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How does history shape our perceptions of national identity?
History, Perceptions & Identity
A series of podcasts of British students and their peers around the world discussing how a study of history has influenced their perceptions of their national identity and how it has influenced their perceptions of each other. This project has been started by The Mount and Millthorpe Schools in York and Philipp Melanchthon Gymnasium...
How does history shape our perceptions of national identity?
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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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Triumphs Show 150.1: meeting the challenges of the A2 synoptic unit
Teaching History article
A collaborative project between Richard Rose Central Academy and University of Cumbria PGCE History trainees to meet the challenges of the A2 synoptic unit.
"If I tell you to eat, you will eat! You wanted cake! You stole cake! And now you've got cake! What's more, you're going to eat...
Triumphs Show 150.1: meeting the challenges of the A2 synoptic unit
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Marr: magpie or marsh harrier?
Teaching History article
The quest for the common characteristics of the genus ‘historian' with 16- to 19-year-olds
Diana Laffin writes about historical language and explores how understanding different historians' use of language can help sixth form students refine and deepen both their understanding of the discipline of history and their abilities to practise...
Marr: magpie or marsh harrier?
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Transforming historical understanding through scripted drama
Teaching History article
An article on scripted drama might seem an unlikely choice for an edition devoted to getting students talking. Surely the point about a script is that the words used are chosen and prescribed by others. However, the examples presented here by Helen Snelson, Ruth Lingard and Kate Brennan demonstrate how...
Transforming historical understanding through scripted drama
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Teaching students to argue for themselves - KS3
Teaching History article
Keeley Richards secured a fundamental shift in some of her Year 13 students' ability to argue. She did it by getting them to engage more fully with the practice of argument itself, as enacted by four historians. At the centre of her lesson sequence was an original activity: the historians'...
Teaching students to argue for themselves - KS3
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Teaching History 147: Curriculum Architecture
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
02 Editorial
03 HA Secondary News
04 HA Update
08 Beth Baker and Steven Mastin - Did Alexander really ask, ‘Do I appear to you to be a bastard?' Using ancient texts to improve pupils' critical thinking (Read article)
14 Cunning Plan: Getting students to use classical texts - Beth Baker...
Teaching History 147: Curriculum Architecture
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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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Creating confident historical readers at A-level
Teaching History article
How can we help pupils learn to read historically? Gary Howells explores this question by explaining how he builds reading challenges into the course of his pupils' post-16 studies and by describing some of the tasks that pupils are set and the principles that underpin them. Howells argues that over...
Creating confident historical readers at A-level
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Developing sixth-form students' thinking about historical interpretation
Teaching History article
Understanding historical interpretation involves understanding how historical knowledge is constructed. How do sixth formers model historical epistemology? In this article Arthur Chapman examines a small sample of data relating to sixth form students' ideas about why historians construct differing interpretations of the past. He argues that understanding interpretation requires students to...
Developing sixth-form students' thinking about historical interpretation
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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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Deepening post-16 students' historical engagement with the Holocaust
Teaching History article
Peter Morgan represents what is best about the reflective practitioner - an experienced teacher of some 15 years' standing, he continues to challenge himself and to seek ways to improve and develop his classroom practice. Deeply influenced by the pedagogy and resources that he encountered on the CPD of the Institute...
Deepening post-16 students' historical engagement with the Holocaust
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Chatting about the sixties: historical reasoning in essay-writing
Teaching History article
An article about essay writing may not seem the most obvious choice for an issue of Teaching History devoted to creative thinking. Yet, as Christine Counsell so richly demonstrated in her work on analytical and discursive writing, the process of crafting an argument is a highly complex and creative challenge....
Chatting about the sixties: historical reasoning in essay-writing
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Distant voices, familiar echoes: exploiting the resources to which we all have access
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
As an Advanced Skills Teacher, Denise Thompson has often been at the forefront of experimental developments. Five years ago, she reported on trials of an online discussion forum used to sharpen A level students' historical...
Distant voices, familiar echoes: exploiting the resources to which we all have access
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OCR History A Level History: Democracy and Dictatorship in Germany 1919-63
Review
Professor Mary Fulbrook and David Williamson with Nick Fellows and Mike Wells
Review by Barbara Hibbert
This resource is one of a series produced by Heinemann to support the new OCR History A AS course. It claims that it ‘exactly reflects the key issues and skills in the specification topics'. ...
OCR History A Level History: Democracy and Dictatorship in Germany 1919-63
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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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Gladstone spiritual or Gladstone material? A rationale for using documents at AS and A2
Teaching History article
Rather than taking a sledgehammer approach to planning for the new AS and A2 courses Gary Howells has used the opportunity to reflect on characteristics of students' historical learning in the post-16 phase. He argues for a much fuller rationale for using documents than mere preparation for exams or coursework....
Gladstone spiritual or Gladstone material? A rationale for using documents at AS and A2
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Carr, Evans, Oakshott and Rudge: the benefits of AEA history
Teaching History article
Sometimes the only way to go beyond the exam is to take another, more difficult, test. For the top—the very top—A2 students, there is such a test available. The Advanced Extension Award [AEA] is a history paper which encourages students finishing their school careers to think about history in a...
Carr, Evans, Oakshott and Rudge: the benefits of AEA history
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Life by sources A to F: really using sources to teach AS history
Teaching History article
The work of Gary Howells will be familiar to many readers of Teaching History—indeed, his last article is heavily cited elsewhere in this edition. He presents here the case in favour of using sources at AS level (16-17 years old). Clearly, historians need to have some form of acquaintance with...
Life by sources A to F: really using sources to teach AS history
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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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How visual learning in 'A' level history can improve memory and conceptual understanding
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Steve Garnett shares some the techniques that he uses to involve different kinds of learner in his post-16 lessons and explains how he arrived at these approaches after reflecting on problems in his own early...
How visual learning in 'A' level history can improve memory and conceptual understanding
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Placing history: territory, story, identity - and historical consciousness
Teaching History article
How do we relate to the past? Does it tell us who we are? Is it a source of examples to follow and mistakes to avoid? Or can we go beyond that to something genuinely historical? Arthur Chapman and Jane Facey argue that as history teachers we have a responsibility...
Placing history: territory, story, identity - and historical consciousness
