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Historical reasoning in the classroom
Teaching History article
Historical reasoning in the classroom: What does it look like and how can we enhance it?
The history education community has long recognised that historical thinking depends on the interplay between substantive knowledge about the past and the procedural, or second-order, concepts that historians use to construct, shape and give...
Historical reasoning in the classroom
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EYFS: What does good curriculum provision look like?
HA Primary Subject Leader Area
In this joint piece, Helen and Rob explore the EYFS Development Matters framework and its relevance to developing children’s understanding of the past. Helen suggests some key resources and approaches which work well in EYFS as well as some key questions to frame discussions with early years staff. Rob shares...
EYFS: What does good curriculum provision look like?
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OFSTED, primary history and creativity
Primary History article
Co-ordinators concerns: OFSTED, primary history and creativity
I'm told the emphasis in schools now is for a rigorous approach to history where the children are taught the main facts and features of history. I recall a time not so long ago when the whole curriculum was about creativity but surely...
OFSTED, primary history and creativity
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Promoting Gypsy, Roma and Traveller heritage in your primary history curriculum
Primary History article
It goes without saying that the events of Black Lives Matter have prompted many leaders and teachers to take a step back and reflect on their curriculum content and how effectively it reflects the diverse story of our islands. However, it is not just Black History that is requiring more prominence...
Promoting Gypsy, Roma and Traveller heritage in your primary history curriculum
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Building and assessing learner autonomy within the Key Stage 3 history classroom
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Oliver Knight is an experienced Advanced Skills Teacher who has taught in four different secondary schools, three of them multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-cultural and at least two wrestling with significant problems arising from social deprivation....
Building and assessing learner autonomy within the Key Stage 3 history classroom
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Unnatural and essential: the nature of historical thinking
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Sam Wineburg's work, in particular his groundbreaking Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts (2001), has a great deal to teach us about the discipline of history, the nature of historical education, and the specific cognitive framework...
Unnatural and essential: the nature of historical thinking
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Sources for the Great Fire of London and its context
Primary History feature
Nina Sprigge reveals two interesting sources that can supplement teaching the Fire of London.
Fire of London: fundraising for refugees
The receipt on the back cover provides evidence of national fundraising in 1666. It is touching that people from Cowfold, a little village outside London, cared enough to want to...
Sources for the Great Fire of London and its context
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Teaching History 182: Out now
Article
Read Teaching History 182
The editorial in the previous edition of Teaching History began by recognising that 2020 would go down in history as the year of the coronavirus pandemic. The words you are reading now were written in the aftermath of another long period of partial school closure in...
Teaching History 182: Out now
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Subject leader’s site: assessment and feedback
Primary History article
Very few teachers prefer assessment to teaching yet the latter has little point if there is no way of knowing that what we teach is beneficial to our pupils. The problem is that there is no such thing as perfect assessment and feedback. For example, you cannot assess everything –...
Subject leader’s site: assessment and feedback
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Using narratives and big pictures to address the challenges of a 2-year KS3 curriculum
Teaching History article
Faced with cutting her Key Stage 3 curriculum to two years, Natalie Kesterton and her department were determined to do more with less. Not only did they want to ensure that their pupils developed a secure, wide-ranging knowledge of British and world history, they also wanted to address deficits in pupils’...
Using narratives and big pictures to address the challenges of a 2-year KS3 curriculum
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The International Journal Volume 9 Number 1
International Journal
International Journal of Historical Learning, Teaching and Research
Volume 9, Number 1 - July 2010
ISSN 1472-9466
1. Editorial - Hilary Cooper and Jon Nichol
2. Articles
Current reflections - 2010, on John Fines' Educational Objectives for the Study of History:
A Suggested Framework and Peter Rogers' The New History,...
The International Journal Volume 9 Number 1
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Enter the Tudor Prince
Historian article
Shakespeare's identity is an issue historians normally avoid - with 77 alternatives to Shakespeare now listed on Wikipedia, it has become a black hole in literary studies. Denial of the orthodox (Stratfordian) view* that William Shakespeare was the Bard dates back a century and a half, but has escalated in...
Enter the Tudor Prince
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Storytelling the past
Primary History article
This article will demonstrate how to engage children through storytelling and how it can be used to develop their critical understanding of the past.
Why story?
Despite their common derivation, the words ‘history’ and ‘story’ suggest very different kinds of knowledge, the former carrying overtones of detached understanding of the...
Storytelling the past
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Building historical thinking together: breathing new life into mini whiteboards
Teaching History article
Formative assessment, in particular Assessment for Learning, created waves in classrooms in the early 2000s. Mini whiteboards, with pen and cloth, became popular and remain part of the toolkit in some classrooms. Teachers work hard to assess the learning of all students in a class, rather than just those who...
Building historical thinking together: breathing new life into mini whiteboards
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New, Novice or Nervous? 167: Confidence with substantive knowledge
Teaching History feature
This page is for those new to the published writings of history teachers. Each problem you wrestle with, other teachers have wrestled with too...
History is a complex enterprise. In order to produce sophisticated arguments, pupils need firm foundations. One foundation is knowledge of the argumentative structures that historians...
New, Novice or Nervous? 167: Confidence with substantive knowledge
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'History on Trial'
IJHLTR Article
International Journal of Historical Learning, Teaching and Research [IJHLTR], Volume 14, Number 2 – Spring/Summer 2017
ISSN: 14472-9474
Abstract
This study discusses the relevance of morality in the explanation of controversial history. It presents a discourse analysis of two representative adolescents’ narratives from Mexico and Spain about the 16th century Spanish Conquest of...
'History on Trial'
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The First Crusade
Pamphlet
Nine centuries after enthusiasm for pope Urban's expedition to Jerusalem swept western Europe the phenomenon of the first crusade continues to fascinate. This pamphlet examines the nature of the crusades and the motives of those who joined it, describes the hardships of the long journey to the Holy Land and...
The First Crusade
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Polychronicon 177: The New Deal in American history
Teaching History feature
Over 50 years ago I read my first serious book on American history. I can still remember the excitement of reading William E. Leuchtenburg’s Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932–1940. His description of FDR and American politics in the 1930s seemed so much more colourful and dramatic than...
Polychronicon 177: The New Deal in American history
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Primary History 87
The primary education journal of the Historical Association
04 Editorial (Read article for free)
05 HA Primary News
06 HA Update
08 The revised EYFS Framework: exploring ‘Past and Present’ – Helen Crawford (Read article)
10 History in the news
12 How did a volcano affect life in the Bronze Age? – Alf Wilkinson (Read article)
14 Exploring the...
Primary History 87
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Historical scholarship and feedback
Teaching History article
In her introduction to this piece, Carolyn Massey describes history teachers as professionals who pride themselves on ‘a sophisticated understanding of change and continuity’. How often, though, do we bemoan change when it comes, as it so often has recently? Massey’s article provides an example of how to embrace change,...
Historical scholarship and feedback
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On-demand webinar: Using stories and storytelling in the primary history classroom
Webinar series: History and literacy: better together
History and literacy: better together
Session 2: Using stories and storytelling in the primary history classroom
This webinar will explore the different ways stories and storytelling can be used in primary history: as an evocative way of conveying substantive knowledge for retrieval, and as a stimulus to hook pupils’ initial interest...
On-demand webinar: Using stories and storytelling in the primary history classroom
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Recorded webinar: Avoiding confusion with chronology and change in primary history
Webinar series: Avoiding confusion and challenging misconceptions in primary history
Webinar series: Avoiding confusion and challenging misconceptions in primary history
Session 1: Avoiding confusion with chronology and change in primary history
This practical webinar will identify what confuses pupils in the teaching of chronology and the disciplinary concept of change and continuity and will show how such confusion and misconceptions...
Recorded webinar: Avoiding confusion with chronology and change in primary history
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On-demand webinar: Keeping sources messy
Embracing messiness: teaching disciplinary thinking in history
Embracing messiness: teaching disciplinary thinking in history
Session 2: Keeping sources messy
This session looks into how source work has often been too tidy in the classroom setting and the reasons behind this. It will explore a different approach to working with sources and evidence and give practical approaches to exemplify what...
On-demand webinar: Keeping sources messy
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Teaching & Assessing Historical Understanding
Teaching of History Series No.63
The purpose of this pamphlet is to broach several issues relating to a child's understanding of some key concepts in History. These are:
Cause and consequence.
Time concepts, i.e. change, continuity, development, progression and regression.
Evidence.
Significance.
Similarity and difference.
Under each of these headings, consideration will be given to: ...
Teaching & Assessing Historical Understanding
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Remembering Neville Chamberlain
Historian article
Brent Dyck is a Canadian teacher and a previous contributor to The Historian. In this short essay he offers us his objective interpretation of the achievements of Neville Chamberlain. For some what he says may seem surprising and for others it might even be controversial. However, editorially it seemed entirely proper...
Remembering Neville Chamberlain
