-
Ofsted: primary guidance 2019
A guide to what primary schools might expect from the new Education Inspection Framework (EIF) 2019
As we approach the introduction of the new Ofsted framework, it seems timely that we offer schools, subject leaders and teachers some guidance on how to approach the coming changes. The call for a broad and balanced curriculum is given renewed emphasis in the new framework, but beyond that, curricula...
Ofsted: primary guidance 2019
-
Pupils as apprentice historians (3)
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
The Spring 2008 issue of this magazine, Visual Literacy, highlighted the excellent practice in using visual historical sources that exists in many primary schoolsWe should strive to preserve and extend this critical use of visuals, whatever...
Pupils as apprentice historians (3)
-
Grace Darling
Lesson Plan
I taught a short history topic on Grace Darling, using a painting as the main focus, to encourage evidence-based learning. The painting depicts Grace and her father rowing towards the rocks where the remains of the Forfarshire are resting, with the lighthouse in the distance.
The speaking and listening elements...
Grace Darling
-
Primary Scheme of Work: Indus Valley
Primary Scheme of Work, Key Stage 2 History (resourced)
This unit on the Indus Valley Civilisation (2600-1900) BCE gives children the opportunity to study an ancient, 'lost' urban civilisation discovered by archaeologists in the Indian subcontinent, early 20th Century. The story of its discovery and the surviving evidence – architecture and artefacts – helps children understand how we can...
Primary Scheme of Work: Indus Valley
-
Get into Teaching
Considering a career in teaching?
Teaching – and especially teaching history! – can be a wonderful and rewarding career. The HA have many years experience working with primary and secondary teachers from trainee level through to heads of history and we're here to help you on your path. We have a comprehensive set of guides and resources for anyone...
Get into Teaching
-
The Great Fire of London and the National Curriculum
Primary History article including Scheme of Work for Key Stage 1 (unresourced)
The Great Fire of London is a favourite National Curriculum teaching topic. This paper draws on the latest resources and teaching ideas to suggest how you can meet both the NC history requirements and the wider ones of the National Curriculum, particularly in integrated programmes that include teaching about the Great...
The Great Fire of London and the National Curriculum
-
Chronology - an Olympic timeline
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Pat Hoodless illuminates how chronology can provide a spine, a backbone and an ‘essential framework' to support and shape pupil learning of NC History.
The Olympic movement provides the perfect opportunity to consider the broad sweep...
Chronology - an Olympic timeline
-
Subject leaders: supporting colleagues to develop their subject knowledge
Primary History article
Many teachers are especially concerned about subject knowledge and knowing what to teach. Using the example of the ancient Egyptians, this article focuses on how a subject leader can support colleagues develop and use their subject knowledge to become more adept at teaching.
One of the most frequent concerns of...
Subject leaders: supporting colleagues to develop their subject knowledge
-
Teaching Ancient Egypt: developing subject knowledge
Primary History article
Ancient Egypt is one of the most popular societies taught in primary schools. In this article Karin Doull argues the importance of having a coherent approach to the content. Much of the article focuses on the key areas that teachers may wish to consider if they are to achieve a...
Teaching Ancient Egypt: developing subject knowledge
-
Life in lockdown
Primary History article
In this article on the impact of the Coronavirus, Matthew Flynn from Ryders Hayes in Walsall, a History Quality Mark school, has considered how history subject leaders can maintain the status of the subject when faced with remote learning.
Education has undergone many changes and uncertainty over the decades, but...
Life in lockdown
-
Young Quills winners 2024
The Young Quills Awards for best historical fiction for young people
The Young Quills winners and highly commended have been announced for his year. This competition for historical fiction for children is a way of celebrating and recognising those authors who are continuing the long tradition of creative writing about the past for children.
All of the books are reviewed by...
Young Quills winners 2024
-
Membership Administrator Job Opportunity
Join the HA team
An exciting opportunity has recently arisen for a Membership Administrator to join the HA team to provide a strong level of support with day-to-day processing and the delivery of a first-class membership service.
The Historical Association (HA) is a membership charity which brings together people who share an interest in the past, and...
Membership Administrator Job Opportunity
-
Archaeology - An approach to teaching history at Key Stage 2. Curriculum history
Article
Alongside modern University buildings, at Beckett Park, (part of Leeds Metropolitan University), there is evidence of a monastic grange, a seventeenth century farmhouse, and an eighteenth century mansion which was extended in Victorian Times. The Beckett Park Archaeology Project was established in 1999 to give local children access to the...
Archaeology - An approach to teaching history at Key Stage 2. Curriculum history
-
Film: Meet the author: Marc Morris on The Anglo-Saxons
Article
In this Virtual Branch talk best-selling author and renowned historian Marc Morris joined us to discuss the process of researching for, structuring and writing his new book The Anglo-Saxons: a history of the beginnings of England.
Drawing on a vast range of original evidence - chronicles, letters, archaeology and artefacts - Morris's...
Film: Meet the author: Marc Morris on The Anglo-Saxons
-
Cleopatra Podcast
Branch Lecture Podcast
This pod-cast was recorded at the Central London Branch of the Historical Association on Saturday 20th February 2010, at the Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, University of London. We were pleased to welcome cultural historian Lucy Hughes-Hallet to the branch to speak on ‘Cleopatra'. Lucy Hughes-Hallet detailed how fact and legend about Cleopatra had been intertwined through history in...
Cleopatra Podcast
-
Oral history, a powerful tool or a double edged sword?
Primary History article
We all agree that oral history is a particularly powerful and attractive method for children to gather evidence and appreciate the real life relevance of history. From the Early Years to Year 6, many of us look deliberately for the opportunities to bring a visitor into the classroom, who will...
Oral history, a powerful tool or a double edged sword?
-
Young Quills winners 2023
The Young Quills Awards for best historical fiction for young people
It is with great pleasure that the HA is able to announce the winners of the Young Quills for Historical Fiction for 2023:
Young readers category
Winner: Tony Bradman for Bruno and Frida (Barrington Stoke)Highly Commended: Judith Eagle for Accidental Stowaway (Faber)
Intermediate category
Winner: Tom Palmer for Resist (Barrington...
Young Quills winners 2023
-
Film: Heligoland: Britain, Germany, and the Struggle for the North Sea
Article
Professor Jan Rüger joined the Virtual Branch on 9th February 2023 to talk about his book Heligoland: Britain, Germany, and the Struggle for the North Sea, tracing a rich history of contact and conflict from the Napoleonic Wars to the Cold War.
For generations this North Sea island expressed a German...
Film: Heligoland: Britain, Germany, and the Struggle for the North Sea
-
Film: Building Anglo-Saxon England
Article
Building Anglo-Saxon England demonstrates how recent excavations enable us to grasp for the first time the diversity of the Anglo-Saxon built environment. The book explores how the natural landscape was modified for human activity, and how settlements were laid out with geometrical precision by specialist surveyors. It also shows how...
Film: Building Anglo-Saxon England
-
Using Local Buildings
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Whilst there are many obvious historical buildings - castles, Roman Villas and Abbeys these often involve transport costs which may be beyond a school budget. Turner-Bisset suggests:
There is also history in ordinary, everyday sites,...
Using Local Buildings
-
Using the back cover image: Reconstructing the Romans
Primary History feature
Reconstruction drawings, diagrams and models are vital examples of interpretation that we can use to help pupils understand the past. On one level they help to fire imagination, while on another they offer a way of presenting important historical facts.
The image overleaf is a reconstruction drawing of Chester's Roman...
Using the back cover image: Reconstructing the Romans
-
What your local Archive Service can offer to schools
Primary History article
Imagine a place where your pupils become detectives working on mysteries from the past such as the tale of Thomas Sargeant, a 15-year-old factory worker who died in a chemical works in 1898. Your local archive is bursting with stories about real people like this which can give children an...
What your local Archive Service can offer to schools
-
History in the Foundation Stage
Article
In September 2000, the introduction of a foundation stage for children aged three to the end of the reception year was widely welcomed for the way in which it confirmed a distinct identity for the early years in education. The recent guidance by QCA1 provides detailed support for all practitioners...
History in the Foundation Stage
-
Bringing an archaeologist into the classroom
Primary History article
The past as represented in school history textbooks and websites is adapted to meet the needs of primary-aged children, but the knowledge on which this depends derives from detailed academic research. Engaging children with historians and archaeologists can show them how we learn about and construct our understanding of history...
Bringing an archaeologist into the classroom
-
Film: Rethinking the origins of the Cold War
Churchill's Great Game
In this HA Virtual Branch talk Professor Richard Toye explores Churchill’s response to the USSR and how his actions during the early Cold War years intersected with his views of traditional Anglo-Russian tensions and the legacy of the ‘Great Game’.
Richard Toye is Professor of Modern History at the University...
Film: Rethinking the origins of the Cold War
