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Getting Year 7 to vocalise responses to the murder of Thomas Becket
Teaching History article
Mary Partridge wanted her pupils not only to become more aware of competing and contrasting voices in the past, but to understand how historians orchestrate those voices. Using Edward Grim's eye-witness account of Thomas Becket's murder, her Year 7 pupils explored nuances in the word ‘shocking' as a way of...
Getting Year 7 to vocalise responses to the murder of Thomas Becket
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Polychronicon 142: 'instructive reversals' - (re)interpreting the 1857 events in Northern India
Teaching History feature
The dramatic, chaotic and violent events that took place in Northern India in 1857/8 have been interpreted in many ways, as, for example, the ‘Indian Mutiny', the ‘Sepoy War' and the ‘First Indian War of Independence'. The tales that have been told about these events have been profoundly shaped, however,...
Polychronicon 142: 'instructive reversals' - (re)interpreting the 1857 events in Northern India
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A local history toolkit
Toolkit
Produced by the Historical Association for the National Literacy Trust's "The Olden Times" newspaper resource, May 2011. For more recent resources on local history enquiries see:
Local significant individuals
Local history scheme of work: your local high street
Local history scheme of work: transport
Incorporating local history into a scheme...
A local history toolkit
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Joan of Arc - Saint, Witch or Warrior?
Transition Training Session 4
This is the 4th of 5 sessions arising from the 2005 KS2-KS3 History Transitions Project:
Transition training session 1: Historical Enquiries & Interpretations
Transition training session 2: Using ICT in the teaching of history
Transition training session 3: Extended writing in history
Transition training session 4: Joan of Arc - Saint,...
Joan of Arc - Saint, Witch or Warrior?
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Into the Key Stage 3 history garden: choosing and planting your enquiry questions
Teaching History article
Drawing upon a range of practice, Michael Riley analyses the characteristics of a good enquiry question. He explores the importance of careful wording of the question if it is genuinely to help the teacher to integrate areas of content into a purposeful learning journey and without distortion.He then moves on...
Into the Key Stage 3 history garden: choosing and planting your enquiry questions
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Bob Dylan and the concept of evidence
Teaching History article
No edition of Teaching History devoted to creativity could be complete without returning to the riches that popular songs offer to historians and history teachers alike. The five Bob Dylan songs that Christopher Edwards explores here are chosen not merely for their ‘literary qualities' and ‘emotional charge'; they also provide...
Bob Dylan and the concept of evidence
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Being historically rigorous with creativity
Teaching History article
After a Fellowship in Holocaust Education at the Imperial War Museum, Andy Lawrence decided that something was missing in normal approaches to teaching emotive and controversial issues such as genocide, a deficit demonstrated by recent research by the Holocaust Education Development Programme. As part of his fellowship, Lawrence created an...
Being historically rigorous with creativity
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Key Stage 2-3 History Transition Project
Guide to KS2-KS3 Transition
Please note: these resources pre-date the 2014 National Curriculum. For more recent resources on Transition KS2-KS3 please see:
Transition KS2–KS3 (Primary History article, 2021)
Smooth Transitions: Key Stage 2 to 3 (Primary History article, 2020)
Transition Key Stage 2 and 3 (Primary History article, 2016)
Before 1066 & All That: Transition between...
Key Stage 2-3 History Transition Project
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Deconstructing lazy analogies in Year 9
Teaching History article
Reflecting on the continuing problem of students holding an impoverished understanding of the value or ‘uses' of history, Steve Rollett turned his attention to the question of analogy. He took the axiom to which students make common appeal (‘we can learn from mistakes in the past') and set about trying...
Deconstructing lazy analogies in Year 9
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'Assessing Pupil Progress'
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
England's Qualification and Curriculum Development Authority (QCDA) has been working on a new way of trying to support teachers in handling interim assessment during Key Stage 3. It is called Assessing Pupil Progress (APP).
Jerome...
'Assessing Pupil Progress'
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Extended Writing in History
Transition Training Session 3
This is the third of 5 sessions arising from the 2005 KS2-KS3 History Transitions Project:
Transition training session 1: Historical Enquiries & Interpretations
Transition training session 2: Using ICT in the teaching of history
Transition training session 3: Extended writing in history
Transition training session 4: Joan of Arc - Saint, Witch...
Extended Writing in History
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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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Causation
Key Concepts
Please note: these links were compiled in 2009. For a more recent resource, please see: What's the Wisdom on: Causation.
These Teaching History Articles on 'Causation' are highly recommended reading to those who would like to get to grips with this key concept:
1. Move Me On 92. Problem page for history mentors. Teaching...
Causation
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Significance
Key Concepts
Please note: these links were compiled in 2009. For a more recent resource, please see: What's the Wisdom on: Historical significance.
This selection of Teaching History articles on 'Significance' are highly recommended reading to anyone who wants to get to grips with this key concept. All Teaching History articles are free to HA Secondary Members...
Significance
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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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Rigorous, meaningful and robust: practical ways forward for assessment
Teaching History article
How do we know how good our students are at history? For that matter, how precisely do we really know what ‘good' at history even means? Even harder, how does our assessment of our students' attainment fit in with the National Curriculum Levels for Key Stage 3? Simon Harrison has...
Rigorous, meaningful and robust: practical ways forward for assessment
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'How our area used to be back then': An oral history project in an east London school
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
How can oral history enquiries engage students with the study of history and help them connect their learning about the past to their present lives? How can oral history engage and develop students' understanding of...
'How our area used to be back then': An oral history project in an east London school
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Riots, railways and a Hampshire hill fort: Exploiting local history for rigorous evidential enquiry
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Rigorous historical enquiry is integral to effective history teaching. The 2008 National Curriculum has recognised its importance by giving it a broader definition as a key process to include not only the use of historical...
Riots, railways and a Hampshire hill fort: Exploiting local history for rigorous evidential enquiry
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Cunning Plan 134: local history at KS3
Teaching History feature
Question: How can we plan to integrate local history into Key Stage 3 schemes of work so that pupils are engaged by the relevance of the subject across different periods of time?
Local history can come in all shapes and sizes, from a large-scale oral history project to the perusal...
Cunning Plan 134: local history at KS3
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Relevant, rigorous and revisited: using local history to make meaning of historical significance
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
The idea of engaging pupils with the relevance of local memorials is becoming commonplace in the history classroom. In Teaching History 109, Examining History Edition, Dale Banham's pupils used First World War memorials to assess...
Relevant, rigorous and revisited: using local history to make meaning of historical significance
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Teaching History 134: Local Voices
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
02 Editorial
03 HA Secondary News
04 Relevant, rigorous and revisited: using local history to make meaning of historical significance – Geraint Brown and James Woodcock (Read article)
12 Cunning Plan: Local history at KS3 – Dan Moorhouse (Read article)
15 Nutshell
16 Riots, railways and a Hampshire hill fort: exploiting local...
Teaching History 134: Local Voices
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Challenging not balancing: developing Year 7's grasp of historical argument through online discussion and a virtual book
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
This article is about using story to construct a learning journey for a Year 7 class. It reports an innovative use of a virtual learning environment to construct a narrative e-book into which argument tasks...
Challenging not balancing: developing Year 7's grasp of historical argument through online discussion and a virtual book
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Making pupils want to explain: using Movie Maker to foster thoroughness and self-monitoring
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Sally Burnham shares her practice and reflections on the value of the software, ‘Movie Maker', for developing particular aspects of historical thinking and learning. In Teaching History 130, in the context of her Key Stage...
Making pupils want to explain: using Movie Maker to foster thoroughness and self-monitoring
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Raising the bar: developing meaningful historical consciousness at Key Stage 3
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
How can we help pupils make sense of the history that they learn so that the whole adds up to more than the sum of its parts? How can we help pupils develop and sophisticate...
Raising the bar: developing meaningful historical consciousness at Key Stage 3
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What is progress in history?
Teaching History article
Evelyn Vermeulen argues that in order for teachers to identify outcomes for the learning of history, they must think clearly about the different attributes of the discipline - its ideas, structures and processes - and the relationship between them. Here, she takes us on her own professional thinking journey. She...
What is progress in history?
