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Year 8 and interpretations of the First World War
Teaching History article
Dan Smith was concerned that his pupils were drawing on over-simplified generalisations about different periods of the past when they were considering why interpretations change over time. This led him to consider how pupils’ contextual knowledge and chronological fluency might be used more explicitly in order to avoid weak generalisations...
Year 8 and interpretations of the First World War
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From the history of maths to the history of greatness
Teaching History article
Readers of Teaching History will be familiar with the benefits and difficulties of cross-curricular planning, and the pages of this journal have often carried analysis of successful collaborations with the English department, or music, or geography. Harry Fletcher-Wood describes in this article a collaboration involving maths, providing for us the...
From the history of maths to the history of greatness
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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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Interpreting Agincourt: KS3 Scheme of Work
Scheme of Work
2015 was a year of anniversaries. As part of our funded commemoration projects surrounding the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt, we commissioned this scheme of work looking at interpretations of the battle and period, particularly aimed at pupils in Key Stage 3.
It comes with a complete resource...
Interpreting Agincourt: KS3 Scheme of Work
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Secondary Education and Social Change in the UK since 1945: KS3 resource packs
Free schools resource packs for Key Stage 3
Although secondary education become an almost universal experience for British 11-year-olds after the Second World War, it is striking how rarely this key social transformation is used to engage current school-age pupils studying post-1945 British history.
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The lessons on these pages are...
Secondary Education and Social Change in the UK since 1945: KS3 resource packs
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Cunning Plan 162: Transferring knowledge from Key Stage 3 to 4
Teaching History feature
Planning to deliver the new GCSE specifications presents a challenge and an opportunity to any history department, whatever their previous specification. The sweep of history that students will now study at GCSE is much broader than ‘Modern World’ departments are used to; including a medieval or early modern depth study...
Cunning Plan 162: Transferring knowledge from Key Stage 3 to 4
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Adventures in assessment
Teaching History article
In Teaching History 157, Assessment Edition, a number of different teachers shared the ways in which their departments were approaching the assessment and reporting of students’ progress in a ‘post-levels’ world. This article adds to those examples, first by illustrating how teachers from different schools in the Bristol area are...
Adventures in assessment
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Developing independent learning with Year 7
Teaching History article
Jaya Carrier’s decision to focus on developing a more independent approach to learning in history at Key Stage 3 was prompted by concerns about her A-level students. In seeking to establish secure foundations for students’ own historical research, Carrier first examined the assumptions of her colleagues and her students. She...
Developing independent learning with Year 7
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Using Folktales, Myths and Legends
Global Learning
This resource was commissioned by the Historical Association to offer teachers an entry point into the new primary History curriculum using stories: folktales, myths and legends from the civilisations, communities and cultures of the statutory programmes of study.
In this resource, pupils are encouraged to recall and retell stories orally,...
Using Folktales, Myths and Legends
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Remembering Agincourt: Bilingual Enquiry
Multipage Article
Do they learn about Agincourt in France?
2015 was a year of anniversaries. As part of our funded commemoration projects surrounding the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt, we have commissioned an enquiry looking at the battle and how it has been remembered, particularly aimed at pupils in years...
Remembering Agincourt: Bilingual Enquiry
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Animated Guide: Become a Museum Curator
Multipage Article
Have you ever visited a museum or exhibition and wondered who puts it all together? Being a museum, library or archive curator is a very responsible job. Not only do they have to look after rare and precious items in their care, but they must also know all about their...
Animated Guide: Become a Museum Curator
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Key Concepts at Key Stage 3
Key Concepts
Please note: This unit was produced before the 2014 National Curriculum and therefore while much of the advice is still useful, there may be some out of date references or links. For more recent resources on key concepts, see our What's the Wisdom on series.
The key concepts can be divided into three...
Key Concepts at Key Stage 3
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Using databases to explore the real depth in the data
Teaching History article
Is it a good thing to have a lot of evidence? Surely the historian would answer that yes, it is: the more evidence that can be used, the better. The problem with this approach, though, is that too much data can be overwhelming for the history student - and, in...
Using databases to explore the real depth in the data
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Exploring big overviews through local depth
Teaching History article
Exploring big overviews through local depth
Rachel Foster and Kath Goudie's search for a more rigorous and interesting way of teaching Year 7 the Norman Conquest was initially driven by a desire to incorporate local history in a more meaningful way in their Key Stage 3 schemes of work.
This...
Exploring big overviews through local depth
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Cunning Plan 154: Who is buried in the box?
Teaching History feature
Question: Who is buried in the box?
Seeking a new and exciting way to introduce my Year 7 students to history, I looked to a practical solution. Ian Dawson once used a Thinking History exercise where students looked at the idea of ‘layers of history'. It was useful in structuring...
Cunning Plan 154: Who is buried in the box?
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Assessment Without Levels
FAQs and Do's and Don'ts
The removal of level descriptions has generated some head-scratching, questions and conflict - especially when the adoption of a new whole school model does not seem to fit with recognised good practice for assessment and progression in history. Our FAQs guide will help to answer many of those frequently asked...
Assessment Without Levels
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Cunning Plan 159: Putting the people into Magna Carta
Teaching History feature
Does your heart skip with excitement at the prospect of a Year 7 lesson on Magna Carta? No? Magna Carta may be an important part of the long-term story of royal power and individual liberties but it is not a topic that excites many teachers. If it were, teachers would...
Cunning Plan 159: Putting the people into Magna Carta
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Teaching History Curriculum Supplement 2014
Changes to the secondary history curriculum
Although modifications to the content of the National Curriculum for history have not been as dramatic as once feared, the effective revocation of the previous attainment target is radical indeed. When these changes are considered alongside the fact that more than half of maintained secondary schools (all academies and free...
Teaching History Curriculum Supplement 2014
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Move Me On 154: Mixed Ability Groups
Teaching History feature
This issue's problem:Joe Priestley is having problems providing sufficient challenge for the higher attainers within his mixed ability groups
Joe Priestley has settled into his training placement very well and has impressed other members of the history department with his lively and engaging ideas.
In his early teaching he was...
Move Me On 154: Mixed Ability Groups
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Engaging Year 9 students in party politics
Teaching History article
Sarah Black wanted to remedy Year 9's lack of knowledge about nineteenth-century politics. With just five lessons to work with, she decided to devise a sequence on Gladstone and Disraeli, shaping the sequence with an enquiry question that invited argument about change and continuity. Black analyses the status and function of different layers of knowledge within her sequence, evaluates the interaction...
Engaging Year 9 students in party politics
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Enabling Year 7 to write essays on Magna Carta
Teaching History article
Setting out to teach Magna Carta to the full attainment range in Year 7, Mark King decided to choose a question that reflected real scholarly debates and also to ensure that pupils held enough knowledge in long-term memory to be able to think about that question meaningfully. As he gradually prepared his pupils to produce their own causation arguments in response to that question, King was startled by...
Enabling Year 7 to write essays on Magna Carta
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Pipes's punctuation and making complex historical claims
Teaching History article
Long, unreadable sentences in her students' essays led Rachel Foster to improve her post-16 students' punctuation. Her journey resulted, however, in more than improved punctuation.
It led her to theorise what historians are really doing in their ‘signpost sentences'. She found herself showing students how an academic historian anticipates a chunk of argument in a single, well-turned, opening sentence. Foster created an intervention in which students...
Pipes's punctuation and making complex historical claims
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Do's and Dont's in developing assessment practice
Article
Principles and practices to take forwardIn light of our experience since drafting our original plea for ‘Assessment without levels' and in the spirit of the new freedoms offered by the abolition of levels, we offer the series of principles and warnings set out in Figure 3. We hope that they...
Do's and Dont's in developing assessment practice
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Can we educate Year 9 in genocide prevention?
Teaching History article
Patterns of genocide: can we educate Year 9 in genocide prevention?
Alison Stephen, who has wrestled for many years with the challenges of teaching emotional and controversial history within a multiethnic school setting, relished the opportunity to link her school's teaching of the Holocaust with a comparative study of other genocides....
Can we educate Year 9 in genocide prevention?
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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
