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Warfare - GCSE
Links to Articles & Podcasts
Warfare
Warfare - GCSE
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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
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Move Me On 173: teaching the GCSE thematic study
The problem page for history mentors
This feature of Teaching History is designed to build critical, informed debate about the character of teacher training, teacher education and professional development. It is also designed to offer practical help to all involved in training new history teachers. Each issue presents a situation in initial teacher education/training with an...
Move Me On 173: teaching the GCSE thematic study
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Here ends the lesson: shaping lesson conclusions
Teaching History journal article
Reflecting on her efforts to improve her trainee’s lesson conclusions, Paula Worth decided to brush up her own. A journey of self-evaluation led her to revisit the Cambridge Conclusions Project. Through its lens, she judged her own lesson conclusions wanting. Worth examines the way in which the final episode of...
Here ends the lesson: shaping lesson conclusions
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‘Man, people in the past were indeed stupid’
Teaching History journal article
In this article, which is based on Huijgen’s PhD dissertation Balancing between the past and the present, Tim Huijgen and Paul Holthuis present the results of an experimental method of teaching 14–16-year-old students to contextualise their historical studies in a different way. In the four lessons described, students’ initial reactions...
‘Man, people in the past were indeed stupid’
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New, Novice or Nervous? 172: Curriculum planning
Teaching History feature: the quick guide to the ‘no-quick-fix’
This page is for those new to the published writings of history teachers. Each problem you wrestle with, other teachers have wrestled with too. Quick fixes don’t exist. But in others’ writing, you’ll find something better: conversations in which history teachers have debated or tackled your problems – conversations which...
New, Novice or Nervous? 172: Curriculum planning
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Conducting the orchestra to allow our students to hear the symphony
Teaching History article
Alex Ford and Richard Kennett both welcome the renewed emphasis on knowledge within recent curriculum reforms in England, but are concerned about some of the ways in which the principle of a ‘knowledge-rich’ curriculum has been interpreted and transformed into particular pedagogical prescriptions. In this article they explain their reasons...
Conducting the orchestra to allow our students to hear the symphony
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Triumphs Show 170: making a place for fieldwork in history lessons
Journal article
Why ‘do’ local history? The new (grades 9–1) GCSE specifications place a lot of importance on the local environment. The rationale for this is to get students to situate a site in its historical context, and to examine the relationship between local and national developments. Initially this change was the...
Triumphs Show 170: making a place for fieldwork in history lessons
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Polychronicon 170: The Becket Dispute
Journal article
‘The Becket Dispute’ (or ‘Controversy’) refers to the quarrel between Henry II and Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, which dominated English ecclesiastical politics in the 1160s. It was a conflict with multiple dimensions: a clash of Church and State; a prolonged struggle between two prominent individuals; a close friendship turned...
Polychronicon 170: The Becket Dispute
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Securing contextual knowledge in year 10
Teaching History article
Using regular, low-stakes tests to secure pupils' contextual knowledge in Year 10
Lee Donaghy was concerned that his GCSE students' weak contextual knowledge was letting them down. Inspired by a mixture of cognitive science and the arguments of other teachers expressed in various blogs, he decided to tackle the problem...
Securing contextual knowledge in year 10
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Triumphs Show 169: Using 360 VR Technology with the GCSE Historic Environment study
Teaching History feature: celebrating and sharing success
One of the biggest changes in the new GCSE specifications is the requirement for all students to undertake a study of the historic environment. Unsurprisingly the approach taken by the exam boards to this requirement varies widely. While some boards allow schools a free choice of site, others have decided...
Triumphs Show 169: Using 360 VR Technology with the GCSE Historic Environment study
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New Treatments of Familiar Topics
National Curriculum 2016
Comparision of new GCSE Specifications Treatment of Familiar Topics If you, like many other departments are beginning to ask the questions that will determine which of the new history GCSE specifications your department will choose, one consideration may well be looking at the retention of familiar topics that you already...
New Treatments of Familiar Topics
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History GCSE Specification Comparison Tool
GCSE Resource
This short guidance is designed to help you compare the 9-1 GCSE specifications. The first examinations of these new linear GCSEs was in the summer of 2018.
History GCSE Specification Comparison Tool
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New approaches to teaching the History of Appeasement in the classroom
Multipage Article
This project has been created on the initiative of Professor Julie. V. Gottlieb, Dept. of History, University of Sheffield. British political history, political conflict, appeasement and the Munich Crisis (1938) itself is the focus of her research and publications. Rather than approach these topics from ‘traditional’, elite and history from...
New approaches to teaching the History of Appeasement in the classroom
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Beyond tokenism: diverse history post-14
Teaching History Article
Nick Dennis shows how a ‘multidirectional memory’ approach to teaching history can move history teachers beyond seeing black history as separate or distracting from the history that must be aught at examination level. He gives examples of ways in which a diverse history can be built into examination courses, strengthening...
Beyond tokenism: diverse history post-14
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Shaping the debate: why historians matter more than ever at GCSE
Teaching History article
The question of how to prepare students to succeed in the examination while also ensuring that they are taught rigorous history remains as relevant as ever. Faced with preparing students to answer a question that seemingly precluded argument, Rachel Foster and Kath Goudie demonstrate how they used historical scholarship both to...
Shaping the debate: why historians matter more than ever at GCSE
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A guide to Assessment Reform at Key Stage 4
Briefing Pack
Big changes in assessment at Key Stage 4 took place the last time specifications were reformed. If you want to compare the assessment approaches taken by different examination Boards, then this handy briefing guide will provide you with the introductory information you need to be able to make sense of...
A guide to Assessment Reform at Key Stage 4
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Remembering the First World War: Using a battlefield tour of the Western Front
Teaching History article
Remembering the First World War: Using a battlefield tour of the Western Front to help pupils take a more critical approach to what they encounter
The first year of the government's First World War Centenary Battlefield Tours Programme is now under way, allowing increasing numbers of students from across Britain...
Remembering the First World War: Using a battlefield tour of the Western Front
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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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The knowledge illusion
Teaching History article
Focusing on students’ attempts to explain the relative significance of different factors in Hitler’s rise to power, Catherine McCrory explores the vexed question of why students who seem able to express necessary historical knowledge on one occasion cannot effectively reproduce it on another. Drawing on a detailed analysis of what...
The knowledge illusion
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My journey to Bosnia: The Balkans Conflict 22 years on
A personal account of an educational visit to Sarajevo and Srebrenica
In these pages HA Education Manager Melanie Jones shares her own personal experiences and reflections from a recent educational visit to Bosnia, and looks at ways in which British schools might be able to explore aspects of the 1990s Balkans Conflict.
In September 2017 I was approached by a small charitable organisation Remembering...
My journey to Bosnia: The Balkans Conflict 22 years on
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The Crusades: links
Links to Articles & Podcasts
An HA Podcasted History: The Crusades - The First, Second & Third Crusade and the Legacy of the Crusades
The First Crusade
The First Crusade: Eastern Sources and Different Interpretations
The Miraculous First Crusade
The Crusades: links
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Poland
Links to Articles & Podcasts
Podcast: Twentieth-century Poland
Podcast: British-Polish relations and the British Polish community
Polychronicon: Why did the Cold War End?
Podcast: The USSR and Eastern Europe
Film: The Partitions of Poland-Lithuania (1772-1795): Repercussions for German-Polish Relations and their Legacy
Resources from other organisations
Beyond Borders: Polish-British Cultural Connections (Polish Cultural Institute, London; resources by Helen...
Poland
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Russia & the USSR
Links to Articles & Podcasts
USSR
An HA Podcasted History of the USSR
Stalinism
Between the Revolutions
Nazism and Stalinism – suitable case for comparison?
Stalin 6th form podcast
Stalin, Propaganda, and Soviet Society during the Great Terror
After the Uprising of 1956: Hungarian Students in Britain
Russia & the USSR
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Charles I, Civil War and Restoration England
Links to Articles & Podcasts
Presidential Lecture - Charles I: The People's Martyr?
King Charles I
The Personal Rule of Charles I 1629-40
Polychronichon – interpreting the revolution of 1688
Cunning Plan
King Charles II
Jacobinism
The Jacobites
Oliver Cromwell
HA Podcasts: From James to Anne
Charles I, Civil War and Restoration England