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Distant voices, familiar echoes: exploiting the resources to which we all have access
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
As an Advanced Skills Teacher, Denise Thompson has often been at the forefront of experimental developments. Five years ago, she reported on trials of an online discussion forum used to sharpen A level students' historical...
Distant voices, familiar echoes: exploiting the resources to which we all have access
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Cunning Plan 134: local history at KS3
Teaching History feature
Question: How can we plan to integrate local history into Key Stage 3 schemes of work so that pupils are engaged by the relevance of the subject across different periods of time?
Local history can come in all shapes and sizes, from a large-scale oral history project to the perusal...
Cunning Plan 134: local history at KS3
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Seeing a different picture: exploring migration through the lens of history
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Rosie Sheldrake and Dale Banham here share the results of their desire to use the curriculum changes which are upon us to do something which they had intended for some time. Their modern world study...
Seeing a different picture: exploring migration through the lens of history
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Polychronicon 133: The Crusader States in the Levant
Teaching History feature
In my first Polychronicon article on ‘The Crusades' I pointed out that research historians are increasingly specialising either on the crusades themselves or on the crusader states. There are good reasons for this, but in my opinion it makes little sense for school or university teachers to treat these topics...
Polychronicon 133: The Crusader States in the Levant
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Triumphs Show 133: Getting more pupils choosing History at GCSE
Teaching History feature
It is often remarked that history is under pressure nationally at GCSE. Our history numbers have never been enormous, and we have recently gone down from 2 sets to one set. The crunch came in 2007 when we collapsed to a dismal 12 students. A variety of factors may have...
Triumphs Show 133: Getting more pupils choosing History at GCSE
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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
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Move Me On 129: Feels out of his depth teaching controversial issues
Teaching History feature
This Issue's Problem: Ajmal Khan has recently started his second school placement. Although he is very pleased to be working now in an ethnically diverse urban school (after a first placement in a largely white suburban setting), he is feeling somewhat overawed at the prospect of teaching Year 9 about...
Move Me On 129: Feels out of his depth teaching controversial issues
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A hankering for the blank spaces: enabling the very able to explore the limits of GCSE
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Many of us would love to have the problems encountered by Oliver Knight at his previous school. His students were simply doing too well - leaving him wondering how to stretch them to the limit...
A hankering for the blank spaces: enabling the very able to explore the limits of GCSE
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Polychronicon 132: Roman Emperors
Teaching History feature
Everyone has seen a Roman emperor. Whether at the British Museum's current Hadrian exhibition, or in Derek Jacobi's stuttering Claudius, or in Joachim Phoenix's psychotic Commodus, most people are aware of Roman emperors to some extent or other.1 They can be semi-legendary, or have been entirely ignored by posterity. Some...
Polychronicon 132: Roman Emperors
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Cunning Plan 132: Year 7 and the new National Curriculum
Teaching History feature
How can we plan for a coherent Year 7 that makes the most of the new National Curriculum freedom and its almost limitless possible content? Answer: borders, boundaries (and books)
Please note: this article was published before the current 2014 National Curriculum.
Cunning Plan 132: Year 7 and the new National Curriculum
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Teaching pupils how history works
Teaching History article
In the last edition of Teaching History Jayne Prior and Peter John presented an approach to extended writing that relied upon pupils’ earlier work.1 Pupil indignation was key. Furious at the blandness of some text presented to them, they used their own knowledge of colour, detail and drama to challenge...
Teaching pupils how history works
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Move Me On 100: Deciding on lesson objectives
Teaching History feature
This Issue's Problem: Hugh Horsea, PGCE student, is having difficulty deciding on his lesson objectives
Problem:
Hugh is a few weeks into his first placement. He is enthusiastic and hard working and was successful in the first teaching tasks that he undertook. However, now that he has moved beyond directed...
Move Me On 100: Deciding on lesson objectives
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Helping pupils with Special Educational Needs to develop a lifelong curiosity for the past
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Pupils in England have an entitlement to study history or geography until the age of sixteen. However, increasingly, some pupils seem to be discouraged from taking up this opportunity as it can be seen as...
Helping pupils with Special Educational Needs to develop a lifelong curiosity for the past
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Polychronicon 131: At your leisure
Teaching History feature
Leisure time - like time itself - is fluid, and keeps changing its social meanings. From a ‘serious' high political perspective there is no history of leisure and leisure is trivial. Such perspectives have long lost their grip on the historical imagination, of course, and we have had histories of...
Polychronicon 131: At your leisure
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Was the workhouse really so bad? An encounter with a cantekerous tramp
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Have you stuggled to find an invigorating, exciting local enquiry to motivate your Year 9 class ? How do you engage students in lively debate? This was the challenge for one Norfolk school who wanted...
Was the workhouse really so bad? An encounter with a cantekerous tramp
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The how of history: using old and new textbooks in the classroom to develop disciplinary knowledge
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
What are textbooks for and how do we think of them? As inevitably partial views of the past that reflect their purpose and moment of construction and their authors' location in physical and ideological time...
The how of history: using old and new textbooks in the classroom to develop disciplinary knowledge
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Polychronicon 130: Dental, transcendental, regimental: Making Mangal Pandey
Teaching History feature
Have you stuggled to find an invigorating, exciting local enquiry to motivate your Year 9 class ? How do you engage students in lively debate? This was the challenge for one Norfolk school who wanted to develop a local study on the Poor Law and to create opportunities for students...
Polychronicon 130: Dental, transcendental, regimental: Making Mangal Pandey
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Move Me On 128: Assessment without Levels
Teaching History feature
This Issue's Problem: Meg Dawson is keen to find ways of recognising and recording students’ progress and achievements without resorting to ‘levels’.
Move Me On 128: Assessment without Levels
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Building a better past: plans to reform the curriculum
Teaching History article
David Nicholls summarises some of the problems facing history education and offers a commentary on various cases for reform. He argues that we need to look at provision holistically from 5 to 21 and urges collaboration across phases and sectors. By working more closely together, the history community as a...
Building a better past: plans to reform the curriculum
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Life by sources A to F: really using sources to teach AS history
Teaching History article
The work of Gary Howells will be familiar to many readers of Teaching History—indeed, his last article is heavily cited elsewhere in this edition. He presents here the case in favour of using sources at AS level (16-17 years old). Clearly, historians need to have some form of acquaintance with...
Life by sources A to F: really using sources to teach AS history
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Move Me On 127: Using PowerPoint as anything more than glorified chalk and talk
Teaching History feature
This Issue's Problem: Nat Turner is feeling confused and aggrieved about what is expected of him in using ICT in his teaching.
Move Me On 127: Using PowerPoint as anything more than glorified chalk and talk
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Cunning Plan 127: Abolitionist icons
Teaching History feature
What makes someone an Icon? A cunning plan to explore the relative significance of individuals involved in abolishing the slave trade.
Cunning Plan 127: Abolitionist icons
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Move Me On 126: Setting worthwhile homework
Teaching History feature
Val Messalina is a lively and engaging young student teacher who has come straight to the PGCE course after completing her history degree. She has made a positive start to teaching but is quite nervous and tends to look for very clear guidance and support. She is now half way...
Move Me On 126: Setting worthwhile homework
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Ralph Sadleir: Hackney's Local Hero or Villain: Examples of learning opportunities in museums and historic sites at Key Stage 3
Teaching History article
The benefits of learning in historical sites and museums are well documented. De Silva, Smith and Tranter wrote in Teaching History 102, Inspiration and Motivation Edition, about exploring identity through the biography of a house, suggesting the possibility of teaching from the local to capture the national picture. However, students...
Ralph Sadleir: Hackney's Local Hero or Villain: Examples of learning opportunities in museums and historic sites at Key Stage 3
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What's your claim: Developing pupils' historical argument skills using asynchronous text based computer conferencing
Teaching History article
The potential that e-conferencing and message boarding have to engage pupils in historical debate and to enhance their ability and inclination to argue is increasingly well understood, as practice reported in these pages recently and the success and expansion of the Historical Association’s Centenary Debates initiative both demonstrate. In this...
What's your claim: Developing pupils' historical argument skills using asynchronous text based computer conferencing
