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Move Me On 183: sees no reason to include Black or Asian British history
Teaching History feature
Move Me On is designed to build critical, informed debate about the character of teacher training, teacher education and professional development. It is also designed to offer practical help to all involved in training new history teachers. Each issue presents a situation in initial teacher education/training with an emphasis upon...
Move Me On 183: sees no reason to include Black or Asian British history
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Where do I begin?
Article
Planning a new Key Stage 3 Curriculum: A Powerpoint presentation from the Regional Subject CfBT/HA Conferences 3 Curriculum aims are: successful learners who enjoy learning, make progress and achieve confident individuals who are able to live safe, healthy and fulfilling lives responsible citizens who make a positive contribution to society...
Where do I begin?
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Teaching Gypsy, Roma and Traveller history
Article
Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people are the largest minority ethnic group in some communities (and therefore in some schools) in the UK. Yet the past of Gypsy, Roma, Traveller people may rarely be part of history lessons. The result is that pupils of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller heritage may not...
Teaching Gypsy, Roma and Traveller history
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Film: Lesson sequences
Teaching History for Beginners webinar series
In this latest film in the teaching history for beginners series, Helen Snelson from the University of York explores and unpacks the principles and process of planning across a sequence of lessons to provide a coherent unit of work that builds knowledge and progression in disciplinary thinking.
Film: Lesson sequences
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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... medieval science and medicine?
Teaching History feature
The phrase ‘medieval science’ may seem nonsensical. ‘How can... a synonym for “backward”,’ the editors of The Cambridge History of Science Volume 2 ask rhetorically, ‘modify a noun that signifies the best available knowledge from the natural world?’ To answer their question, we must rethink our assumptions, both about the...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... medieval science and medicine?
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What’s The Wisdom On... Consequence
Teaching History feature
Consequence easily becomes ‘causation’s forgotten sibling’, as Fordham noted, in the title of a workshop presented at the 2012 Historical Association conference. The choice to treat consequence separately from causation in this series of articles is, therefore, a very deliberate one. Yet an emphasis on the importance of consequences should...
What’s The Wisdom On... Consequence
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Move Me On 182: thinks that substantive knowledge is all that matters
Teaching History feature
Lina Power has interpreted an emphasis on knowledge organisers and factual knowledge tests to mean that substantive knowledge is all that matters.
Move Me On is designed to build critical, informed debate about the character of teacher training, teacher education and professional development. It is also designed to offer practical...
Move Me On 182: thinks that substantive knowledge is all that matters
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The Quality Mark award: Self-evaluation with a critical friend
Article
The Quality Mark has been a really important part in the journey of the development of our history curriculum culture at the Convent of Jesus and Mary. Our school is a diverse comprehensive all-girls Catholic school situated in Harlesden, north west London. We first started working together as a department team...
The Quality Mark award: Self-evaluation with a critical friend
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Virtual Branch Recording: Writing Black histories, telling Black stories
Article
In February 2021 we were delighted to continue the HA Virtual Branch with Stephen Bourne, author of a number of books including Black Poppies: Britain’s Black Community and the Great War and Black in the British Frame: The Black Experience in British Film and Television. In 2017 South Bank University awarded Stephen an Honorary Fellowship for...
Virtual Branch Recording: Writing Black histories, telling Black stories
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Cunning Plan 181: Incorporating a more global perspective within Key Stage 3
Teaching History feature
While lockdown, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020, brought a period of turbulence to the education sector, it also brought a wealth of generosity, with a vast range of free online CPD offered by different providers. One in particular was the webinar series ‘West African History before the 1600s’ hosted...
Cunning Plan 181: Incorporating a more global perspective within Key Stage 3
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Triumphs Show 128: Speed-dating with Queen Elizabeth
Teaching History feature
Some of the most effective role play activities are those which draw on the common experiences of pupils to promote serious learning outcomes. Chris Higgins experiments with a number of situations and strategies that draw upon popular games and television show formats. These are used to engage, to provide structure...
Triumphs Show 128: Speed-dating with Queen Elizabeth
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Vive la France! A comparison of French and British history teaching, with practical suggestions from across La Manche
Teaching History article
It is possible for teachers to learn a great deal within their own classrooms, departments and schools. However, stepping outside that daily experience, whether by reading a journal, contributing to a web debate or attending a conference, can always provide refreshing ideas. Evelyn Sweerts takes the concept of sharing good...
Vive la France! A comparison of French and British history teaching, with practical suggestions from across La Manche
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The Origins of Mass Society: Speech, Sex and Drink in Urbanising Britain, 1780-1870
Virtual Branch Lecture Recording
Professor Peter Mandler is the current president of the Historical Association. As part of our 'presidents season' for the HA Virtual Branch he gave a fascinating talk on The Origins of Mass Society: Speech, Sex and Drink in Urbanising Britain, 1780-1870.
In this talk he explores the impact of the changes in...
The Origins of Mass Society: Speech, Sex and Drink in Urbanising Britain, 1780-1870
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Life by sources A to F: really using sources to teach AS history
Teaching History article
The work of Gary Howells will be familiar to many readers of Teaching History—indeed, his last article is heavily cited elsewhere in this edition. He presents here the case in favour of using sources at AS level (16-17 years old). Clearly, historians need to have some form of acquaintance with...
Life by sources A to F: really using sources to teach AS history
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Building Key Stage 5 students’ analysis of interpretations
Article
Students of A-level history are required to analyse and evaluate historical interpretations. Samuel Head found limitations in his Year 13 students’ understanding of how and why historians arrive at differing interpretations, which impeded their ability to analyse them. He set about tackling this with carefully sequenced planning and a processual model...
Building Key Stage 5 students’ analysis of interpretations
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Move Me On 180: feeling unprepared to start as NQT because of Covid-19
Teaching History feature
Una Marson had her training interrupted by school closures in response to Covid-19 and feels unprepared to start as an NQT.
Move Me On is designed to build critical, informed debate about the character of teacher training, teacher education and professional development. It is also designed to offer practical help to all...
Move Me On 180: feeling unprepared to start as NQT because of Covid-19
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Lesson sequence: Twentieth-century Europe
Article
The first lesson of this sequence is available free to all secondary members here.
This series of lessons has been designed to support the teaching of recent 20th century history at Key Stage 3. This sequence of lessons will enable students to learn some of the historical context to the European Union...
Lesson sequence: Twentieth-century Europe
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Lesson sequence: Twentieth-century Europe - taster lesson
Article
This series of lessons has been designed to support the teaching of recent 20th century history at Key Stage 3. This sequence of lessons will enable students to learn some of the historical context to the European Union and Britain’s relationship with the European Union today. It combines overview and...
Lesson sequence: Twentieth-century Europe - taster lesson
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How introducing cultural and intellectual history improves critical analysis in the classroom
Teaching History article
In his article in this journal just over a year ago, Steven Driver set out his vision for a less myopic range of topics in A-level coursework. In this edition, Driver demonstrates how he has built student enthusiasm for, and knowledge of, a topic which he had previously identified as...
How introducing cultural and intellectual history improves critical analysis in the classroom
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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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Young Quills 2025
16th April 2025
Each year, the Historical Association runs Young Quills, a competition for published historical fiction for children and young adults (14+). The Young Quills books for each year must be published for the first time in English in the year preceding the competition – so 2024 for this year’s selection.
Our...
Young Quills 2025
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Webinar series: Direct history teaching
HA webinar series for history teachers at KS3 and KS4
What does this series cover?
In this webinar series, explore a direct approach to teaching history. Presenters Jacob Olivey and Mike Hill will advocate for ‘lean lessons’ that focus on reading, explanation, and discussion to build pupils’ historical knowledge and understanding – with no worksheets, activities, or group work in...
Webinar series: Direct history teaching
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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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‘You should be proud about your history. They make you feel ashamed’: Teaching history hurts
Teaching History article
As history teachers we are used to encouraging pupils to think; enabling them to express thoughts with clarity both verbally and in written form. Yet, if history as a school subject becomes purely cognitive, then something is missing. History deals with human behaviour and therefore the affective and the emotional...
‘You should be proud about your history. They make you feel ashamed’: Teaching history hurts
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Webinar series: Coherence at Key Stage 4
HA webinar series for subject leaders and teachers of history
What does this series cover?
This series of webinars will consider coherence at Key Stage 4. We will reflect on using sequencing to establish coherence, how different categories of coherence can be used to inform our planning and delivery of GCSE, and how meaningful approaches to assessment will allow pupils’...
Webinar series: Coherence at Key Stage 4
