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Minimalist cause boxes for maximal learning: one approach to the Civil War in Year 8
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated
Ian Gibson and Susan McLelland describe their work using cause boxes. They identity the type of historical learning that they felt was taking place and the range of factors which they judged to be critical...
Minimalist cause boxes for maximal learning: one approach to the Civil War in Year 8
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Interpretation and poor Victorian Children
Year 6 Scheme of Work
Please note: this resource pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum.
This unit centres on the portrayal of poor, Victorian children. While factual knowledge about conditions in workhouses is an essential component of the unit, the main focus is on contrasting portrayals of one fictional Victorian child, Charles Dicken's Oliver Twist. The...
Interpretation and poor Victorian Children
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Professional wrestling in the history department: a case study in planning the teaching of the British Empire at key stage 3
Teaching History article
Three years ago (TH 99, Curriculum Planning Edition), Michael Riley illustrated ways in which history departments could exploit the increased flexibility of the revised National Curriculum. He showed that precisely-worded enquiry questions, positioned thoughtfully across the Key Stage, help to ensure progression, challenge and coherence. His picturesque image for this...
Professional wrestling in the history department: a case study in planning the teaching of the British Empire at key stage 3
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Working with sources: scepticism or cynicism? Putting the story back together again
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Many history teachers will remember the feature on Jamie Byrom's teaching in Times Educational Supplement of July 1996 where he attacked the recent fashion of history textbooks for encouraging only short (and usually formulaic) responses...
Working with sources: scepticism or cynicism? Putting the story back together again
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Was Boudicca Britain's first hero?
Year 6 Scheme of Work
Please note: this resource pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum.
This unit centres on Queen Boudicca.
While factual knowledge about her life and the Roman occupation are an essential component of the unit, the main focus is on contrasting interpretations of Boudicca over time and exploration of the reasons behind her...
Was Boudicca Britain's first hero?
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Kett's Rebellion 1549
Classic Pamphlet
On 20 june, 1549, the men of the town of Attleborough and of the neighbouring hamlets of Eccles and Wilby, in South Norfolk, threw down the fences recently erected by John Green, lord of the manor of Beckhall in Wilby, round part of the common over which they all had...
Kett's Rebellion 1549
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Potential and pitfalls in teaching 'big pictures' of the past
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Jonathan Howson summarises findings from the recent ESRC funded research project - Usable Historical Pasts - and suggests how its insights might inform continuing professional debate and enquiry concerning both frameworks and ‘big pictures'.
In...
Potential and pitfalls in teaching 'big pictures' of the past
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Cartoons and the historian
Historian article
Many historical books contain cartoons, but in most cases these are little more than a relief from the text, and do not make any point of substance which is not made elsewhere. Political cartoons should be regarded as much more than that. They are an important historical source which often...
Cartoons and the historian
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History, citizenship and Oliver Stone
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
When is a work of art a work of history? How can we get our students to appreciate the difference without ignoring the overlap? How should we ask our students to approach the historical film...
History, citizenship and Oliver Stone
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'The end of all existence is debarred me': Disraeli's depression 1826-30
Historian article
During the years from 1826 to 1830 Benjamin Disraeli went through the slough of despond. His first major biographer,William Flavelle Monypenny, observed the ‘clouds of despondency which were now settling upon Disraeli's mind'. In his magisterial life of the great tory leader Robert Blake commented that ‘after completing Part II...
'The end of all existence is debarred me': Disraeli's depression 1826-30
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Telling and suggesting in the Conwy Valley
Teaching History article
Thelma Wiltshire applies a ‘telling' and ‘suggesting' strategy to an enquiry involving an historical site. Getting beyond more simplistic approaches to ‘fact' and ‘opinion', she describes how a pack of curriculum materials was designed to give pupils a precise language to talk about layers of certainty and uncertainty in their...
Telling and suggesting in the Conwy Valley
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Triumphs Show 136: how one history department changed pupils' and parents' perceptions of homework
Teaching History feature
Devising worthwhile and engaging homework tasks, week in week out, can prove both demanding and frustrating - particularly in contexts where we know students will have be chased to complete them.
How can we make homework planning easier and more effective - and cut down the time spent chasing recalcitrant...
Triumphs Show 136: how one history department changed pupils' and parents' perceptions of homework
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Telling tales: Developing students' own thematic and synoptic understandings at Key Stage 3
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Ed Brooker is as concerned as the other authors within this edition that students should be able to see and make meaning out of ‘big pictures' of the past.
He is acutely aware, however, that...
Telling tales: Developing students' own thematic and synoptic understandings at Key Stage 3
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Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal
Classic Pamphlets
New Deal is the name given to the policies of the American president Franklin D. Roosevelt during the 1930s. Elected in 1932, at a time of great economic depression, he sought to alleviate distress by using the inherent powers of government, and the New Deal era come to be seen...
Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal
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The Nation of the Scots and the Declaration of Arbroath
Classic Pamphlet
This pamphlet seeks to chart the progress of the Scottish struggle for independence after 1291 by considering the changing nature of the Scottish resistance. The primary sources are exiguous when compared to those bearing upon the English attempt at subjugation, and the interpretation offered is at best tentative: that initially...
The Nation of the Scots and the Declaration of Arbroath
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Teaching history's big pictures: including continuity as well as change
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
School history teachers are not the only ones wrestling with the challenges of building ‘big pictures' that do justice to complexity. In this article, social and cultural historian Penelope Corfield puts our interest in long-term...
Teaching history's big pictures: including continuity as well as change
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Building memory and meaning
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Sarah Gadd attempted to re-think her department's usual approach to the two-year Key Stage 3. Concerned that a thematic approach might not be securing the overview perspective it was designed to achieve, she decided instead...
Building memory and meaning
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Shaping macro-analysis from micro-history
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Many history teachers are inspired by the work of historians and want to share their stories and arguments with students in school. Hywel Jones found Malcolm Gaskill's Witchfinders ‘gripping and intriguing'.
He decided to use...
Shaping macro-analysis from micro-history
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Polychronicon 130: Dental, transcendental, regimental: Making Mangal Pandey
Teaching History feature
Have you stuggled to find an invigorating, exciting local enquiry to motivate your Year 9 class ? How do you engage students in lively debate? This was the challenge for one Norfolk school who wanted to develop a local study on the Poor Law and to create opportunities for students...
Polychronicon 130: Dental, transcendental, regimental: Making Mangal Pandey
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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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Prehistoric Bristol
Classic Pamphlet
This period is represented in the valley of the Bristol Avon by the Acheulian industries, named from the type station of St. Acheul in the Somme valley, which has yielded many ovate and pear-shaped hand-axes characteristic of the period. These industries flourished during the very long Second Interglacial phase, a...
Prehistoric Bristol
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Nutshell 135: The challenge of analysing 'difference'
Teaching History feature
Hello Nutshell. What's all this stuff in the NC Attainment Target about ‘nature', ‘extent' and ‘interplay' of diversity?
The trick is to look behind the word ‘diversity'. Then it all makes sense...
Nutshell 135: The challenge of analysing 'difference'
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Understanding Slavery
Free Online Resource
Teaching the transatlantic slave trade and its abolition in British history is now a compulsory component of the revised KS3 History curriculum.
The Understanding Slavery Initiative (USI) is a national education project set up in 2003. The initiative has been developed in partnership with the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich,...
Understanding Slavery
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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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The strange death of King Harold II: Propaganda and the problem of legitimacy in the aftermath of the Battle of Hastings
Historian article
How did King Harold II die at the Battle of Hastings? The question is simple enough and the answer is apparently well known. Harold was killed by an arrow which struck him in the eye. His death is depicted clearly on the Bayeux Tapestry in one of its most famous...
The strange death of King Harold II: Propaganda and the problem of legitimacy in the aftermath of the Battle of Hastings
