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Minimalist cause boxes for maximal learning: one approach to the Civil War in Year 8
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated
Ian Gibson and Susan McLelland describe their work using cause boxes. They identity the type of historical learning that they felt was taking place and the range of factors which they judged to be critical...
Minimalist cause boxes for maximal learning: one approach to the Civil War in Year 8
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Knowing what counts in history: historical understanding and the non-specialist teacher
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
If science graduates think that history teaching is not about questioning, that there is only ‘one answer' in history or that historical facts are unproblematic, does it matter? Should we care? Doug Newton and Lynn...
Knowing what counts in history: historical understanding and the non-specialist teacher
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Interpretation and poor Victorian Children
Year 6 Scheme of Work
Please note: this resource pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum.
This unit centres on the portrayal of poor, Victorian children. While factual knowledge about conditions in workhouses is an essential component of the unit, the main focus is on contrasting portrayals of one fictional Victorian child, Charles Dicken's Oliver Twist. The...
Interpretation and poor Victorian Children
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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
Teaching History 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. He showed that precisely-worded enquiry questions, positioned thoughtfully across the Key Stage, help to ensure progression, challenge and coherence. His picturesque image for this...
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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Working with sources: scepticism or cynicism? Putting the story back together again
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Many history teachers will remember the feature on Jamie Byrom's teaching in Times Educational Supplement of July 1996 where he attacked the recent fashion of history textbooks for encouraging only short (and usually formulaic) responses...
Working with sources: scepticism or cynicism? Putting the story back together again
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Move Me On 96: Struggling with language register - getting pitch right
Teaching History feature
This Issue's Problem: John Ball is having difficulty getting his language register right
Problem:
John is several weeks into his first school placement. He is very much enjoying the PGCE course. It is proving to be the intellectual and practical challenge that he hoped. He has come to the course...
Move Me On 96: Struggling with language register - getting pitch right
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Was Boudicca Britain's first hero?
Year 6 Scheme of Work
Please note: this resource pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum.
This unit centres on Queen Boudicca.
While factual knowledge about her life and the Roman occupation are an essential component of the unit, the main focus is on contrasting interpretations of Boudicca over time and exploration of the reasons behind her...
Was Boudicca Britain's first hero?
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Cunning Plan 95: Medicine through Time
Teaching History feature
GCSE development studies require students to assess change over vast periods of time. How can we cover the content whilst ensuring that our students do not lose sight of the big picture? Look to your choice of big enquiries for the solution. Here is one efficient and motivating approach devised...
Cunning Plan 95: Medicine through Time
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Kett's Rebellion 1549
Classic Pamphlet
On 20 june, 1549, the men of the town of Attleborough and of the neighbouring hamlets of Eccles and Wilby, in South Norfolk, threw down the fences recently erected by John Green, lord of the manor of Beckhall in Wilby, round part of the common over which they all had...
Kett's Rebellion 1549
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Potential and pitfalls in teaching 'big pictures' of the past
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Jonathan Howson summarises findings from the recent ESRC funded research project - Usable Historical Pasts - and suggests how its insights might inform continuing professional debate and enquiry concerning both frameworks and ‘big pictures'.
In...
Potential and pitfalls in teaching 'big pictures' of the past
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Cartoons and the historian
Historian article
Many historical books contain cartoons, but in most cases these are little more than a relief from the text, and do not make any point of substance which is not made elsewhere. Political cartoons should be regarded as much more than that. They are an important historical source which often...
Cartoons and the historian
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History, citizenship and Oliver Stone
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
When is a work of art a work of history? How can we get our students to appreciate the difference without ignoring the overlap? How should we ask our students to approach the historical film...
History, citizenship and Oliver Stone
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Community cohesion and the prevention of violent extremism
Community Cohesion Guide
A series of key stage targeted activities and schemes of work for promoting community cohesion and the prevention of violent extremism.
Community cohesion and the prevention of violent extremism
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'The end of all existence is debarred me': Disraeli's depression 1826-30
Historian article
During the years from 1826 to 1830 Benjamin Disraeli went through the slough of despond. His first major biographer,William Flavelle Monypenny, observed the ‘clouds of despondency which were now settling upon Disraeli's mind'. In his magisterial life of the great tory leader Robert Blake commented that ‘after completing Part II...
'The end of all existence is debarred me': Disraeli's depression 1826-30
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Telling and suggesting in the Conwy Valley
Teaching History article
Thelma Wiltshire applies a ‘telling' and ‘suggesting' strategy to an enquiry involving an historical site. Getting beyond more simplistic approaches to ‘fact' and ‘opinion', she describes how a pack of curriculum materials was designed to give pupils a precise language to talk about layers of certainty and uncertainty in their...
Telling and suggesting in the Conwy Valley
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Advice on Public Speaking
Podcast
At the Taunton/South West England heat of the Great Debate the head judge, Marcus Paul (Deputy Head of Queens College, Taunton), gave some valuable tips on public speaking.
If you are interested in public speaking or want to take part in our next Great Debate competition this podcast will prove...
Advice on Public Speaking
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Triumphs Show 136: how one history department changed pupils' and parents' perceptions of homework
Teaching History feature
Devising worthwhile and engaging homework tasks, week in week out, can prove both demanding and frustrating - particularly in contexts where we know students will have be chased to complete them.
How can we make homework planning easier and more effective - and cut down the time spent chasing recalcitrant...
Triumphs Show 136: how one history department changed pupils' and parents' perceptions of homework
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Telling tales: Developing students' own thematic and synoptic understandings at Key Stage 3
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Ed Brooker is as concerned as the other authors within this edition that students should be able to see and make meaning out of ‘big pictures' of the past.
He is acutely aware, however, that...
Telling tales: Developing students' own thematic and synoptic understandings at Key Stage 3
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Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal
Classic Pamphlets
New Deal is the name given to the policies of the American president Franklin D. Roosevelt during the 1930s. Elected in 1932, at a time of great economic depression, he sought to alleviate distress by using the inherent powers of government, and the New Deal era come to be seen...
Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal
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The Nation of the Scots and the Declaration of Arbroath
Classic Pamphlet
This pamphlet seeks to chart the progress of the Scottish struggle for independence after 1291 by considering the changing nature of the Scottish resistance. The primary sources are exiguous when compared to those bearing upon the English attempt at subjugation, and the interpretation offered is at best tentative: that initially...
The Nation of the Scots and the Declaration of Arbroath
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Education Objectives for the Study of History: A suggested framework
Classic Teaching History Pamphlets
Teachers of history in many parts of the country are now trying to formulate objectives for the study of their subject. This framework is put forward as a possible aid to them in a task which all admit to be a difficult one. Here, we try to spell out the...
Education Objectives for the Study of History: A suggested framework
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The New History: Theory into Practice
Classic Teaching History Pamphlets
Pleas for the 'New History' have now become so commonplace that, if implementation had in anyway matched recommendation, the term 'New' would have ceased to be appropriate. Unfortunately, there appeares to be little agreement as to what the 'New; History is or should be. In what sense, if any, can pupils...
The New History: Theory into Practice
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Move Me On 136: Struggling to teach elite politics/international relations
Teaching History feature
This issue's problem: Ernest Briggs, who wants pupils to engage with the real lives of ordinary people in the past, is struggling to learn to teach courses that he thinks are too narrowly focused on elite politics and international relations.
Ernest, initially one of the most animated and enthusiastic trainees on...
Move Me On 136: Struggling to teach elite politics/international relations
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Teaching history's big pictures: including continuity as well as change
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
School history teachers are not the only ones wrestling with the challenges of building ‘big pictures' that do justice to complexity. In this article, social and cultural historian Penelope Corfield puts our interest in long-term...
Teaching history's big pictures: including continuity as well as change
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Building memory and meaning
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Sarah Gadd attempted to re-think her department's usual approach to the two-year Key Stage 3. Concerned that a thematic approach might not be securing the overview perspective it was designed to achieve, she decided instead...
Building memory and meaning
