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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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Teaching history's big pictures: including continuity as well as change
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
School history teachers are not the only ones wrestling with the challenges of building ‘big pictures' that do justice to complexity. In this article, social and cultural historian Penelope Corfield puts our interest in long-term...
Teaching history's big pictures: including continuity as well as change
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Do we have to read all of this?' Encouraging students to read for understanding
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
What’s the hardest part of history? Heads of Year 9 at options time seem depressingly clear - ‘Don’t do history, there’s too much writing.’ David Hellier and Helen Richards show that at The Green School...
Do we have to read all of this?' Encouraging students to read for understanding
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Move Me On 135: Not sure where to draw boundaries when handling sensitive issues
Teaching History feature
This Issue's Problem: Cathy Mompesson is uncertain where to draw the boundaries when teaching sensitive issues.
A recent Year 9 visit to the Imperial War Museum has left Cathy Mompesson confused about the relationship between moral and historical objectives in her teaching. Her placement school visits the museum every year,...
Move Me On 135: Not sure where to draw boundaries when handling sensitive issues
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'Britain was our home': Helping Years 9, 10, and 11 to understand the black experience of the Second World War
Teaching History article
In this article, Helena Stride shows how the Imperial War Museum responded to criticism that insufficient attention had been paid to the contribution of black and Asian people to Britain’s wars. She focuses on one of two resource-packs produced by the Museum, which highlights the experience of Britain’s colonial peoples,...
'Britain was our home': Helping Years 9, 10, and 11 to understand the black experience of the Second World War
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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
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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
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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!
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Why we must change history GCSE
Teaching History article
A head of steam for change in GCSE history has been building for some time now amongst history teachers, heads of history, advisers, teacher-trainers, researchers, consultants and all who regularly engage in debate about history teaching and learning. All those who read widely, share their practice, experience many Key Stage...
Why we must change history GCSE
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Move Me On 96: Struggling with language register - getting pitch right
Teaching History feature
This Issue's Problem: John Ball is having difficulty getting his language register right
Problem:
John is several weeks into his first school placement. He is very much enjoying the PGCE course. It is proving to be the intellectual and practical challenge that he hoped. He has come to the course...
Move Me On 96: Struggling with language register - getting pitch right
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Making history curious: Using Initial Stimulus Material (ISM) to promote enquiry, thinking and literacy
Teaching History article
The idea of gaining pupils’ attention, interest and curiosity at the start of the lesson with an intriguing image, story, analogy or puzzle has long been used by our best history teachers. Michael Riley, through writing and inset, popularised the term ‘hook’ and emphasised its special role at the start...
Making history curious: Using Initial Stimulus Material (ISM) to promote enquiry, thinking and literacy
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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
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From horror to history: teaching pupils to reflect on significance
Teaching History article
In this detailed account of the first stages of a lesson sequence for Year 9 (13-14 year-olds), Kate Hammond sets out the tensions that must be examined and resolved when planning and teaching this most demanding of topics. How can young teenagers be helped to develop a mature response to...
From horror to history: teaching pupils to reflect on significance
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Disembarking the religious rollercoaster
Teaching History article
Sarah Jackson-Buckley and Jessie Phillips found themselves perennially dissatisfied with the outcomes of their teaching of the Protestant Reformation. Determined that students should take away a sense of the momentous political and social consequences of the Reformation, they turned to historical scholarship, and to the work of other history teachers on...
Disembarking the religious rollercoaster
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New, Novice or Nervous? 155: Similarity & Difference
Teaching History feature
This page is for those new to the published writings of history teachers. Every problem you wrestle with, other teachers have wrestled with too. Quick fixes don't exist. But if you discover others' writing, you'll soon find - and want to join - something better: an international conversation in which...
New, Novice or Nervous? 155: Similarity & Difference
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A team-taught conspiracy: Year 8 are caught up in a genuine historical debate
Teaching History article
Are top sets always our top priority? Of course, we know that every child matters (should that now have capital letters?) but those of us who teach in an ability-setted context also know that a bottom set left unable to access the curriculum is likely to pose bigger problems than...
A team-taught conspiracy: Year 8 are caught up in a genuine historical debate
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'Don't worry, Mr. Trimble. We can handle it' Balancing the rationale and the emotional in teaching of contentious topics
Teaching History article
A common line amongst teachers and policy-makers seeking to theorise a workable relationship between history and the new subject of citizenship is to say that there must be a link with the present. This is harder than it sounds. If the implication is that the study of the past should...
'Don't worry, Mr. Trimble. We can handle it' Balancing the rationale and the emotional in teaching of contentious topics
