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Allowing A-level students to choose their own coursework focus
Teaching History article
Faced with the introduction of the new A-levels in 2015 and with a move to a new school, Eleanor Thomas took the opportunity to embrace yet another challenge: giving her students a complete free choice about the focus of their non-examined assessment (NEA). This article presents the rationale for her...
Allowing A-level students to choose their own coursework focus
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Polychronicon 148: The Wars of the Roses
Teaching History feature
There are few periods in our history from which we turn with such weariness and disgust as from the Wars of the Roses. Their savage battles, their ruthless executions, their shameless treasons seem all the more terrible from the pure selfishness of the ends for which men fought, the utter...
Polychronicon 148: The Wars of the Roses
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The Harkness Method: achieving higher-order thinking with sixth-form
Teaching History article
Hark the herald tables sing! Achieving higher-order thinking with a chorus of sixth-form pupils
On 9 April 1930, a philanthropist called Edward Harkness donated millions of dollars to the Phillips Exeter Academy in the USA. He hoped that his donation could be used to find a new way for students to sit around a table...
The Harkness Method: achieving higher-order thinking with sixth-form
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Move Me On 156: Assessment for Learning
Teaching History feature
This issue's problem: Fred North treats ‘Assessment for Learning' as though it is a bolt-on extra unconnected to his learning objectives
Fred is an enthusiastic trainee who has generally made a good impression on students and colleagues over the course of his first term. He has been determined to establish a...
Move Me On 156: Assessment for Learning
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Developing students' thinking about change and continuity
Teaching History article
The more things change, the more they stay the same: developing students' thinking about change and continuity
Finding ways to characterise the nature of change and continuity is an important part of the historian's task, yet students find it particularly challenging to do. Building on her previous work on change, Rachel...
Developing students' thinking about change and continuity
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Triumphs Show 150.2: Year 13 game for reaching substantiated judgements
Teaching History feature
Year 13 play a competitive game to help them arrive at strong and substantiated judgements.
Year 13 were in the library again, sinking under tomes of weighty works on the German Reformation. James was feverishly rifling through a book on the ‘Reformation World' for something (anything!) to do with Luther's...
Triumphs Show 150.2: Year 13 game for reaching substantiated judgements
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Exploring pupils' difficulties when arguing about a diverse past
Teaching History article
Wrestling with diversity: exploring pupils' difficulties when arguing about a diverse past
How can we develop students' ability to argue about diversity? Sarah Black explores this question through classroom research that set out to help students think in complex ways about diversity, drawing on Burbules' work on conceptualising difference and...
Exploring pupils' difficulties when arguing about a diverse past
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Strategies for A-Level marking to motivate and enable
Teaching History article
Jane Facey was unsatisfied with the way in which her A-Level students responded to typical assessment practice. This would normally involve their teacher marking their work and then providing them with written feedback. In looking to move beyond this, Facey drew upon a wide range of research and practice which...
Strategies for A-Level marking to motivate and enable
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Cultivating curiosity about complexity
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 recently about the importance of encouraging and enabling all students to read beyond their comfort zones, beyond the textbook and certainly beyond the obvious requirements of an examination specification....
Cultivating curiosity about complexity
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Duffy's devices: teaching Year 13 to read and write
Teaching History article
Rachel Ward’s intriguing title seems a little out of place in an edition on teaching the most able. The point she makes, though, is that even our very brightest post-16 students need to be encouraged both to engage with the historiography surrounding their course and to learn to write with...
Duffy's devices: teaching Year 13 to read and write
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Are you ready for your close-up?
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
We are often reminded that we remember little of what we hear and read but much of what we teach. The very act of teaching forces us to clarify our understanding and to process it...
Are you ready for your close-up?
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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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Transition to University
What is the transition from sixth form to studying at University like?
In this series of short films history undergraduates answer questions about their experiences of the transition to university and about extended student engagement.
A joint project of the Historical Association and the History Subject Centre.
Transition to University
