-
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Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.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
-
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
-
Does the linguistic release the conceptual? Helping Year 10 to improve their casual reasoning
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Does new vocabulary help students to express existing ideas for which they do not yet have words or does it actually give them new ideas which they did not previously hold? James Woodcock asks whether...
Does the linguistic release the conceptual? Helping Year 10 to improve their casual reasoning
-
'If Jesus Christ were amongst them, they would deceive Him'
Teaching History article
During discussions about planning, Tim Kemp and Charlotte Bickmore recently concluded that despite the name they give to their major Year 8 unit (The Making of the United Kingdom), they tend mainly to focus on England, and even more especially, on London. They have a good point. Ask an average...
'If Jesus Christ were amongst them, they would deceive Him'
-
Geography in the Holocaust: citizenship denied
Teaching History article
In this article David Lambert argues powerfully for teachers of the humanities to place citizenship at the centre of their work. He seeks to demonstrate that the division between subject-boundaries needs to be broken through if students are not to be denied what they are entitled to: an understanding of...
Geography in the Holocaust: citizenship denied
-
The teaching and learning of history for 15-16 year olds: have the Japanese anything to learn from the English experience
Teaching History article
What would you expect the differences to be between Japan and England in how pupils learn history in the post-14 phase? Perhaps your guess would be: Japanese school students learn a lot of historical facts and focus upon their own identity and English school students talk a lot more in...
The teaching and learning of history for 15-16 year olds: have the Japanese anything to learn from the English experience
-
'How do ideas travel?' East meets west - and history meets science
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Jamie Byrom is well-known to readers of Teaching History, not least for introducing us to the concept ‘professional wrestling' in the history department (Teaching History,133, Empire Edition). That article, authored with Michael Riley, focused on...
'How do ideas travel?' East meets west - and history meets science
-
Keeping the kids on message...one school's attempt at helping sixth form students to engage in historical debating using ICT
Teaching History article
At post-16 level, keeping the ‘kids’ on message is critical. Teaching and learning must be focused on the relatively narrow goals of the examination syllabus, but set within broader historical and historiographical contexts. Students need to how know, and where, to fit their ideas into those of existing historians. Ideally...
Keeping the kids on message...one school's attempt at helping sixth form students to engage in historical debating using ICT
-
Transforming Year 7's understanding of the concept of Imperialism: a case study on the Roman Empire
Teaching History article
Those of us in the U.K. know that many of our pupils finish their entire historical education without a satisfactory grasp of basic substantive concepts as they are used in history. Do all our low-attaining or ‘low ability’ 14-year-olds who are pressured to drop history at 14 really emerge with...
Transforming Year 7's understanding of the concept of Imperialism: a case study on the Roman Empire
-
Using this map and all your knowledge, become Bismarck
Teaching History article
Understanding the past is not an abstract exercise. Historical questions revolve around decisions made by real people under real pressure. As historians, we factor psychological pressure into our analysis. How, though, are we to enable our students to do the same? To study why Bismarck began a programme of overseas...
Using this map and all your knowledge, become Bismarck
-
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!
-
Conceptual awareness through categorising: using ICT to get Year 13 reading
Teaching History article
When presenting their practical approaches to post-16 teaching in Teaching History 103, both Richard Harris and Rachael Rudham argued that students need to ‘do’ things with information, to process it, play with it, classify it, if they are ever to understand or remember it. They made a case for not...
Conceptual awareness through categorising: using ICT to get Year 13 reading
-
Promote the past, celebrate the present: putting your history department in the news
Teaching History article
Dan Collins urges history teachers to promote both their subject and their department in the local press. Drawing on his experience of a history department in a large, mixed, multi-cultural comprehensive school in West London, Dan argues that there are many opportunities available, from national anniversaries to the success of...
Promote the past, celebrate the present: putting your history department in the news
-
It's a lot harder than politics'...students' experience of history at Advanced Level
Teaching History article
Does the experience of studying history in the sixth form prepare students adequately for study at university? There is plenty of attention given to the issue of continuity across the Key Stages but much less attention given to the transition from school into higher education. It is largely assumed that...
It's a lot harder than politics'...students' experience of history at Advanced Level
-
Getting Year 10 to understand the value of precise factual knowledge
Teaching History article
Up until the early 1990s, historical knowledge sometimes had rather a bad press. Various developments, in National Curriculum, at GCSE and, importantly, in ordinary teachers’ practice and debate, then led to a much closer integration of what we once called ‘content’ and ‘skills’. Tony McAleavy examined changing perceptions of the...
Getting Year 10 to understand the value of precise factual knowledge
-
School History Scene: the unique contribution of theatre to history teaching
Teaching History article
The study of history has to be vibrant. It is about real people, real dramas, real narrative, real human dilemmas. It is not surprising that, despite manifold structural pressures working against us, take-up for GCSE history is once again buoyant. There are all manner of reasons for this - is...
School History Scene: the unique contribution of theatre to history teaching
-
The Tenth Grade tells Bismarck what to do: using structured role-play to eliminate hindsight in assessing historical motivation
Teaching History article
Neomi Shiloah and Edna Shoham show how history teachers in Israel have begun to move away from traditional talk-and-chalk based teaching. They describe a blend of role-play and ICT that not only grabs pupils’ attention and caters for different styles of learning but also helps pupils to appreciate the difficulties...
The Tenth Grade tells Bismarck what to do: using structured role-play to eliminate hindsight in assessing historical motivation
-
So, what exactly does an AST do?
Teaching History article
Professional development lies at the heart of any thriving, forward-thinking profession. In teaching, however, despite the government’s recent drive to ‘modernise’ the profession, it can still be a bit hit and miss. What are the opportunities for ambitious and successful teachers of history to widen their horizons and engage in...
So, what exactly does an AST do?
-
Revealing the big picture: patterns, shapes and images at Key Stage 3.
Teaching History article
It is easy enough to incorporate overview and depth studies into a scheme-of-work. Units are carved up into those topics that last for several weeks and those that are covered in one. Isn’t that enough to satisfy the requirements of the National Curriculum? Many teachers have gone much further than...
Revealing the big picture: patterns, shapes and images at Key Stage 3.
-
Historical significance - the forgotten 'Key Element'?
Teaching History article
How many history departments regularly discuss the quality of their enquiries and teaching processes that relate to historical significance? It would not be unusual, in 2002, for a history department to spend time in a department meeting reflecting upon pupils’ learning about causation or to explore the connection between pupils’...
Historical significance - the forgotten 'Key Element'?
-
Teaching the Holocaust: the experience of Vad Vashem
Teaching History article
No institution is better known for its continuing work on the Holocaust than Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem. In this article Richelle Budd Caplan offers guidelines for teachers, based on its unrivalled experience. She demands that our teaching of this subject should aim to restore the identities of the victims. To do...
Teaching the Holocaust: the experience of Vad Vashem
-
You are members of a United Nations Commission...' Recent world crises simulations
Teaching History article
David Ghere presents a teaching and learning rationale for simulations where the location is not identified. This creates a deliberately artificial situation where the student can tackle the problems and carry out the decision-making and problem-solving exercise without preconceptions. The author does not recommend leaving the activity at this stage,...
You are members of a United Nations Commission...' Recent world crises simulations
-
Why essay-writing remains central to learning history at AS level
Teaching History article
Richard Harris challenges those who play down the essay in their teaching of the new AS Level. He argues that essay-writing embodies historical thinking and that it is therefore an essential tool for developing students’ understanding of history as an opinion-forming, judgement making process. Students need to practise developed, evidential...
Why essay-writing remains central to learning history at AS level
-
Finding voices in the past: exploring identity through the biography of a house
Teaching History article
Heather De Silva, Jenny Smith and Jason Tranter outline a new study unit, planned jointly by their history and geography departments and designed specifically to meet the new requirements for local history required by England’s recently revised National Curriculum for history. They aimed to help pupils to capture a part...
Finding voices in the past: exploring identity through the biography of a house
-
Databases, spreadsheets, and historical enquiry at Key Stage 3
Teaching History article
Databases and spreadsheets used to terrify many history teachers and even where some skill was gained, these tools were approached in a spirit of professional worthiness rather than of intellectual excitement. Rob Alfano oozes intellectual excitement and it is pretty obvious that he communicates this to his pupils. His approaches...
Databases, spreadsheets, and historical enquiry at Key Stage 3
