill meant the destruction of the constitution.
Middle class Radicals welcomed the Reform Bill as the instrument that...
The Reformed Electoral System in Great Britain, 1832-1914
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The Northern Ireland Question 1886-1986
Classic Pamphlet
The nature of the rights of majorities and minorities is one of the most intractable of the issues raised by the Northern Ireland question, especially since much depends on definitions. Ulster Protestants are a majority in that province but a minority in both Ireland and the United Kingdom, while Catholics,...
The Northern Ireland Question 1886-1986
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Kilpeck Church: a window on medieval 'mentalite'
Historian article
In the village of Kilpeck, about eight miles south-west of Hereford, may be found the small parish church of St Mary and St David, justifiably described by Pevsner as ‘one of the most perfect Norman village churches in England’ (Pevsner 1963, 201). Seemingly remote today, in the twelfth century the...
Kilpeck Church: a window on medieval 'mentalite'
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Polychronicon 126: Stonehenge
Teaching History feature
Secondary history ought to pay more attention to stones:
1. they are accessible, logistically and educationally, and highly instructive. The Neolithic is everywhere, and generally speaking, free2. venture outside the classroom, into real space or cyberspace, and you stumble into it eventually.3. Archaeological interpretation is an accessible way into aspects...
Polychronicon 126: Stonehenge
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What is APP?
Article
Assessing Pupils' Progress in History
APP is a tool to view pupil progress periodically by making use of collections of day to day learning in order to ‘make periodic judgements on pupils' progress using a wide range of evidence taken from a variety of classroom contexts.'[i] QCDA is currently working...
What is APP?
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How do we get better at going on trips: Planning for progression outside the classroom
Teaching History article
School trips are, it seems, always in the news. They are under threat, or vital, or the preserve of wealthier students, or a forum for poor behaviour, or a day out of the classroom to build relationships, or a fantastic learning experience where students learn important life skills (such as...
How do we get better at going on trips: Planning for progression outside the classroom
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Cunning Plan 147: Getting students to use classical texts
Teaching History feature
The following plan provides a more detailed practical example of the approaches discussed in the article on using ancient texts.
Having puzzled over what ancient texts actually are - carefully constructed interpretations? testimonies? (but testimonies to what?) myths? - I wanted my Ancient History GCSE class to engage in this...
Cunning Plan 147: Getting students to use classical texts
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The great Liberal landslide: the 1906 General Election in perspective
Historian article
On 1 May 1997 the Conservative party suffered an electoral defeat so overwhelming that political commentators were left rummaging through the statistics of the previous two centuries to find anything similar. The Times concluded on 3 May that it was the party's worst performance since 1832, though 'The disaster suffered...
The great Liberal landslide: the 1906 General Election in perspective
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Teaching History 135: To They or Not To They
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
02 Editorial
03 HA Secondary News
04 Drilling down: how one history department is working towards progression in pupils’ thinking about diversity across Years 7, 8 and 9 – Matthew Bradshaw (Read article)
13 Cunning Plan: The generalisation game - challenging generalisations (Read article)
16 Were industrial towns ‘death-traps’? Year...
Teaching History 135: To They or Not To They
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A team-taught conspiracy: Year 8 are caught up in a genuine historical debate
Teaching History article
Are top sets always our top priority? Of course, we know that every child matters (should that now have capital letters?) but those of us who teach in an ability-setted context also know that a bottom set left unable to access the curriculum is likely to pose bigger problems than...
A team-taught conspiracy: Year 8 are caught up in a genuine historical debate
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Christopher Hill: Marxism and Methodism
Historian article
Christopher Hill, the eminent historian of seventeenth century England, was a convinced Marxist throughout most of his long and productive life (1912-2003). He embraced this secular world-view when he was a young History student at Oxford in the polemical 1930s and never lost his ideological commitment, even though he resigned...
Christopher Hill: Marxism and Methodism
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Maybe they haven't decided yet what is right: English and Spanish perspectives on teaching historical significance
Teaching History article
Historians and history teachers understand well that students, when they ‘answer’ questions, are creating their own interpretation. We take account of this in our teaching too: we do not pretend that, beyond the level of the simplest closed questioning, there is ever a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answer approach to history....
Maybe they haven't decided yet what is right: English and Spanish perspectives on teaching historical significance
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Peter the Great
Classic Pamphlet
No European ruler except Napoleon I has impressed both contemporise and later historians so profoundly as Peter I of Russia by the originality and the personal character of his achievements. Like Napoleon, Peter appeared to some observers, at least in his later years, as almost more than human. He seemed...
Peter the Great
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Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime: using external support, local history and a group project to challenge the most able
Teaching History article
The most able can be challenged in a variety of ways and at a number of levels, from the extension question for the individual child to the extended enquiry for the most able class. In a Leading Edge History project, Guy Woolnough and his colleagues took the concept of challenge...
Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime: using external support, local history and a group project to challenge the most able
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When computers don't give you a headache: the most able lead a debate on medicine through time
Teaching History article
Dan Moorhouse begins with a complaint about ICT. It is not the clichéd teacher-complaint – that the computers keep crashing, and the students are messing around on the Internet (and how, exactly, do you turn the things on?) Instead, he observes that the use of ICT in the classroom is...
When computers don't give you a headache: the most able lead a debate on medicine through time
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Mussolini's missing marbles: simulating history at GCSE
Teaching History article
Arthur Chapman and James Woodcock have collaborated before: Woodcock extended Chapman’s familiar casual metaphor of the final straw breaking a poor abused camel’s back. Here, they collaborate more explicitly to suggest a means of teaching students to produce adequately nuanced historical explanation. Their two central ideas are to produce a...
Mussolini's missing marbles: simulating history at GCSE
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Numismatics and History
Classic Pamphlet
Numismatics may be defined as the science of money in its physical aspects. It is only indirectly connected with the theory of money, which belongs to the sphere of economics. Its subject-matter consists of the material objects which in most societies are used to measure the worth of goods and...
Numismatics and History
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Charles XII
Classic Pamphlet
The reputation of Charles XII who became king of Sweden before he was fifteen years old and had the responsibility of absolutist goverment thrust upon him within the next six months - contrary to the plans laid down for him by his father - has tended to attract political rather...
Charles XII
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England Arise! The General Election of 1945
Historian article
‘The past week will live in history for two things’, announced the Sunday Times of 29 July 1945, ‘first the return of a Labour majority to Parliament and the end of Churchill's great war Premiership.’ Most other newspapers concurred. The Daily Mirror, of 27 July, proclaimed that the 1945 general election...
England Arise! The General Election of 1945
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Lloyd George & Gladstone
Article
Lloyd George, who died sixty years ago on 26 March 1945, grew up and began his Parliamentary career in Queen Victoria's reign. In taking up a major Welsh issue, disestablishment of the Church of Wales, he memorably clashed with William Ewart Gladstone, perhaps the greatest of all Liberal Prime Ministers....
Lloyd George & Gladstone
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Votes for Women in Britain 1867-1928
Classic Pamphlet
This classic pamphlet takes you through the Votes for Women in Britain movement from its origins to its eventual success, following the case for women's suffrage presented, tactics and strategies, the anti-suffragist argument, party political complications, international perspectives, the Pankhursts and militancy, the revival of non-militant suffragism, the impact of...
Votes for Women in Britain 1867-1928
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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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Assessment of students' uses of evidence
Teaching History article
Drawing on her research into students' evidential reasoning, Elisabeth Pickles explores the possibilities for how such reasoning might be assessed. Existing exam mark schemes focus too heavily on generic processes involved in the analysis of source material and insufficiently on the historical validity of reasoning and conclusions produced. Approaching the...
Assessment of students' uses of evidence
