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Transforming Year 11's conceptual understanding of change
Teaching History article
For all that history teachers appreciate the need to build substantive knowledge and conceptual understanding systematically over time, they are also likely to have experienced that sickening moment when they realise that a Year 11 pupil has somehow missed something fundamental.
In Anna Fielding's case, her pupil's misconception was related to...
Transforming Year 11's conceptual understanding of change
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Young Quills reviews 2020
HA annual awards for best historical fiction for young people
The Young Quills Awards for Historical Fiction are annual awards that recognize the best in historical fiction for young people.
The way the HA organises the awards is that publishers nominate their new historical fiction books from the previous year, copies of those books are sent to schools, and the reviews of...
Young Quills reviews 2020
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Young Quills shortlist 2024
HA annual awards for best historical fiction for young people
It is here! We are delighted to announce the shortlist for 2024 Young Quills Awards for Historical Fiction. You can read reviews of all this year's entries here.
For readers aged 5-8 years
Title
Author
Publisher
Moving the Millers' Minnie Moore Mine Mansion
Dave Eggers (illus Júlia Sardà)
Walker
The Most Famous Rhinoceros...
Young Quills shortlist 2024
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Crime & Punishment - Factors and Time Periods
Podcast
The history of crime and punishment across time spreads over 2500 years. It is really important that you have a way of making sense of this. In this podcast you will hear how the course has been divided into time periods, and learn about the main factors that affect crime,...
Crime & Punishment - Factors and Time Periods
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Questions and answers about questions and answers
Teaching History article
Intrigued by the wide range of pupils’ responses to a sourcebased essay question, Jonathan Sellin decided to investigate why pupils were using sources in such different ways. Probing his own philosophical assumptions about history, and how they have changed over time, prompted Sellin to explore pupils’ assumptions about how historians use sources to make claims about the past. By asking pupils to...
Questions and answers about questions and answers
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School Direct: Salaried and Fee-paying routes
Routes into Teaching
What is the School Direct route into teaching?
The label ‘School Direct’ refers to training places that the government has allocated directly to a group of schools working in partnership to offer teacher training. Each partnership includes at least one school designated as a ‘Teaching School’, which is likely to...
School Direct: Salaried and Fee-paying routes
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Why we must change history GCSE
Teaching History article
A head of steam for change in GCSE history has been building for some time now amongst history teachers, heads of history, advisers, teacher-trainers, researchers, consultants and all who regularly engage in debate about history teaching and learning. All those who read widely, share their practice, experience many Key Stage...
Why we must change history GCSE
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The Chapel and the Nation
Classic Pamphlet
The Noncoformitst chapel has played a crucial role in the history of the English and Welsh nations. When the great French historian Elie Halevy sought to explain the contrast between the turbulent history of his own country and the peaceful evolution of England in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries...
The Chapel and the Nation
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Note-making, knowledge-building and critical thinking are the same thing
Teaching History article
Heidi Le Cocq sets out the classic problem of the history teacher: how does she cover the content and ensure that pupils reflect and analyse at the same time? She relates this to a another problem: how do you prepare pupils well for coursework (ensuring, for example, that they adopt...
Note-making, knowledge-building and critical thinking are the same thing
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New, Novice or Nervous? 161: Teaching substantive concepts
Teaching History feature
It’s worrying when pupils reach Year 9 or 10 unable to properly interpret or find fluency in major abstract nouns that crop up again and again in history. They should have bumped into ‘empire’, ‘republic’, ‘federation’, ‘peasantry’, ‘commons’ and ‘communism’, many times by Year 10, so why are many students...
New, Novice or Nervous? 161: Teaching substantive concepts
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Professional wrestling in the history department: a case study in planning the teaching of the British Empire at Key Stage 3
Article
Three years ago ( TH 99, Curriculum Planning Edition), Michael Riley illustrated ways in which history departments could exploit the increased flexibility of the revised National Curriculum.1 He showed that precisely-worded enquiry questions, positioned thoughtfully across the Key Stage, help to ensure progression, challenge and coherence. His picturesque image for...
Professional wrestling in the history department: a case study in planning the teaching of the British Empire at Key Stage 3
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Recorded lecture: Henry V: Henry the Conqueror?
Article
Henry V - Henry the Conqueror?
In this lecture former HA President Anne Curry Emeritus Professor of Medieval History Southampton addresses the question Henry V - Henry the Conqueror?'. She explores the relationship between Henry V, his court and those in France.
(Please note: if you have HA Membership and are...
Recorded lecture: Henry V: Henry the Conqueror?
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Assessing the Battle of Waterloo in the classroom
Teaching History article
Defying the Iron Duke: assessing the Battle of Waterloo in the classroom
The approaching bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo has stimulated debate about how it should be commemorated. This article reports a collaboration between the Waterloo200 Committee and Tom Wheeley, history teacher, to create a lesson sequence analysing the...
Assessing the Battle of Waterloo in the classroom
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Representations of Empire: Learning through Objects
Key Stages 2 and 3
Produced by the Northamptonshire Black History Association and originally published in 2008, this is one of a set of resources for schools offering a more inclusive map of the past that includes an appreciation of Black History within the local, national and global context. The resources provide a range of opportunities to promote diversity within the curriculum.
Contents of...
Representations of Empire: Learning through Objects
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Teaching students to argue for themselves - KS3
Teaching History article
Keeley Richards secured a fundamental shift in some of her Year 13 students' ability to argue. She did it by getting them to engage more fully with the practice of argument itself, as enacted by four historians. At the centre of her lesson sequence was an original activity: the historians'...
Teaching students to argue for themselves - KS3
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The Fall of Singapore 1942
Historian article
Churchill called it "the worst disaster and the largest capitulation in British history" and the Fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942 has certainly gathered its own mythology in the past 70 years. Was it all the fault of General Percival; were the guns pointing the wrong way; did the...
The Fall of Singapore 1942
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Understanding Key Concepts: Diversity
Article
Please note: this resource pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum. For more recent resources, see How diverse is your history curriculum? and Diversity links and resources for Secondary history.
This material enables history teachers to explore the concept of diversity.
Section 1 discusses the concept of diversity and its importance in the...
Understanding Key Concepts: Diversity
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Newcastle and the General Strike 1926
Historian article
The nine-day General Strike of May 1926 retains a totemic place in the nation's history nearly 100 years later. The Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill was among those who attempted to characterise it as anarchy and revolution, but this was hyperbole and largely inaccurate for, as Ellen Wilkinson (then...
Newcastle and the General Strike 1926
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Learning to read, reading to learn: strategies to move students from 'keen to learn' to 'keen to read'
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Conventionally, students learn to read before they come to secondary school. As a result, for the majority of our students, reading can be taken for granted. Yet sometimes, as history teachers, we can find that...
Learning to read, reading to learn: strategies to move students from 'keen to learn' to 'keen to read'
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'What's that stuff you're listening to Sir?' Rock and pop music as a rich source for historical enquiry
Teaching History article
Building on the wonderful articles by Mastin and Sweerts & Grice in TH 108, Simon Butler urges us here to make greater use of rock and pop music in history classrooms. His reasons are persuasive. First, it provides a rich vein of initial stimulus material to tap, helping us to...
'What's that stuff you're listening to Sir?' Rock and pop music as a rich source for historical enquiry
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William the Silent and the Revolt of the Netherlands
Classic Pamphlet
The Revolt of the Netherlands was the most successful of all uprisings in early modern Europe and had far reaching effects on the course of Dutch and European history. In accounting for its outcome recent research has emphasized the significance of impersonal forces of political, economic or religious nature rather...
William the Silent and the Revolt of the Netherlands
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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
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Walter Tull: Sport, War and Challenging Adversity
Resource packs and schemes of work for KS1 and KS3
Schemes of work and resource packs
Produced by the Northamptonshire Black History Association and originally published in 2008, these packs comprise a teachers' resource book and a schemes of work booklet of 10 activities for teachers to use in the classroom.
The resource book contains a description of how to use this resource,...
Walter Tull: Sport, War and Challenging Adversity
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What's happening in History? Trends in GCSE and 'A'-level examinations
Teaching History article
Teaching History frequently celebrates and analyses the practice of those history departments that appear to buck trends. In keeping with the Historical Association’s Campaign for History and its popular ‘Choosing History at 14’ Pack, a number of articles and Triumphs Shows in recent editions of Teaching History have celebrated the...
What's happening in History? Trends in GCSE and 'A'-level examinations
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Thinking across time: planning and teaching the story of power and democracy at Key Stage 3
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Ian Dawson's seminal work on developing chronological understanding - in Teaching History 117, on the website thinkinghistory.co.uk and elsewhere - will be familiar to readers. In this article Dawson considers the question, very much on...
Thinking across time: planning and teaching the story of power and democracy at Key Stage 3
