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'How our area used to be back then': An oral history project in an east London school
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
How can oral history enquiries engage students with the study of history and help them connect their learning about the past to their present lives? How can oral history engage and develop students' understanding of...
'How our area used to be back then': An oral history project in an east London school
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Year 7 challenge stereotypes about the Mexica
Teaching History article
After discussing a new book about the Mexica (Aztecs) during a routine meeting with a trainee teacher, Niamh Jennings decided to construct a sequence of lessons around the history of the Mexica Empire. Struck by the vivid storytelling of historian Camilla Townsend in her book Fifth Sun, and fascinated by...
Year 7 challenge stereotypes about the Mexica
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Polychronicon 172: Health in the Middle Ages
Teaching History feature
The history of medicine, health, and illness between c. 500 AD and 1500 has received a great deal of scholarly attention in recent decades. It’s a fascinating field that can tell us a great deal about medieval people’s everyday lives and their day-to-day worries: after all, everyone is ill or...
Polychronicon 172: Health in the Middle Ages
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Developing KS3 students’ ability to challenge their history curriculum through an early introduction of significance
Teaching History article
Offered five weeks to teach ‘whatever he wanted’ to Year 7, Andrew Slater decided that he wished to tackle the concept of significance head-on early in his students’ time in his school. He chose the expectedly unfamiliar substantive content of the Khmer Empire, challenging his students to justify the significance of...
Developing KS3 students’ ability to challenge their history curriculum through an early introduction of significance
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How to make historical simulations adaptable, engaging and manageable
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Dan Moorhouse suggests that history teachers are sometimes put off role-play or simulations because the amount of preparation - intellectual and practical - appears both time-consuming and expensive. He argues that effective simulations need be...
How to make historical simulations adaptable, engaging and manageable
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Frameworks for linking pupils' evidential understanding with growing skill in structured, written argument: the 'evidence sandwich'
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
History teachers are increasingly good at designing exercises which develop skill in evidence analysis. The ubiquitous ‘source' is invariably analysed for utility and reliability. But how do pupils integrate such understandings with extended written work?...
Frameworks for linking pupils' evidential understanding with growing skill in structured, written argument: the 'evidence sandwich'
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Evidential understanding, period knowledge and the development of literacy: a practical approach to 'layers of inference' for Key Stage 3
Teaching History article
Claire Riley explains how she developed and improved the ‘layers of inference' diagram-already a popular device since Hilary Cooper's work-as a way of getting pupils fascinated by challenging texts and pictures. Working with the whole ability range in Year 9 she analyses her successes and failures, offering many practical suggestions...
Evidential understanding, period knowledge and the development of literacy: a practical approach to 'layers of inference' for Key Stage 3
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Expertise in its development stage: planning for the needs of gifted adolescent historians
Teaching History article
The Director of the National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth (NAGTY), Deborah Eyre, is one of the foremost advocates of gifted and talented children, and their education, in the UK. She plans to improve the education of the most able students by asking subject communities to work on how...
Expertise in its development stage: planning for the needs of gifted adolescent historians
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Cunning Plan 99: 'a world study after 1900'
Teaching History feature
This unit could still become a trawl through two World Wars and then the Cold War (if you don't run out of time). So, when reviewing your planning why not take advantage of being at the turn of a century? Ask pupils what will the twentieth century be remembered for?...
Cunning Plan 99: 'a world study after 1900'
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My essays could go on forever: using Key Stage 3 to improve performance at GCSE
Teaching History article
History teachers are waking up to the fact that you cannot raise standards in GCSE by very much if you leave this work until Year 10. To leave it that late is to resort to surface, tactical moves rather than to address the deep reasons why so many pupils find...
My essays could go on forever: using Key Stage 3 to improve performance at GCSE
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Interpretations of History: Issues for Teachers in the Development of Pupils' Understanding
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
This article is based on collaborative work between staff at a University department of educational studies and a comprehensive school. Ian Davies and Rob Williams reviews the status and meaning of interpretations in history education...
Interpretations of History: Issues for Teachers in the Development of Pupils' Understanding
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Year 9 face up to historical difference
Teaching History article
How many people does it take to make an Essex man? Year 9 face up to historical difference
Teaching her Key Stage 3 students in Essex, Catherine McCrory was struck by the stark contrast between their enthusiasm for studying diverse histories of Africa and the Americas and their reluctance to...
Year 9 face up to historical difference
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Cooperative Learning: the place of pupil involvement in a history textbook
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Pupil involvement is at the heart of every good history lesson. Its planning ensures that pupils are given the opportunity to think for themselves, share ideas, discuss evidence and debate points. The history education community...
Cooperative Learning: the place of pupil involvement in a history textbook
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Are we creating a generation of 'historical tourists'?
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
A trip to the battlefields of the First World War throws into stark relief the challenges presented by work on interpretations related to historical sites. Andrew Wrenn first drew attention to the difficulties of promoting...
Are we creating a generation of 'historical tourists'?
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How can I improve my use of ICT? Put history first!
Teaching History article
What is the difference between using lots of ICT and using it well? Dave Atkin draws upon work in his own department and with other Gloucestershire teachers in order to identify criteria for effective ICT use. These boil down to ‘putting history first' and getting maximum value out of the...
How can I improve my use of ICT? Put history first!
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The Holy Grail? GCSE History that actually enhances historical understanding!
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Teaching History 109, Examining History Edition, launched a range of debates about the role and value of our public examinations in history, debates which have continued in these pages and in history teacher conferences (such...
The Holy Grail? GCSE History that actually enhances historical understanding!
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Why go on a pilgrimage? Using a concluding enquiry to reinforce and assess earlier learning
Teaching History article
Jamie Byrom describes the learning activities within a final enquiry for a National Curriculum area of study - Britain 1066-1500. The strong message in this article is that the learning in each enquiry is only as good as the planning and teaching of the enquiries that precede it. Byrom's model...
Why go on a pilgrimage? Using a concluding enquiry to reinforce and assess earlier learning
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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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Exploring change and continuity with Year 7
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 about causation in the pages of Teaching History. From camels to linguistics, this is a second-order concept that teachers and pupils frequently deliberate.
Departments balance the need for substantive knowledge with explicit...
Exploring change and continuity with Year 7
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Active remembrance
Teaching History article
A year after the end of the First World War, George V stated: "I believe that my people in every part of the Empire fervently wish to perpetuate the memory of the Great Deliverance and those who laid down their lives to achieve it."
From that moment, the idea of large-scale remembrance...
Active remembrance
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Navigating the ‘imperial history wars’
Teaching History article
Concerned by the growing tendency of politicians and press to revive the moral balance-sheet approach to British imperial history and by some evidence of its resurgence in schools, Alex Benger set about devising a framework which would keep pupils’ analysis rigorously historical, rather than moral and politicised. In this article,...
Navigating the ‘imperial history wars’
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Slaying dragons and sorcerers in Year 12: in search of historical argument
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Reflecting on his GCSE and post-16 students' essays, Michael Fordham began to wonder if there were something missing in the way he taught students to write. Work on structure that was designed to strengthen argument...
Slaying dragons and sorcerers in Year 12: in search of historical argument
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Substantial sculptures or sad little plaques? Making 'interpretations' matter to Year 9
Teaching History article
Andrew Wrenn builds upon current, popular and practical work on ‘interpretations of history' analysed in recent editions. Using the public's responses to the temporary exhibition on the slave trade housed at Bristol City Museum, he offers a range of fascinating practical activities for Year 9 pupils. Many of these could...
Substantial sculptures or sad little plaques? Making 'interpretations' matter to Year 9
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New alchemy or fatal attraction? History and citizenship
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
The citizenship curriculum at both Key Stages 3 and 4 is currently being redefined and much has been said recently about the contribution that history could or should make to citizenship agendas and to the...
New alchemy or fatal attraction? History and citizenship
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Polychronicon 134: The Great War and Cultural History
Teaching History feature
Over the past two decades the historiography of the Great War has witnessed something of a revolution. Although historical revisionism is, of course, nothing out of the ordinary, the speed with which long-held assumptions about the First World War and its impact have been swept away has been quite astonishing....
Polychronicon 134: The Great War and Cultural History
