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Assessing the Battle of Waterloo in the classroom
Teaching History article
Defying the Iron Duke: assessing the Battle of Waterloo in the classroom
The approaching bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo has stimulated debate about how it should be commemorated. This article reports a collaboration between the Waterloo200 Committee and Tom Wheeley, history teacher, to create a lesson sequence analysing the...
Assessing the Battle of Waterloo in the classroom
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Cunning Plan 183: Teaching a broader Britain, 1625–1714
Teaching History feature
‘Gruesome!’ was how we decided to describe our teaching of seventeenth-century British history, although ‘inadequate’ was probably more accurate. Oh, how much was wrong! We had…
Incoherence. The Civil War and Protectorate years plonked in between the Elizabethan Age and the origins of the industrial revolution. We had lost years!
A...
Cunning Plan 183: Teaching a broader Britain, 1625–1714
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JFK: the medium, the message and the myth
Teaching History article
Dale Banham and Russell Hall present a multi-faceted rationale for an in-depth study of the 1991 film, JFK. They treat it as an ‘interpretation’ in the National Curriculum sense, constructing a varied and meticulous learning journey towards its analysis. By the end of that journey pupils had examined the central...
JFK: the medium, the message and the myth
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Move Me On 130: How to generate class discussion
Teaching History feature
This Issue's Problem: Dot Bradford would love to generate much more productive small group talk and worthwhile class discussion but can't work out how to manage it.
Dot came to the PGCE straight from a history degree and was originally inspired by approaches quite different from her own school experience....
Move Me On 130: How to generate class discussion
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Questions and answers about questions and answers
Teaching History article
Intrigued by the wide range of pupils’ responses to a sourcebased essay question, Jonathan Sellin decided to investigate why pupils were using sources in such different ways. Probing his own philosophical assumptions about history, and how they have changed over time, prompted Sellin to explore pupils’ assumptions about how historians use sources to make claims about the past. By asking pupils to...
Questions and answers about questions and answers
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English, history and song in Year 9: mixing enquiries for a cross-curricular approach to teaching the most able
Teaching History article
Several articles in previous editions of Teaching History have touched on the themes of crosscurricularity, Assessment for Learning and the most able. Tony McConnell and Mandy Monaghan bring these themes together in describing how the English and history departments in their school have taken advantage of a natural area of...
English, history and song in Year 9: mixing enquiries for a cross-curricular approach to teaching the most able
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Stretching the straight jacket of assessment: use of role play and practical demonstration to enrich pupils' experience of history at GCSE and beyond
Teaching History article
As in his previous, popular and influential Teaching History articles, Ian Luff has once again provided us with a wide range of high-quality, practical activities informed by a rigorous and persuasive rationale. This time, he has turned his attention to the use of role play and active demonstration at GCSE...
Stretching the straight jacket of assessment: use of role play and practical demonstration to enrich pupils' experience of history at GCSE and beyond
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Move Me On 106: Teaching AS level
Teaching History feature
This Issues Problem: Matilda Angevin, PGCE history student, is finding it hard to get to grips with teaching AS Level.
Move Me On 106: Teaching AS level
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Basket weaving in Advanced level history...how to plan and teach the 100 year study
Teaching History article
The current specifications for AS/A2 history require students to study change over a period of at least 100 years. Given that the 100 year study represents just one module out of six and also that it may not complement any of the other modules selected and may therefore be wholly...
Basket weaving in Advanced level history...how to plan and teach the 100 year study
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Move Me On 104: Establishing lesson goals
Teaching History feature
This Issue's Problem: Bill norman, PGCE History student, is struggling with lesson goals.
Move Me On 104: Establishing lesson goals
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Move Me On 154: Mixed Ability Groups
Teaching History feature
This issue's problem:Joe Priestley is having problems providing sufficient challenge for the higher attainers within his mixed ability groups
Joe Priestley has settled into his training placement very well and has impressed other members of the history department with his lively and engaging ideas.
In his early teaching he was...
Move Me On 154: Mixed Ability Groups
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Triumphs Show 141: using family photos to bring the diversity of Jewish lives to life
Teaching History feature
Headteachers, Hungarians and hats: using family photos to bring the diversity of Jewish lives to life
It is 9.35am on a wet Tuesday. As the rain falls outside, fingers twitch in a Y ear 9 history classroom. The instruction is given and 28 pairs of hands spring into action, rifling...
Triumphs Show 141: using family photos to bring the diversity of Jewish lives to life
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Getting ready for the Grand Prix: Learning how to build a substantial argument in year 7
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated
Dale Banham’s Grand Prix race has helped many history teachers in Suffolk to think freshly about metaphors and images that will inspire and enable pupils (especially underachieving boys) to write analytically and at length. In...
Getting ready for the Grand Prix: Learning how to build a substantial argument in year 7
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Triumphs Show 146: putting an enquiry together
Teaching History feature: celebrating and sharing success
Department meetings have a range of purposes, and all teachers will be aware of some of the more tedious tasks that have to be completed at such meetings. The most exciting meetings for us are those where we can sit down as a history department and design a new enquiry....
Triumphs Show 146: putting an enquiry together
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Move Me On 119: Teaching EAL students
Teaching History feature
This Issue's Problem: Beth is worried about how to make history accessible to the students with English as an Additional Language (EAL) in her classes.
Move Me On 119: Teaching EAL students
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Move Me On 103: Failing to improve pupils' understanding of evidence
Teaching History feature
This Issue's problem: Josie, PGCE history student, is finding that her use of the department's exercises on sources is not improving pupils' understanding of evidence.
Move Me On 103: Failing to improve pupils' understanding of evidence
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Thinking about… the Partition of British India in August 1947
Teaching History article
Shortly before midnight on 14 August 1947 Jawaharlal Nehru, leader of the Indian National Congress (the main nationalist organisation in British India), rose in India’s Constituent Assembly in New Delhi to deliver his famous ‘Tryst with Destiny’ speech that marked the end of 200 years of British rule in the...
Thinking about… the Partition of British India in August 1947
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Short cuts to deep knowledge
Teaching History article
Sam Pullan explains how a chance encounter has helped him to improve his introduction to the modern themes and founding documents of US politics. Working with a professional historian whom he met, by chance, over dinner, he was able to produce lessons at the cutting edge of subject knowledge to...
Short cuts to deep knowledge
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Engaging with each other: how interactions between teachers inform professional practice
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
What kinds of interaction take place in a history department? What might be their value? Between 1999 and 2003, Simon Letman, then history teacher and Director of Studies at The Royal Hospital School in Ipswich,...
Engaging with each other: how interactions between teachers inform professional practice
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Working as a team to teach the Holocaust well: a language-centred approach
Teaching History article
Clear themes run through the work of the history department at Huntington School. A remarkably consistent emphasis on language and literacy, including work on speaking and listening of many types, is a hallmark of this sequence of six Year 9 lessons on the Holocaust, described in detail by head of...
Working as a team to teach the Holocaust well: a language-centred approach
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Cunning Plan 102.1: teaching decolonisation and the end of apartheid
Article
Cunning Plan for teaching decolonisation and the end of apartheid to 13 and 14 year-olds. The rationale behind this teaching unit is manifold: first, it takes away the idea in the children’s minds that all that happened in the twentieth century is world war. Second, it is designed to appeal...
Cunning Plan 102.1: teaching decolonisation and the end of apartheid
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History's secret weapon: the enquiry of a disciplined mind
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
As a local authority adviser, Andrew Wrenn's advice has often been sought by history departments, both those seeking to resist ill-conceived and potentially damaging cross-curricular initiatives and those keen to exploit new opportunities for meaningful...
History's secret weapon: the enquiry of a disciplined mind
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Do we need another hero? Rorke's Drift
Teaching History article
Do we need another hero? Year 8 get to grips with the heroic myth of the Defence of Rorke's Drift in 1879
Mike Murray shares a lesson sequence in which his students examined changing interpretations of the Battle of Rorke's Drift in 1879. Building on earlier work on teaching interpretations...
Do we need another hero? Rorke's Drift
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Move Me On 122: Catering for different learning styles
Teaching History feature
This Issue's Problem: Maria Monte has decided that catering for different learning styles will solve all her problems of differentiation in history.
Move Me On 122: Catering for different learning styles
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Polychronicon 121: interpretations of the American Revolution
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 of 'Polychronicon'focuses on the interpretations of the American Revolution.
Polychronicon 121: interpretations of the American Revolution