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Learning lessons from genocides
Teaching History article
‘Never again'? Helping Year 9 think about what happened after the Holocaust and learning lessons from genocides
‘Never again' is the clarion call of much Holocaust and genocide education. There is a danger, however, that it can become an empty, if pious, wish. How can we help pupils reflect seriously on...
Learning lessons from genocides
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Can we educate Year 9 in genocide prevention?
Teaching History article
Patterns of genocide: can we educate Year 9 in genocide prevention?
Alison Stephen, who has wrestled for many years with the challenges of teaching emotional and controversial history within a multiethnic school setting, relished the opportunity to link her school's teaching of the Holocaust with a comparative study of other genocides....
Can we educate Year 9 in genocide prevention?
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Building an overview of the historic roots of antisemitism
Teaching History article
‘But I still don't get why the Jews': using cause and change to answer pupils' demand for an overview of antisemitism
Research by the Centre for Holocaust Education has suggested that students need and want more help with building an overview of the historical roots of antisemitism and that they...
Building an overview of the historic roots of antisemitism
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Helping Year 9 debate the purposes of genocide education
Teaching History article
Connecting the dots: helping Year 9 to debate the purposes of Holocaust and genocide education
Why do we teach about the Holocaust and about other genocides? The Holocaust has been a compulsory part of the English National Curriculum since 1991; however, curriculum documents say little about why pupils should learn...
Helping Year 9 debate the purposes of genocide education
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Move Me On 152: How to teach meaningful overviews
Teaching History feature
This Issue's Problem: Martin King is worried about how to teach meaningful overviews...
Move Me On 152: How to teach meaningful overviews
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New, Novice or Nervous? 152: Describing Progression
Teaching History feature
'New, Novice or Nervous?' is for those new to the published writings of history teachers. Every problem you wrestle with, other teachers have wrestled with too. Quick fixes don't exist. But if you discover others' writing, you'll soon find - and want to join - something better: an international conversation...
New, Novice or Nervous? 152: Describing Progression
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Historical consciousness in sixth-form students
Teaching History article
Moving forwards while looking back: historical consciousness in sixth-form students
A key concern driving debates about curriculum reform in England is anxiety that young people's knowledge of the past is too episodic - that they lack a coherent ‘narrative' or ‘map' of the past. While recent debate focused on what...
Historical consciousness in sixth-form students
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Cunning Plan 152.1: visual sources
Teaching History feature
The principles outlined here were developed in response to three key concerns. The first was consideration of the needs of students learning English as an additional language who face particular challenges with reading and writing.
Images could perhaps offer them more direct, less abstract, ways into an understanding of challenging...
Cunning Plan 152.1: visual sources
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Developing awareness of the need to select evidence
Teaching History article
Let's play Supermarket ‘Evidential' Sweep: developing students' awareness of the need to select evidence
Despite having built a sustained focus on historical thinking into their planning for progression across Years 7 to 13, Rachel Foster and Sarah Gadd remained frustrated with stubborn weaknesses in the evidential thinking of students in...
Developing awareness of the need to select evidence
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Year 9 face up to historical difference
Teaching History article
How many people does it take to make an Essex man? Year 9 face up to historical difference
Teaching her Key Stage 3 students in Essex, Catherine McCrory was struck by the stark contrast between their enthusiasm for studying diverse histories of Africa and the Americas and their reluctance to...
Year 9 face up to historical difference
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Year 7 explore the story of a London street
Teaching History article
One street, twenty children and the experience of a changing town: Year 7 explore the story of a London street
Michael Wood and others have recently drawn attention to the ways in which big stories can be told through local histories. Hughes and De Silva report a teaching unit through...
Year 7 explore the story of a London street
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Continuity in the treatment of mental health through time
Teaching History article
Where's the other ‘c'? Year 9 examine continuity in the treatment of mental health through time
Helen Murray, Rachel Burney and Andrew Stacey-Chapman show how they strengthened three goals of their practice - secure knowledge, narrative shapes and conceptual analysis - by securing strong connection between them. The curricular focus...
Continuity in the treatment of mental health through time
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Do we need another hero? Rorke's Drift
Teaching History article
Do we need another hero? Year 8 get to grips with the heroic myth of the Defence of Rorke's Drift in 1879
Mike Murray shares a lesson sequence in which his students examined changing interpretations of the Battle of Rorke's Drift in 1879. Building on earlier work on teaching interpretations...
Do we need another hero? Rorke's Drift
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Year 9 - Connecting past, present and future
Teaching History article
Possible futures: using frameworks of knowledge to help Year 9 connect past, present and future
How can we help pupils integrate history into coherent ‘Big Pictures' or mental frameworks? Building on traditions of classroom research and theorising reported in earlier editions of Teaching History, Dan Nuttall reports how his department set...
Year 9 - Connecting past, present and future
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New, Novice or Nervous? 151: Getting beyond bad ‘source work'
Teaching History feature
This page is for those new to the published writings of history teachers. Every problem you wrestle with, other teachers have wrestled with too. Quick fixes don't exist. But if you discover others' writing, you'll soon find - and want to join - something better: an international conversation in which...
New, Novice or Nervous? 151: Getting beyond bad ‘source work'
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Knowledge and the Draft NC
Teaching History article
Silk purse from a sow's ear? Why knowledge matters and why the draft History NC will not improve it
Katie Hall and Christine Counsell attempt to construct a Key Stage 3 scheme of work out of the draft National Curriculum for history that was released for consultation in England in...
Knowledge and the Draft NC
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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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A question of attribution: working with ghetto photographs
Teaching History article
Holocaust imagery is very familiar, clichéd even. How can we get pupils thinking about it in novel ways and seeing differently? Phillips reports work completed with his PGCE students, proposes a scaffold of questions with which to deconstruct images and applies it to archive images and to Hollywood representations. Images...
A question of attribution: working with ghetto photographs
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Thematic or sequential analysis in causal explanations
Teaching History article
Struck by what he saw as the complexity, artistry and cognitive achievement of historians' narrative accounts, Robin Kemp decided to explore ways of teaching his pupils to write narrative and to analyse the role of such writing in developing various kinds of historical thinking.
Working with Year 8 and Year...
Thematic or sequential analysis in causal explanations
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New, Novice or Nervous? 150: Getting pupils to see change over time
Teaching History feature
This page is the starting point for all who are new to the published writings of history teachers. Every problem you wrestle with, other history teachers have wrestled with too. Quick fixes don't exist. But if you discover others' writing, you'll soon find - and want to join - something...
New, Novice or Nervous? 150: Getting pupils to see change over time
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Historical reasoning in the classroom
Teaching History article
Historical reasoning in the classroom: What does it look like and how can we enhance it?
The history education community has long recognised that historical thinking depends on the interplay between substantive knowledge about the past and the procedural, or second-order, concepts that historians use to construct, shape and give...
Historical reasoning in the classroom
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Planning and teaching linear GCSE
Teaching History article
Planning and teaching linear GCSE: inspiring interest, maximising memory and practising productively
As proposed changes to the National Curriculum are furiously debated, and details of future changes to GCSE are anxiously awaited, history teachers in England are already wrestling with the implications of one change to the public examination system:...
Planning and teaching linear GCSE
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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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Enquiries to engage Year 7 in medieval anarchy
Teaching History article
Wrestling with Stephen and Matilda: planning challenging enquiries to engage Year 7 in medieval anarchy
McDougall found learning about Stephen and Matilda fascinating, was sure that her pupils would also and designed an enquiry to engage them in ‘the anarchy' of 1139-1153 AD. Pupils enjoyed exploring ‘the anarchy' and learning...
Enquiries to engage Year 7 in medieval anarchy
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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
