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Using narratives and big pictures to address the challenges of a 2-year KS3 curriculum
Teaching History article
Faced with cutting her Key Stage 3 curriculum to two years, Natalie Kesterton and her department were determined to do more with less. Not only did they want to ensure that their pupils developed a secure, wide-ranging knowledge of British and world history, they also wanted to address deficits in pupils’...
Using narratives and big pictures to address the challenges of a 2-year KS3 curriculum
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The dialogic dimensions of knowing and understanding the Norman legacy in Chester
Teaching History article
Michael Bird and Thomas Wilson focus their attention directly on the voices of pupils, in dialogue with their teacher and with each other, as they draw inferences from differing sources about the Norman legacy in Chester. By carefully examining dialogue stimulated by these sources, Bird and Wilson demonstrate not only...
The dialogic dimensions of knowing and understanding the Norman legacy in Chester
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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
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‘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’
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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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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
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Challenging stereotypes and avoiding the superficial: a suggested approach to teaching the Holocaust
Teaching History article
Alison Kitson provides a rationale for a scheme of work for Year 9 (13-14 year-olds). She argues that teachers should analyse the kind of historical learning that is taking place when the Holocaust is studied. Critical of the assumption that learning will take place as a result of exposure, she...
Challenging stereotypes and avoiding the superficial: a suggested approach to teaching the Holocaust
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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
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The Power of Context: using a visual source
Teaching History article
Drawing on her wealth of experience and expertise in using visual sources in the classroom, in this article Jane Card explores how a single painting, a portrait of Dido Elizabeth Belle Lindsay and her cousin Lady Elizabeth Murray, might form the basis for a sequence of lessons.
Arguing that although highly...
The Power of Context: using a visual source
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Building and assessing historical knowledge on three scales
Teaching History article
The knowledge that ‘flavours' a claim: towards building and assessing historical knowledge on three scales
While marking some Year 11 essays, Kate Hammond found her interest caught by significant differences between one kind of strong analysis and another. Some scored high marks but were less convincing. The achievement in these...
Building and assessing historical knowledge on three scales
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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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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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Getting Year 7 to vocalise responses to the murder of Thomas Becket
Teaching History article
Mary Partridge wanted her pupils not only to become more aware of competing and contrasting voices in the past, but to understand how historians orchestrate those voices. Using Edward Grim's eye-witness account of Thomas Becket's murder, her Year 7 pupils explored nuances in the word ‘shocking' as a way of...
Getting Year 7 to vocalise responses to the murder of Thomas Becket
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Polychronicon 141: Adolf Eichmann
Teaching History feature
Almost 60 years ago Adolf Eichmann went on trial for crimes committed against the Jews while he was in the service of the Nazi regime. His capture by the Israeli secret service and his abduction from Argentina triggered a number of journalistic books that portrayed him as a pathological monster...
Polychronicon 141: Adolf Eichmann
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Learning about an 800-year-old fight can't be all that bad, can it? Its like what Simon and Kane did yesterday': modern-day parallels in history
Teaching History article
Deborah Robbins charts a story of her own learning during the PGCE year. She explains how she identified a point of interest in her own practice - the use of modern-day examples. Turning this into a focus for testing her own hypotheses, she theorised from her own lessons to produce...
Learning about an 800-year-old fight can't be all that bad, can it? Its like what Simon and Kane did yesterday': modern-day parallels in history
