-
Developing transferable knowledge at A-level
Teaching History article
From a compartmentalised to a complicated past: developing transferable knowledge at A-level
Students find it difficult to join up the different things they study into a complex account of the past. Examination specifications do not necessarily help with this because of the way in which history is divided up into...
Developing transferable knowledge at A-level
-
Move Me On 157: Getting knowledge across
Teaching History feature
This issue's problem: Rose Valognes feels she hasn't got enough ways of getting knowledge across to the students before they can do something with it.
After a positive start to her training year, Rose Valognes seems to have got stuck in a rut in her thinking, with her lessons falling...
Move Me On 157: Getting knowledge across
-
Using timelines in assessment
Teaching History article
Bridging a twenty-year gap in their practice, Elizabeth Carr and Christine Counsell bring out the similarities in their use of timelines in their planning, teaching and assessment. What they also have in common is the fact that their experimentation with timelines as a way of strengthening cumulative knowledge emerged in...
Using timelines in assessment
-
Securing contextual knowledge in year 10
Teaching History article
Using regular, low-stakes tests to secure pupils' contextual knowledge in Year 10
Lee Donaghy was concerned that his GCSE students' weak contextual knowledge was letting them down. Inspired by a mixture of cognitive science and the arguments of other teachers expressed in various blogs, he decided to tackle the problem...
Securing contextual knowledge in year 10
-
Building and assessing historical knowledge on three scales
Teaching History article
The knowledge that ‘flavours' a claim: towards building and assessing historical knowledge on three scales
While marking some Year 11 essays, Kate Hammond found her interest caught by significant differences between one kind of strong analysis and another. Some scored high marks but were less convincing. The achievement in these...
Building and assessing historical knowledge on three scales
-
Making History Accessible
Multipage Article
My students struggle with...
Every student has an entitlement to learn history and to high quality history teaching. In this section you will find support for helping students who struggle with specific aspects of learning history.
For each aspect of learning history that students struggle with you will find:
A...
Making History Accessible
-
Year 9 - Connecting past, present and future
Teaching History article
Possible futures: using frameworks of knowledge to help Year 9 connect past, present and future
How can we help pupils integrate history into coherent ‘Big Pictures' or mental frameworks? Building on traditions of classroom research and theorising reported in earlier editions of Teaching History, Dan Nuttall reports how his department set...
Year 9 - Connecting past, present and future
-
Knowledge and the Draft NC
Teaching History article
Silk purse from a sow's ear? Why knowledge matters and why the draft History NC will not improve it
Katie Hall and Christine Counsell attempt to construct a Key Stage 3 scheme of work out of the draft National Curriculum for history that was released for consultation in England in...
Knowledge and the Draft NC
-
Planning and teaching linear GCSE
Teaching History article
Planning and teaching linear GCSE: inspiring interest, maximising memory and practising productively
As proposed changes to the National Curriculum are furiously debated, and details of future changes to GCSE are anxiously awaited, history teachers in England are already wrestling with the implications of one change to the public examination system:...
Planning and teaching linear GCSE
-
The Holocaust in history and history in the curriculum
Teaching History article
In this powerfully argued article Paul Salmons focuses directly on the distinctive contribution that a historical approach to the study of the Holocaust makes to young people's education. Not only does he question the adequacy of objectives focused on eliciting purely emotional responses; he issues a strong warning that turning...
The Holocaust in history and history in the curriculum
-
Building and assessing a frame of reference in the Netherlands
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Concerns about our ability to equip young people with a frame of reference that they can actually use to orient themselves in time are widespread. The challenges were extensively debated within the last issue of...
Building and assessing a frame of reference in the Netherlands
-
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
-
Raising the bar: developing meaningful historical consciousness at Key Stage 3
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
How can we help pupils make sense of the history that they learn so that the whole adds up to more than the sum of its parts? How can we help pupils develop and sophisticate...
Raising the bar: developing meaningful historical consciousness at Key Stage 3
-
Weighing a century with a website: teaching Year 9 to be critical
Teaching History article
Two years ago the history department at Hampstead School was one of two history departments chosen to model very effective use of IT in history for a BECTA research study. Two years on, what has the department been up to? All of the factors identified in that study -an ICT...
Weighing a century with a website: teaching Year 9 to be critical
-
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
-
The return of King John: using depth to strengthen overview in the teaching of political change
Teaching History article
Dale Banham's article in Teaching History 92, ‘Getting ready for the Grand Prix: learning to build a substantiated argument in Year 7' has influenced much debate about extended writing. It has been influential way beyond the history education community. It also raised new questions about the management of historical content....
The return of King John: using depth to strengthen overview in the teaching of political change
-
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
