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Teaching pupils to analyse cartoons
Article
In this practical account of a key aspect of history departmental policy, Joseph O'Neill presents a rationale for the systematic teaching of analytical techniques. Alert to the dangers of mechanistic and formulaic examination responses, the author draws a distinction between the limiting rigidity of the learned response and the systematic...
Teaching pupils to analyse cartoons
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Promoting rigorous historical scholarship
Teaching History article
The history department at Cottenham Village College has one more member than you might expect. Ruth Brown is a teaching assistant (TA) and one of the longest-standing members of the department, and this article is about how her work has an impact on specific pupils, whole classes and teachers. The key...
Promoting rigorous historical scholarship
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Herbert Art Gallery Coventry - History Centre
Visit
Herbert Art Gallery and Museum's brand new History Centre is a treasure trove of information on the history of Coventry and its citizens from medieval times to the present .The huge range of original documents includes books, maps, newspapers, electoral registers and building plans. Photographs, oral history, microfilms and internet sources...
Herbert Art Gallery Coventry - History Centre
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Earth in vision: Enviromental Broadcasting
Historian article
Joe Smith, Kim Hammond and George Revill share some of the findings of their work examining what digital broadcast archives are available and which could be made available in future.
The BBC’s archives hold over a million hours of programmes, dating back to the 1930s (radio) and 1940s (television). It...
Earth in vision: Enviromental Broadcasting
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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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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Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.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
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Polychronicon 129: Reinterpreting Peterloo
Teaching History feature
The Peterloo massacre is one of the best-documented events in British history. It was the bloodiest political event of the 19th century on English soil.
At St Peter's Fields in central Manchester on Monday 16 August 1819, a rally of around 60,000 people seeking parliamentary reform was violently dispersed by...
Polychronicon 129: Reinterpreting Peterloo
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Rigorous, meaningful and robust: practical ways forward for assessment
Teaching History article
How do we know how good our students are at history? For that matter, how precisely do we really know what ‘good' at history even means? Even harder, how does our assessment of our students' attainment fit in with the National Curriculum Levels for Key Stage 3? Simon Harrison has...
Rigorous, meaningful and robust: practical ways forward for assessment
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Child labour in eighteenth century London
Historian article
On 1 March 1771, thirteen year-old John Davies, a London charity school boy, left his home in Half MoonAlley and made his way to Bishopsgate Street. There he joined thirteen other boys of similar age who, like him, were new recruits of the Marine Society, a charity that sent poor...
Child labour in eighteenth century London
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GCSE History
Introduction
There are a wide variety of changes happening in relation to GCSE. Current exam specifications (for students sitting exams in 2015) were subject to 'strengthening' measures. The extent of change varies from board to board and specification so you need to check with your own examination board that you are...
GCSE History
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Numismatics and History
Classic Pamphlet
Numismatics may be defined as the science of money in its physical aspects. It is only indirectly connected with the theory of money, which belongs to the sphere of economics. Its subject-matter consists of the material objects which in most societies are used to measure the worth of goods and...
Numismatics and History
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Making pupils want to explain: using Movie Maker to foster thoroughness and self-monitoring
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Sally Burnham shares her practice and reflections on the value of the software, ‘Movie Maker', for developing particular aspects of historical thinking and learning. In Teaching History 130, in the context of her Key Stage...
Making pupils want to explain: using Movie Maker to foster thoroughness and self-monitoring
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Using remote voting to involve everyone in classroom thinking at AS and A2
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Diana Laffin shares her findings on an action research project into the use of remote voting systems in the AS and A2 classroom. She was particularly interested in examining the impact of such devices on...
Using remote voting to involve everyone in classroom thinking at AS and A2
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Triumphs Show 102: communicating historical difference to children with literacy problems
Teaching History feature
With the summer break stretching forth its welcome hand and the final lesson with my lowband Year 7 class looming, I wanted to ensure that the enthusiasm and dedication that this class had shown throughout the year was kept alive over the holiday period. We had been studying the Norman...
Triumphs Show 102: communicating historical difference to children with literacy problems
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Cunning Plan 106: Political literacy
Teaching History feature
The onset of citizenship brings with it the need to cover political literacy. The topic can be seen as dry and complex by Year 9 pupils. But ‘democracy is not boring’ (Lang in Teaching History 96). We need to educate our pupils to understand the complexity and features of a...
Cunning Plan 106: Political literacy
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Elizabethan England
Links to Articles & Podcasts
Polychronichon – interpreting Elizabeth I
How Glorious was Gloriana?
Elizabeth I and II comparison
Women in Britain1500-1700
Revising the Elizabethans
Elizabethan England
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Henry VIII and Ministers
Links to Articles & Podcasts
Henry VIII
Faction in Tudor England
The Tudors podcasted series
Tudor government
Henry VIII and Ministers
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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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Year 7 use musical language to think about King John
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
As an enthusiastic musician, Alison Meikle is always looking for ways to use music in the history classroom. While Teaching History has seen plenty of articles on using musical sources as evidence (e.g. Mastin in Teaching...
Year 7 use musical language to think about King John
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Cultivating curiosity about complexity
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
A great deal has been written recently about the importance of encouraging and enabling all students to read beyond their comfort zones, beyond the textbook and certainly beyond the obvious requirements of an examination specification....
Cultivating curiosity about complexity
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Film: Medlicott Lecture 2024 - Professor Catherine Hall
Article
The Medlicott Medal is awarded annually for outstanding services and contributions to history. This year the Medal went to Professor Catherine Hall, who is Emerita Professor of Modern British Social and Cultural History at University College London. Professor Hall has a long-established academic record in feminist history and empire and post-colonial history. She was a...
Film: Medlicott Lecture 2024 - Professor Catherine Hall
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Move Me On 192: analytical focus with diverse histories
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 192: analytical focus with diverse histories
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Putting life into history: how pupils can use oral history to become critical historians
Teaching History article
However imaginative and enquiring classroom history may be, the history itself is usually constructed by a historian, a textbook author or a teacher. It is rare that pupils gain the opportunity to construct original histories of their own. Oral history can offer this opportunity. Yet as a methodology, oral history...
Putting life into history: how pupils can use oral history to become critical historians
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CRIC Research Project
Link
Recent conflicts in Europe, as well as abroad, have brought the deliberate destruction of the heritage of others, as a means of inflicting pain, to the foreground. With this has come the realisation that the processes involved and thus the long-term consequences are poorly understood. Heritage reconstruction is not merely...
CRIC Research Project
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Neville Chamberlain: Villain or Hero?
Historian article
Perhaps no other British figure of the twentieth century has been as vilified or as celebrated as Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister from 1937 to 1940. In 1999, a BBC Radio 4 poll of prominent historians, politicians and commentators rated Chamberlain as one of the worst Prime Ministers of...
Neville Chamberlain: Villain or Hero?
