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Making reading routine
Teaching History article
Inspired by the growing number of history teachers who have sought to introduce younger pupils to academic historical scholarship in the classroom, Tim Jenner wanted to bring about his own reading revolution at Key Stage 3. But rather than simply develop one-off lessons or enquiries based on scholarship his goal...
Making reading routine
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Polychronicon 146: Interpreting the history of 'big history'
Teaching History feature
In recent decades, a novel approach to history has emerged, called ‘big history', which provides an overview of all of human history, embedded within biological, geological and astronomical history covering the grandest sweep of time and space, from the beginning of the universe to life on Earth here and now....
Polychronicon 146: Interpreting the history of 'big history'
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Out went Caesar and in came the Conqueror: A case study in professional thinking
Teaching History article
A case study in professional thinking
Michael Fordham examines the evolution of his own practice as an example of how history teachers draw upon collective, professional knowledge constructed by other history teachers in journals, books, conferences and seminars. Fordham explains how a particular Year 7 enquiry examining historical change from the...
Out went Caesar and in came the Conqueror: A case study in professional thinking
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Using individuals’ stories to help GCSE students to explain change and causation
Article
Should we, and how do we, develop in our students a sense of period – or a series of senses of period – in a thematic study spanning a thousand years? This was the problem faced by Matthew Fearns-Davies in preparing for the GCSE ‘Health and the People’ paper. He shows...
Using individuals’ stories to help GCSE students to explain change and causation
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Professional wrestling in the history department: a case study in planning the teaching of the British Empire at Key Stage 3
Article
Three years ago ( TH 99, Curriculum Planning Edition), Michael Riley illustrated ways in which history departments could exploit the increased flexibility of the revised National Curriculum.1 He showed that precisely-worded enquiry questions, positioned thoughtfully across the Key Stage, help to ensure progression, challenge and coherence. His picturesque image for...
Professional wrestling in the history department: a case study in planning the teaching of the British Empire at Key Stage 3
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Teaching History 107: Little Stories, Big Pictures
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
This edition deals with the complex relationship between depth work and overview work. Revealing the big picture: patterns, shapes and images at Key Stage 3, Slavery, Learning and teaching about the history of Europe in the 20th Century, Teaching the history of 20th women in Europe, Using Ethel and Ernest...
Teaching History 107: Little Stories, Big Pictures
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The role of takeaways in shaping a history curriculum
Teaching History article
Jonathan Grande explains how he and his department faced up to the paradox that teaching rich detail is vital for good historical learning and is vital for students to remember in the short term, but is not essential to remember for ever. This article sets out his exploration of why...
The role of takeaways in shaping a history curriculum
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Assessing the Battle of Waterloo in the classroom
Teaching History article
Defying the Iron Duke: assessing the Battle of Waterloo in the classroom
The approaching bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo has stimulated debate about how it should be commemorated. This article reports a collaboration between the Waterloo200 Committee and Tom Wheeley, history teacher, to create a lesson sequence analysing the...
Assessing the Battle of Waterloo in the classroom
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Helping Year 9 explore the cultural legacies of WW1
Teaching History article
A world turned molten: helping Year 9 to explore the cultural legacies of the First World War
Rachel Foster shows how her own study of cultural history led to a new dimension in her planning. She wanted to show her students not only that historians are interested in many different...
Helping Year 9 explore the cultural legacies of WW1
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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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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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Of the many significant things that have ever happened, what should we teach?
Teaching History article
There are three basic strands to our lessons. How should we teach? What skills should we enable our students to build? What content should we use to deliver those skills?
In this article Tony McConnell, who has been re-designing the curriculum in his school in response to a changed examination regimen, considers the issue of subject...
Of the many significant things that have ever happened, what should we teach?
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Bringing Rwanda into the classroom
Teaching History article
A short 20 years: meeting the challenges facing teachers who bring Rwanda into the classroom
As the twentieth anniversary of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda approaches, Mark Gudgel argues that we should face the challenges posed by teaching about Rwanda. Drawing on his experience as a history teacher in the...
Bringing Rwanda into the classroom
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Potential and pitfalls in teaching 'big pictures' of the past
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Jonathan Howson summarises findings from the recent ESRC funded research project - Usable Historical Pasts - and suggests how its insights might inform continuing professional debate and enquiry concerning both frameworks and ‘big pictures'.
In...
Potential and pitfalls in teaching 'big pictures' of the past
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Cunning Plan 179: using TV producers’ techniques to make the most effective use of retrieval practice
Teaching History feature
Last year I was working with colleagues on a project examining Rosenshine’s principle of beginning lessons with a short review of previous learning.1 At the same time I was working with a history trainee who had been using recall quizzes as a starter with GCSE students. Following a lesson observation,...
Cunning Plan 179: using TV producers’ techniques to make the most effective use of retrieval practice
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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
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Using an anthology of substantial sources at GCSE
Teaching History article
Struck by his GCSE students’ bewildered expressions when studying source extracts, Liam McDonnell decided to adopt a new approach to source analysis. Inspired by the work of other history teachers, McDonnell decided to use an anthology of substantial sources when studying nineteenth-century Whitechapel in London. By revisiting the sources at...
Using an anthology of substantial sources at GCSE
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Transforming Year 11's conceptual understanding of change
Teaching History article
For all that history teachers appreciate the need to build substantive knowledge and conceptual understanding systematically over time, they are also likely to have experienced that sickening moment when they realise that a Year 11 pupil has somehow missed something fundamental.
In Anna Fielding's case, her pupil's misconception was related to...
Transforming Year 11's conceptual understanding of change
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The return of King John: using depth to strengthen overview in the teaching of political change
Teaching History article
Dale Banham's article in Teaching History 92, ‘Getting ready for the Grand Prix: learning to build a substantiated argument in Year 7' has influenced much debate about extended writing. It has been influential way beyond the history education community. It also raised new questions about the management of historical content....
The return of King John: using depth to strengthen overview in the teaching of political change
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Thinking across time: planning and teaching the story of power and democracy at Key Stage 3
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Ian Dawson's seminal work on developing chronological understanding - in Teaching History 117, on the website thinkinghistory.co.uk and elsewhere - will be familiar to readers. In this article Dawson considers the question, very much on...
Thinking across time: planning and teaching the story of power and democracy at Key Stage 3
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What time does the tune start? From thinking about 'sense of period' to modelling history at Key Stage 3
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
A ‘sense of period' is the contextual backdrop to the study of any aspect of history. As experienced historians, we tend to take for granted both our structural map of the past and our rich...
What time does the tune start? From thinking about 'sense of period' to modelling history at Key Stage 3
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"Is it the Tuarts and then the Studors or the other way round?" The importance of developing a usable big picture of the past
Teaching History article
What should pupils know and understand as a result of their historical studies? This question is much in the news currently and too often quickly posed and glibly answered. In this article, Jonathan Howson poses this problem in the light of an ongoing research tradition that has sought complex answers...
"Is it the Tuarts and then the Studors or the other way round?" The importance of developing a usable big picture of the past
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Raising the bar: developing meaningful historical consciousness at Key Stage 3
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
How can we help pupils make sense of the history that they learn so that the whole adds up to more than the sum of its parts? How can we help pupils develop and sophisticate...
Raising the bar: developing meaningful historical consciousness at Key Stage 3
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Into the Key Stage 3 history garden: choosing and planting your enquiry questions
Teaching History article
Drawing upon a range of practice, Michael Riley analyses the characteristics of a good enquiry question. He explores the importance of careful wording of the question if it is genuinely to help the teacher to integrate areas of content into a purposeful learning journey and without distortion.He then moves on...
Into the Key Stage 3 history garden: choosing and planting your enquiry questions
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A need to know: Islamic history and the school curriculum
Teaching History article
In this article, Nicolas Kinloch questions some of the principal justifications often advanced for teaching Islamic history in schools. In particular, he wants to move us beyond our concern with current events in the Middle East. He suggests that there are dangers in looking at Islamic history if it is...
A need to know: Islamic history and the school curriculum
