-
Cunning Plan 112: Empire
Teaching History feature
‘Empire’ is an historical concept with a rather imprecise range of meanings. Students need to be able to track their changing understanding of what an empire actually is. Into our workschemes for Years 7 to 13 we have therefore introduced a number of enquiry questions that simultaneously build knowledge about...
Cunning Plan 112: Empire
-
Lucy Worsley: How to build an Anniversary
Annual Conference Film
Do you sometimes heave a cynical sigh when you hear that it's 175 years since the invention of, say, the paperclip, and that a wealth of exhibitions, books and TV programmes are planned to celebrate the fact?
Well, anniversaries can be a powerful hook to get people interested in the...
Lucy Worsley: How to build an Anniversary
-
Move Me On 99: Struggling with just about everything
Teaching History feature
This Issue's Problem: Sophie Scholl, PGCE Student. is experiencing very seious difficulties...in just about everything.
Problem:
Sophie is approaching the end of her second school placement. It was clear from her first placement report that she was finding the process of learning to teach extremely difficult, but she displayed a...
Move Me On 99: Struggling with just about everything
-
Move Me On 98: Marking & Assessment
Teaching History feature
This Issue's problem: Bill Penn, PGCE student, is struggling with marking and assessment
Problem
Bill Penn is three weeks into his main school placement and making excellent progress. One problem, however, is beginning to emerge. He is being extraordinarily conscientious in his marking but is rapidly losing heart. He is increasingly...
Move Me On 98: Marking & Assessment
-
Useful Resources for History Teaching
Useful Resources
The following are lists of those resources which we have found genuinely useful during our NQT year, or which we feel could be used to good effect, whether as sources, interpretations or stimulus materials. The lists are not exhaustive, and are inevitably skewed towards those topics which we have taught....
Useful Resources for History Teaching
-
Move Me On 97: Having difficulty evaluating own lessons
Teaching History feature
Move Me On 97
This Issue's problem: Maggi Paton, PGCE student, is having difficulty evaluating her lessons
Problem:
It is the first term of Maggie's PGCE course and she is a few weeks into her first school placement. Initially, her mentor and other staff were impressed by her: she had...
Move Me On 97: Having difficulty evaluating own lessons
-
We Also Served: British Asian Veterans of WW2
We Also Served
In search of the story of British Asian Veterans of World War Two.‘We also served' is a moving short film, which follows pupils from Beardwood and St Bede's high schools as they research why the contribution of these soldiers is not more widely recognised.
We Also Served: British Asian Veterans of WW2
-
Research Methods in Heritage, Museums & Galleries
Reading List
Reading List for those interested in research methods in heritage, museums and galleries from Newcastle University...
Essential Reading
Dicks, Bella, From Mine to Museum: The Evolution of Heritage in the Rhondda in Heritage, place, and community by Dicks, Bella University of Wales Press, 2000
Dicks, Bella, Heritage and Local Memory in...
Research Methods in Heritage, Museums & Galleries
-
Why history matters? Round Table discussion podcast
Podcasts
Podcast of the round table discussion available here!The History Matters Annual Conference in May saw the best turnout we've had for some time with a healthy and representative mix of HA members. Our thanks to all those who contributed their time and energy in delivering workshops and lectures. Our afternoon...
Why history matters? Round Table discussion podcast
-
History in Schools - Present and Future
Conference Report
History in Schools - Present and future: Event report This one day conference was organised by the sponsors to raise awareness of the changes in the 14-19 curriculum and initiate discussion on how history, taught from Key Stage 3 to HE level, could be best served and enhanced by the...
History in Schools - Present and Future
-
Historical Interpretation: Why is it still such a major issue?
E-CPD
This E-CPD unit was produced for the previous National Curriculum, when Interpretations in History were still relatively new. In the current National Curriculum, Interpretations are still central to the skills necessary for success. Perhaps more so, as it is now a separate assessment objective [AO4] at GCSE, starting in 2016,...
Historical Interpretation: Why is it still such a major issue?
-
Move Me On 181: navigating the challenges of learning to teach history with visual impairment
Teaching History feature
Fiona Tait, a trainee with visual impairment, was unsure how she would navigate the challenges of learning to teach history...
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...
Move Me On 181: navigating the challenges of learning to teach history with visual impairment
-
Move Me On 175: paying attention to why topics have been included in schemes of work
The problem page for history mentors
This issue's problem: Martha Partington doesn't pay enough attention to the reasons why particular topics or approaches to them have been included with her department’s schemes of work...
Move Me On 175: paying attention to why topics have been included in schemes of work
-
New, Novice or Nervous? 174: Building students' historical talk
The quick guide to the ‘no-quick-fix'
How do we get our students to talk more in lessons? No, not like that! How have history teachers engaged with the issue of students’ historical – and general – oracy? Talking about history is not the same skill as writing about it. It is more immediate, and more easily...
New, Novice or Nervous? 174: Building students' historical talk
-
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
-
Move Me On 168: teaching exam classes
Teaching History feature
Move Me On 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.
This issue’s problem: Robert Nivelle is nearing the end of his first (relatively long)...
Move Me On 168: teaching exam classes
-
Move Me On 167: Frames of reference
Teaching History feature
This feature is designed to build critical, informed debate about the character of teacher training, teacher education and professional development.
This issue’s problem: Eleanor Franks doesn’t really understand her students’ frames of reference and the difficulties that many of them have in making sense of the particular historical phenomena she is teaching them about.
Eleanor Franks,...
Move Me On 167: Frames of reference
-
Thinking makes it so: cognitive psychology and history teaching
Teaching History article
What, exactly, is learned knowledge - and why does it matter in history teaching?
Michael Fordham seeks to use the general tenets of cognitive psychology to inform the debate about how history teachers might get the best from their students, in particular in considering the role of memory. Fordham surveys the latest research concerning memory while also arguing that remembering does matter in history...
Thinking makes it so: cognitive psychology and history teaching
-
Move Me On 166: getting the right pitch for GCSE teaching
Teaching History feature
This feature is designed to build critical, informed debate about the character of teacher training, teacher education and professional development.
This issue’s problem: Bob Williams is struggling to get the pitch right in teaching topics at GCSE that the school previously taught to Year 7.
Bob Williams, now half way through his training year, is feeling very out...
Move Me On 166: getting the right pitch for GCSE teaching
-
‘If you had told me before that these students were Russians, I would not have believed it’
Teaching History article
Bjorn Wansink and his co-authors have aligned their teaching of a recent and controversial historical issue – the Cold War – in the light of a contemporary incident.
This article demonstrates a means of ensuring that students understand that different cultures’ views of their shared past are nuanced, rather than monolithic – a different concept in philosophy as well as in...
‘If you had told me before that these students were Russians, I would not have believed it’
-
Cunning Plan 166: developing an enquiry on the First Crusade
Teaching History feature
"What shall I say next? We were all indeed huddled together like sheep in a fold, trembling and frightened, surrounded on all sides by enemies so that we could not turn in any direction. It was clear to us that this had happened because of our sins. A great clamour rose to the sky, not...
Cunning Plan 166: developing an enquiry on the First Crusade
-
Move Me On 165: Capturing student interest vs. sense of period
Teaching History feature
This issue’s problem: In her concern to capture students’ interest Jennet Preston tends to present people in the past as weird and wonderful aliens...
Jennet Preston has come into teaching as a second career, following a break to look after her young children. She is enthusiastic and full of ideas for...
Move Me On 165: Capturing student interest vs. sense of period
-
New, Novice or Nervous? 164: Constructing narrative
Teaching History feature: the quick guide to the no-quick-fix
Narrative is shedding its status as the ‘underrated skill’, re-emerging as a requirement of the new GCSE in England. As Counsell has argued, constructing a narrative is ‘no easy option’, however, and asking students to ‘Write an account…’ lacks the comfortable familiarity of ‘Explain why…’ or ‘How far…’. Fortunately, many...
New, Novice or Nervous? 164: Constructing narrative
-
Cunning Plan 163.1: GCSE Thematic study
Teaching History feature
I started teaching ‘crime and punishment through time’ thematically a few years ago. I was teaching it as a Schools History Project ‘study in development’. We had moved from ‘medicine through time’ in order to keep things fresh. After six times through the content, much as I loved it, crime,...
Cunning Plan 163.1: GCSE Thematic study
-
Cunning Plan 163.2: Developing an A-level course in medieval history
Teaching History feature
Medieval history has always been a Cinderella era for post-16 students. Some schools offer A-levels in classical civilisation, but most A-level history courses focus on the early-modern and modern periods. A few schools teach an A-level medieval module, with the Crusades being a popular choice. I was therefore excited at...
Cunning Plan 163.2: Developing an A-level course in medieval history