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Interpreting Agincourt: KS3 Scheme of Work
Scheme of Work
2015 was a year of anniversaries. As part of our funded commemoration projects surrounding the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt, we commissioned this scheme of work looking at interpretations of the battle and period, particularly aimed at pupils in Key Stage 3.
It comes with a complete resource...
Interpreting Agincourt: KS3 Scheme of 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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Exploring big overviews through local depth
Teaching History article
Exploring big overviews through local depth
Rachel Foster and Kath Goudie's search for a more rigorous and interesting way of teaching Year 7 the Norman Conquest was initially driven by a desire to incorporate local history in a more meaningful way in their Key Stage 3 schemes of work.
This...
Exploring big overviews through local depth
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Move Me On 140: Getting students to generate their own enquiry questions
Teaching History feature
This Issue's Problem: Rafe Sadler has just started his second teaching placement and is worried about the very different ways of working and expectations of teachers in his new department.
In his first school, where history was taught within a humanities programme, the Key Stage 3 scheme of work had...
Move Me On 140: Getting students to generate their own enquiry questions
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Assessment after levels
Free Teaching History article
Ten years ago, two heads of department in contrasting schools presented a powerfully-argued case for resisting the use of level descriptions within their assessment regimes. Influenced both by research into the nature of children's historical thinking and by principles of assessment for learning, Sally Burnham and Geraint Brown argued that...
Assessment after levels
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Historical scholarship, archaeology and evidence in Year 7
Teaching History article
The stimulus for this article came from two developmental tasks that Barbara Trapani was set during the course of her initial teacher education programme: planning her first historical enquiry and bringing the work of an historian into the classroom. Trapani chose to tackle the two tasks together, using Susan Whitfield’s...
Historical scholarship, archaeology and evidence in Year 7
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Modelling the discipline
Teaching History article
David Hibbert and Zaiba Patel decided to work together after becoming concerned that school history curricula might not enable students to interrogate popular British mythologising about World War II. Building on these pre-existing concerns, their collaboration with the historian Yasmin Khan yielded an Interpretations enquiry which asked students to consider...
Modelling the discipline
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Cunning Plan 144: promoting independent student enquiry
Teaching History feature
Getting students to generate their own questions can seem like a formidable challenge, even for experienced teachers with extensive subject knowledge developed over years of teaching. Imagine how much more alarming it appeared to a student-teacher being encouraged to take risks by handing more responsibility to the students. Could it...
Cunning Plan 144: promoting independent student enquiry
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Emotional response or objective enquiry? Using shared stories and a sense of place
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
In this article, Andrew Wrenn explores some issues that teachers might consider when supporting 14 and 15 year olds in their study of war memorials as historical interpretations. Tony McAleavy has argued that ‘popular' and...
Emotional response or objective enquiry? Using shared stories and a sense of place
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History's secret weapon: the enquiry of a disciplined mind
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
As a local authority adviser, Andrew Wrenn's advice has often been sought by history departments, both those seeking to resist ill-conceived and potentially damaging cross-curricular initiatives and those keen to exploit new opportunities for meaningful...
History's secret weapon: the enquiry of a disciplined mind
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Why go on a pilgrimage? Using a concluding enquiry to reinforce and assess earlier learning
Teaching History article
Jamie Byrom describes the learning activities within a final enquiry for a National Curriculum area of study - Britain 1066-1500. The strong message in this article is that the learning in each enquiry is only as good as the planning and teaching of the enquiries that precede it. Byrom's model...
Why go on a pilgrimage? Using a concluding enquiry to reinforce and assess earlier learning
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Film: What's the wisdom on... Enquiry questions (Part 1)
Your Virtual History Department Meeting
We’ve been talking to our secondary school members and we know how difficult life is for teachers in the current circumstances, so we wanted to lend a helping hand.
'What’s the wisdom on…' is a new and already popular feature in our secondary journal Teaching History and provides the perfect stimulus for a...
Film: What's the wisdom on... Enquiry questions (Part 1)
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Emotional response or objective enquiry? Using shared stories and a sense of place in the study of interpretations for GCSE
Article
In this article, Andrew Wrenn explores some issues that teachers might consider when supporting 14 and 15 year olds in their study of war memorials as historical interpretations. Tony McAleavy has argued that ‘popular' and ‘personal' interpretations and representations are just as worthy of study at Key Stage 3 as...
Emotional response or objective enquiry? Using shared stories and a sense of place in the study of interpretations for GCSE
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Designing an enquiry in a challenging setting
Teaching History article
The Association for Historical Dialogue and Research (AHDR) is a Cyprus-based organization that works to foster dialogue among history teachers and other educators across the divide in Cyprus. In one of their UN-funded projects, ADHR members worked with UK colleagues to shape a lesson sequence and resources on the Ottoman period...
Designing an enquiry in a challenging setting
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Film: What's the wisdom on... Enquiry questions (Part 2)
Your Virtual History Department Meeting
We’ve been talking to our secondary school members and we know how difficult life is for teachers in the current circumstances, so we wanted to lend a helping hand.
'What’s the wisdom on…' is a new and already popular feature in our secondary journal Teaching History and provides the perfect stimulus for a...
Film: What's the wisdom on... Enquiry questions (Part 2)
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Getting Year 7 to set their own questions about the Islamic Empire, 600-1600
Teaching History article
Sometimes particular problems can lead to unexpected solutions. In this case, Sally Burnham decided to solve a problem that she had identified among her Year 12 students by changing the way in which she teaches Year 7. Her Year 12s were finding it difficult to set appropriate questions for their...
Getting Year 7 to set their own questions about the Islamic Empire, 600-1600
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Anatomy of enquiry: deconstructing an approach to history curriculum planning
Teaching History article
It is almost 20 years since Michael Riley first invited Key Stage 3 history teachers to ‘choose and plant’ their enquiry questions. Many members of the history education community have taken up that invitation, making use of overarching enquiry questions to structure students’ learning. But what is meant by enquiry...
Anatomy of enquiry: deconstructing an approach to history curriculum planning
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What’s the wisdom on… enquiry questions
Teaching History feature
One way of explaining what is meant by an enquiry question is to start with what it is not.
What's the Wisdom On... is a short guide providing new history teachers with an overview of the ‘story so far’ of practice-based professional thinking about a particular aspect of history teaching. It...
What’s the wisdom on… enquiry questions
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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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Making history curious: Using Initial Stimulus Material (ISM) to promote enquiry, thinking and literacy
Teaching History article
The idea of gaining pupils’ attention, interest and curiosity at the start of the lesson with an intriguing image, story, analogy or puzzle has long been used by our best history teachers. Michael Riley, through writing and inset, popularised the term ‘hook’ and emphasised its special role at the start...
Making history curious: Using Initial Stimulus Material (ISM) to promote enquiry, thinking and literacy
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How representing women can convey a more complex narrative of the Russian Revolution to Year 9
Teaching History article
Barbara Trapani was troubled by the oversimplified judgements her students were making about the Russian Revolution. Could the women of the revolution help her students overcome their tendency to focus on success and failure? Trapani revised her enquiry, selecting stories of women who could ‘illuminate’ a longer, more complex history of...
How representing women can convey a more complex narrative of the Russian Revolution to Year 9
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'...trying to count the stars': using the story of Bergen-Belsen to teach the Holocaust
Teaching History article
Maria Osowiecki's search for the right questions to frame her students' study of the Holocaust was driven initially by the proximity of her school to the site of Bergen-Belsen, and the particular interests and concerns of her students as members of British Forces families. But, as this article richly demonstrates,...
'...trying to count the stars': using the story of Bergen-Belsen to teach the Holocaust
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'ICT Starter for 10' a primer for Secondary History Educators
Article
This resource is intended to provide a short ‘aide memoire’ to the hard pressed teacher providing a series of ‘launching pads’ for historical enquiry…
'ICT Starter for 10' a primer for Secondary History Educators
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Shaping the debate: why historians matter more than ever at GCSE
Teaching History article
The question of how to prepare students to succeed in the examination while also ensuring that they are taught rigorous history remains as relevant as ever. Faced with preparing students to answer a question that seemingly precluded argument, Rachel Foster and Kath Goudie demonstrate how they used historical scholarship both to...
Shaping the debate: why historians matter more than ever at GCSE
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New, Novice or Nervous? 153: Good Enquiry Questions
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? 153: Good Enquiry Questions
