-
Magna Carta Enquiry: free lesson sequence
Magna Carta Scheme of Work
The following sequence of lessons is designed to build on pupils' existing knowledge and understanding of the medieval period. In particular it is assumed that pupils will already have an outline knowledge of the main features of medieval kingship and how monarchs exercised their power.
In determining the focus for...
Magna Carta Enquiry: free lesson sequence
-
Triumphs Show 155: beyond trivial judgements of 'bias'
Teaching History feature: celebrating and sharing success
Towards victory in that battle...
10A were nearly a term into their GCSE history course, working on an 1890-1918 British history ‘depth study'. They had already completed work on the Liberal welfare reforms and on the women's suffrage movement, and they had been practising a range of source evaluation approaches....
Triumphs Show 155: beyond trivial judgements of 'bias'
-
Cunning Plan 96: teaching citizenship through KS3 history
Teaching History feature
Big theme: dissent and the formation of the concept of ‘rights'
You can teach citizenship not only without compromising National Curriculum content, processes and concepts, but in such a way as to improve them. Review your department's ‘whole Key Stage' planning. Secure rigour and high levels of challenge by remembering...
Cunning Plan 96: teaching citizenship through KS3 history
-
Film: The Ruin of All Witches
Life and Death in the New World
Professor Malcom Gaskill joined the HA Virtual Branch on Thursday 10 December 2022 to discuss the subject of his book, The Ruin of all Witches, Life and Death in the New World, which was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize in 2022. His research explores the attitudes, beliefs and treatment of people as...
Film: The Ruin of All Witches
-
Triumphs Show 167: Keeping the 1960s complicated
Teaching History feature: celebrating and sharing success
During her PGCE year, it became evident to Rachel Coleman just how much pupils struggled with the complicated nature of history. They were troubled in particular by the lack of definitive answers, by the range of perspectives that might be held at the time of a particular event or development...
Triumphs Show 167: Keeping the 1960s complicated
-
Women in British Coal Mining
Historian article
With the final closure of Britain’s deep coal mines, Chris Wrigley examines the long-standing involvement of women in and around this challenging and dangerous form of work.
With the closure in 2015 of Thoresby and Kellingley mines, the last two working deep coal mines in Britain, leaving only open-cast coal...
Women in British Coal Mining
-
Talk to your inspector: making the most of your history inspection
Teaching History article
Scott Harrison gives the official view on what history teachers can expect from an OFSTED inspection. He emphasises the need to communicate, as fully as possible, the department's rationale underlying all professional practice. This is essential if the inspector is to analyse the reasons why standards are as they are....
Talk to your inspector: making the most of your history inspection
-
The Indian Mutiny - Pamphlet
Classic Pamphlet
Harrison's booklet takes an evaluative look, at not just the effects of the Indian Mutiny on Indo-British history, but at the reporting of this event over the years. He begins with a look at the prejudices of British writers and British historians' attitude towards the mutiny, highlighting the flawed confidence western...
The Indian Mutiny - Pamphlet
-
'Really weird and freaky': using a Thomas Hardy short story as a source of evidence in the Year 8 classroom
Teaching History article
Can 25 so-called ‘low ability’ girls access 30 pages of difficult text? Yes, much more easily they can access the tiny, sanitised, made-easy ‘gobbets’ that they are normally exposed to in the name of ‘access’. Mary Woolley makes the point that boring texts are those that tell you only essential...
'Really weird and freaky': using a Thomas Hardy short story as a source of evidence in the Year 8 classroom
-
Subject exemplification of the Initial Teacher Training National Curriculum for ICT: how the history examples were developed
Article
David Linsell describes how the Teacher Training Agency's history working group provided history-specific examples for the new ICT initial teacher training National Curriculum. He stresses the group's ‘history first' thinking. The aim was to provide realistic examples of ICT use, through which trainee teachers might develop and ultimately demonstrate their...
Subject exemplification of the Initial Teacher Training National Curriculum for ICT: how the history examples were developed
-
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
-
Introduction to the Survive & Thrive Units
Introduction
What's the point of the four Survive and Thrive units?Survive:There are today many teacher-training routes into the teaching profession. The teacher-training year is always a difficult balancing act between gaining enough classroom experience and enough understanding of the theories that underpin the discipline's key skills. As a result, each teacher-training...
Introduction to the Survive & Thrive Units
-
Progression without Levels
Briefing Pack
"As part of our reforms to the national curriculum , the current system of ‘levels' used to report children's attainment and progress will be removed. It will not be replaced." (DfE 2013)
When National Curriculum levels were removed in 2014, it was all too easy to fall into the trap of...
Progression without Levels
-
Building and assessing learner autonomy within the Key Stage 3 history classroom
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Oliver Knight is an experienced Advanced Skills Teacher who has taught in four different secondary schools, three of them multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-cultural and at least two wrestling with significant problems arising from social deprivation....
Building and assessing learner autonomy within the Key Stage 3 history classroom
-
What’s The Wisdom On... Similarity and difference?
Teaching History feature
How often have you found yourself challenging a pupil’s use of ‘they’ or ‘people’? How often have you teased them with, ‘Really? All of them?!’ Every time we do this, we are pushing our pupils to respect the complexity of the past. We are pressing them to use their knowledge...
What’s The Wisdom On... Similarity and difference?
-
Triumphs Show 173: Teaching Black Tudors
Teaching History journal feature
I am ashamed to admit that, until recently, my teaching of black history did not go beyond schemes of work on the transatlantic slave trade and the civil rights movement in the USA. This all changed in November 2017 when I heard Dr Miranda Kaufmann on the ‘BBC History Extra’...
Triumphs Show 173: Teaching Black Tudors
-
Beyond Multiple Choice: Questions and Answers, Pedagogy and Technology in the History classroom
E-CPD
*This unit was produced a number of years ago and whilst still relevant from the pedagogy side of things many of the ICT aspects are outdated.
Interactivity: A Grail-like QuestIn recent years the buzzword in many sectors, whether it be business, communications, entertainment or education, has been interactivity. One of...
Beyond Multiple Choice: Questions and Answers, Pedagogy and Technology in the History classroom
-
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
-
New, Novice or Nervous? 152: Describing Progression
Teaching History feature
'New, Novice or Nervous?' 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...
New, Novice or Nervous? 152: Describing Progression
-
Virtual Branch Recording: The cultural world of Elizabethan England
Article
In this Virtual Branch talk Professor Emma Smith provides a preview of her current research, which explores the lives and cultural undercurrents of Elizabethan England. What was influencing their cultural tastes and how much of it was new, or had it all been seen before?
Emma Smith is Professor of Shakespeare...
Virtual Branch Recording: The cultural world of Elizabethan England
-
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
-
New, Novice or Nervous? 167: Confidence with substantive knowledge
Teaching History feature
This page is for those new to the published writings of history teachers. Each problem you wrestle with, other teachers have wrestled with too...
History is a complex enterprise. In order to produce sophisticated arguments, pupils need firm foundations. One foundation is knowledge of the argumentative structures that historians...
New, Novice or Nervous? 167: Confidence with substantive knowledge
-
Move Me On 178: trainee sees all observation as assessment
The problem page for history mentors
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 178: trainee sees all observation as assessment
-
Building the Habit of Evidential Thinking
Teaching History article
Anna Aiken and her history colleagues had been reflecting on the stubborn problem of students failing to tackle GCSE questions about sources with adequate thought or understanding of evidence. Teaching them the typical requirements of the GCSE examination even appeared to make things worse, encouraging superficiality and failing to bring about secure responses. Aiken and her colleagues noted that the problems...
Building the Habit of Evidential Thinking
-
What was Witchcraft in the Early Sixteenth Century?
Article
In this article, Dr Jonathan Durrant (Principal Lecturer in History, University of South Wales) argues that we know no more now than we did in the late 1980s about what witchcraft was as men and women of the early sixteenth century understood it. Dr Durrant looks at evidence from Henry VIII's Witchcraft Act of 1542 to explore British and European perceptions of witches...
What was Witchcraft in the Early Sixteenth Century?