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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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Polychronicon 122: The Gunpowder Plot
Teaching History feature
Our Polychronicon in Teaching History is a regular feature helping school history teachers to update their subject knowledge, with special emphasis on recent historiography and changing interpretation. This edition of 'Polychronicon' focuses on interpretations of the Gunpowder Plot.
Polychronicon 122: The Gunpowder Plot
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Three lessons about a funeral: Second World War cemeteries and twenty years of curriculum change
Article
Mike Murray analyses the way in which curriculum development has broadened and strengthened our conceptions of high standards in historical learning for school students. He pays tribute to ground-breaking new theoretical principles from the Schools History Project and from new emphases upon contextual knowledge and ‘interpretations' in the first National...
Three lessons about a funeral: Second World War cemeteries and twenty years of curriculum change
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Ordinary pupils, extraordinary results: a structured approach to raising attainment at GCSE
Article
It is a very common complaint that history GCSE is unfairly demanding compared with other subjects. Well, it probably is. But that does not stop history at Robert Clack School from outperforming every other subject except art. Nor is this the story of one of those schools with an unusually...
Ordinary pupils, extraordinary results: a structured approach to raising attainment at GCSE
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Triumphs Show 121: 60th Anniversary commemoration of the end of WWII
Teaching History feature
It’s early July 2004, and the history department of Harrogate Grammar School are chatting in the staff room enjoying a bit of spare time now that exam classes have disappeared. The subject of what the department will do next year when it comes to trips, speakers and special days comes...
Triumphs Show 121: 60th Anniversary commemoration of the end of WWII
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Super history teaching on the Superhighway: the Internet for beginners
Article
Isobel Jenkins and Mike Turpin answer some of those basic questions which many history teachers are afraid to ask, like ‘What exactly is it anyway?' and ‘Is this really worth my valuable time?' They outline the internet's value as a means of improving information access and as a way of...
Super history teaching on the Superhighway: the Internet for beginners
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Move Me On 93: Not making progress in use of ICT
The problem page for history mentors
Millie Marvel, PGCE Student is not making use of ICT to teach history in the classroom
Problem:
Millie Marvel, student history teacher, is in Term 2 of her PGCE year. She enjoys using ICT and is highly competent in her use of several applications. However, lessons in which she has chosen...
Move Me On 93: Not making progress in use of ICT
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The Hopi is different from the Pawnee: using a datafile to explore pattern and diversity
Article
Dave Martin identifies the factors which led to new knowledge and understanding in a mixed ability Year 7 class. Not only did these pupils acquire greater knowledge of the native peoples of North America, they also learned transferable techniques for identifying and analysing pattern and diversity. Clear learning objectives led...
The Hopi is different from the Pawnee: using a datafile to explore pattern and diversity
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History using information technology: past, present and future
Article
Alaric Dickinson gives an overview of recent developments in the teaching of history using ICT and relates these to different contexts. He examines the appeal of the History Using IT materials and places these in the context of earlier developments. He also considers the role of ICT in the context...
History using information technology: past, present and future
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Polychronicon 120: The past as analogy in popular music
Teaching History feature
Polychronicon is a regular feature helping school history teachers to update their subject knowledge, with special emphasis on recent historiography and changing interpretation. This edition focuses on the interpretations of popular music.
Polychronicon 120: The past as analogy in popular music
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What about history? Lessons from seven years with project-based learning
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Alternative curriculum models can take many forms. Some seem to be imposed on reluctant history teachers with little opportunity for planning. Other teachers are given the opportunity to really embed and revise models that might...
What about history? Lessons from seven years with project-based learning
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What's happening in History? Trends in GCSE and 'A'-level examinations
Teaching History article
Teaching History frequently celebrates and analyses the practice of those history departments that appear to buck trends. In keeping with the Historical Association’s Campaign for History and its popular ‘Choosing History at 14’ Pack, a number of articles and Triumphs Shows in recent editions of Teaching History have celebrated the...
What's happening in History? Trends in GCSE and 'A'-level examinations
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Active Historical Thinking
Teaching History article
‘Thinking Skills' have been much discussed in England since, at least, the revision of the National Curriculum in 2000 and have recently morphed, with the 2008 revisions to the curriculum, into ‘Personal, Learning and Thinking Skills'. Often, however, such ‘skills' are discussed in abstract and cross-curricular ways, outside the context...
Active Historical Thinking
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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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Move Me On 91: work with historical sources lacks focus
The problem page for history mentors
Problem: Mike Jones, student history teacher, is half-way through his PGCE year. He is making unusually good progress in his knowledge, understanding and practice with regard to the use of sources in history. He also appears to have no difficulty with classroom management and relationships with pupils. He easily creates...
Move Me On 91: work with historical sources lacks focus
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Frameworks for linking pupils' evidential understanding with growing skill in structured, written argument: the 'evidence sandwich'
article
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? How can they be helped to use these understandings in the creation of written argument?...
Frameworks for linking pupils' evidential understanding with growing skill in structured, written argument: the 'evidence sandwich'
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Cunning Plan 137: making homework more exciting
Teaching History journal feature
Ever since I started teaching, homework has been something of a bugbear. Administration alone is a hassle: not only remembering when to set and collect it in, but keeping track of the various students who fail to deliver anything on time (except highly creative excuses) and of the follow-up action...
Cunning Plan 137: making homework more exciting
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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
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Triumphs Show 116: A practical way of teaching the complexities of ‘The Troubles’ at GCSE
Teaching History feature
Helping pupils to understand sectarian divisions in Northern Ireland is not easy. For pupils to comprehend the origins and complexities of ‘the Troubles’ they need a big picture. That big picture could be viewed as the interaction of three concepts: time, place and identity. If pupils can at least glimpse...
Triumphs Show 116: A practical way of teaching the complexities of ‘The Troubles’ at GCSE
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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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MTL in a Nutshell
Teaching History feature
Help nutshell! I hear that all new history teachers being trained now have to have a Masters degree.
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
It's certainly not compulsory, but you're right that a new kind of Masters course - a Masters...
MTL in a Nutshell
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Polychronicon 136: Interpreting the Beatles
Teaching History feature
‘The Beatles were history-makers from the start,' proclaimed the liner notes for the band's first LP in March 1963. It was a bold claim to make on behalf of a beat combo with one charttopping single, but the Beatles' subsequent impact on 1960s culture put their historical importance (if not...
Polychronicon 136: Interpreting the Beatles
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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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Shaping macro-analysis from micro-history
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Many history teachers are inspired by the work of historians and want to share their stories and arguments with students in school. Hywel Jones found Malcolm Gaskill's Witchfinders ‘gripping and intriguing'.
He decided to use...
Shaping macro-analysis from micro-history
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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
