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Confounding expectation at Key Stage 3: flower-songs from an indigenous empire
Teaching History article
In this article Nicolas Kinloch examines aspects of an indigenous empire: that of Aztec Mexico. He attempts to persuade a group of mixed-ability Year 8 students to examine - and question - some of the assumptions they bring to the study of this empire. Their attitudes reflect quite widespread beliefs...
Confounding expectation at Key Stage 3: flower-songs from an indigenous empire
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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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'Didn't we do that in Year 7?' Planning for progress in evidential understanding
Teaching History article
Christine Counsell describes a lively activity, ideal for Year 9, in which pupils compare and interrelate a collection of sources. The activity leads pupils into thinking about the sources as a collection, and about the enquiry as an evidential problem. Or at least it can do. The article discusses the...
'Didn't we do that in Year 7?' Planning for progress in evidential understanding
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What is progress in history?
Teaching History article
Evelyn Vermeulen argues that in order for teachers to identify outcomes for the learning of history, they must think clearly about the different attributes of the discipline - its ideas, structures and processes - and the relationship between them. Here, she takes us on her own professional thinking journey. She...
What is progress in history?
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Gladstone spiritual or Gladstone material? A rationale for using documents at AS and A2
Teaching History article
Rather than taking a sledgehammer approach to planning for the new AS and A2 courses Gary Howells has used the opportunity to reflect on characteristics of students' historical learning in the post-16 phase. He argues for a much fuller rationale for using documents than mere preparation for exams or coursework....
Gladstone spiritual or Gladstone material? A rationale for using documents at AS and A2
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A most horrid malicious bloody flame: using Samuel Pepys to improve Year 8 boys' historical writing
Teaching History article
Unusually, instead of moving from a narrative to an analytic structure, David Waters moves his pupils from causal analysis to narrative. By the time pupils are ready to produce their storyboard narrative, their thinking about the Great Fire has been shaped and re-shaped not only by structural exercises and argument...
A most horrid malicious bloody flame: using Samuel Pepys to improve Year 8 boys' historical writing
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No puzzle, no learning: how to make your site visits rigorous, fascinating and indispensable
Teaching History article
Chris Culpin builds on recent articles by Andrew Wrenn and Mike Murray with numerous practical ideas for good quality site visits at Key Stage 3 and GCSE. But this article offers much more than practical tips. Chris Culpin sets out a rationale for the centrality of site visits in the...
No puzzle, no learning: how to make your site visits rigorous, fascinating and indispensable
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Move Me On 97: Having difficulty evaluating own lessons
Teaching History feature
Move Me On 97
This Issue's problem: Maggi Paton, PGCE student, is having difficulty evaluating her lessons
Problem:
It is the first term of Maggie's PGCE course and she is a few weeks into her first school placement. Initially, her mentor and other staff were impressed by her: she had...
Move Me On 97: Having difficulty evaluating own lessons
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Weighing a century with a website: teaching Year 9 to be critical
Teaching History article
Two years ago the history department at Hampstead School was one of two history departments chosen to model very effective use of IT in history for a BECTA research study. Two years on, what has the department been up to? All of the factors identified in that study -an ICT...
Weighing a century with a website: teaching Year 9 to be critical
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Who wants to fight? Who wants to flee? Teaching history from a 'thinking skills' perspective
Teaching History article
Whatever shape the National Curriculum of the 21st century takes, history will have to show its relevance to major curricular areas and themes such as literacy, citizenship education and thinking skills. This ought to be easy: the critical, informed decision-making required by the modern citizen is practised in virtually every...
Who wants to fight? Who wants to flee? Teaching history from a 'thinking skills' perspective
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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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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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What is good citizenship education in history classrooms?
Teaching History article
Ian Davies, Geoff Hatch, Gary Martin and Tony Thorpe seek to theorise - and to support teachers in their own theorising - concerning the purpose of citizenship education and criteria for good citizenship education. They aim for a professional precision that will be helpful to teachers, getting us beyond the...
What is good citizenship education in history classrooms?
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Ranking and classifying: teaching political concepts to post-16 students
Teaching History article
Sometimes it is precisely in the interest of building better historical knowledge that facts and detail need temporarily to be abandoned. Gary Howells aims to secure discernible foundation understandings in his students by getting them to engage quickly with those aspects of political concepts that they can grasp. He is...
Ranking and classifying: teaching political concepts to post-16 students
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Teaching pupils to analyse cartoons
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
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...
Teaching pupils to analyse cartoons
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'Now listen to Source A' : Music and History
Teaching History article
In Steve Mastin’s classroom, pupils do not just read, look at and observe their historical sources. They listen to them. Steve’s classroom is already full of music. He uses it variously - to focus, settle or simply to expand the cultural curiosity of his pupils. Pupils expect to walk in...
'Now listen to Source A' : Music and History
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Mushrooms and snake-oil: using film as AS/A level
Teaching History article
In this article, Seán Lang examines the power of film to shape AS/A students’ perception and even understanding of the past. He argues that teachers of Years 12 and 13 underestimate at their peril the impact film can have on how students shape their perception of history. Although, as he...
Mushrooms and snake-oil: using film as AS/A level
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History and Mathematics or History with Mathematics: does it add up?
Teaching History article
Ian Phillips expresses some frustration with the way the Numeracy across the Curriculum strand of England’s Key Stage 3 Strategy is sometimes presented. He argues that the acid test of cross-curricular numeracy is the value of mathematical understanding in aiding historical thinking and imagination. He criticises attempts to plant numeracy...
History and Mathematics or History with Mathematics: does it add up?
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A noisy classroom is a thinking classroom: speaking and listening in Year 7 history
Teaching History article
Rachael Rudham describes the thinking and discussion that led her department to plan systematically for the integration of speaking and listening tasks into Year 7 history lessons. Speaking and listening is a serious business; it is not a ‘light’ option, argues Rachael, and it should never be used as a...
A noisy classroom is a thinking classroom: speaking and listening in Year 7 history
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Voices from Rwanda: when seeing is better than hearing
Teaching History article
Where were you when you last witnessed history being formed? How did you know that the events you had witnessed would turn out to be significant? The missile attack on a plane in Rwanda on 6 April 1994 passed Martyn Beer by at the time. It was later that he...
Voices from Rwanda: when seeing is better than hearing
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Innovation, inspiration and diversification: new approaches to history at Key Stage 3
Teaching History article
Good history teaching should not be the responsibility of a single department working in isolation. The history subject community as a whole should work together to ensure that history teaching is of as high a quality as possible. This does not mean that every department, and every teacher, should do...
Innovation, inspiration and diversification: new approaches to history at Key Stage 3
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Suffrage, feudal, democracy, treaty... history's building blocks: learning to teach historical concepts
Teaching History article
In the UK, thoughtful history teachers have long lamented the fact that the majority of pupils emerge from their compulsory history schooling at 14 with a limited or inadequate understanding of those key historical concepts that are necessary to make sense of the world in adult life. Whilst more able...
Suffrage, feudal, democracy, treaty... history's building blocks: learning to teach historical concepts
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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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Year 7 pupils collaboratively design an historical game about a medieval peasant
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Jacques Haenen and Hanneke Tuithof describe an activity that they developed for pupils as part of an initial teacher education course. Teams of Year 7 pupils were given a structure and guidelines within which they...
Year 7 pupils collaboratively design an historical game about a medieval peasant
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Are you ready for your close-up?
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
We are often reminded that we remember little of what we hear and read but much of what we teach. The very act of teaching forces us to clarify our understanding and to process it...
Are you ready for your close-up?
