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Why did you write it like a story rather than just saying the information?
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Six-year-old Rebecca asked me this question when I visited her classroom to share a book which I had written with her and her classmates. It seemed to me at the time that Rebecca was identifying a...
Why did you write it like a story rather than just saying the information?
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Teaching History 127: Sense and Sensitivity
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
04 Music, blood and terror: making emotive and controversial history matter – Andrew Wrenn and Tim Lomas (Read article)
11 Nutshell
13 Teaching controversial issues… where controversial issues really matter – Keith Barton and Alan McCully (Read article)
20 Polychronicon: the Crusades (Read article)
22 Identity-shakers: cultural encounters and the...
Teaching History 127: Sense and Sensitivity
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The Historian 152: Out now
The magazine of the Historical Association
Read The Historian 152: Built environment
From its inception The Historian has been built on the voluntary efforts of both its editorial leadership and also its contributors. This voluntary context has been delivered in as professional a manner as possible. One of our recent strategies has been to identify a...
The Historian 152: Out now
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The Historian 150: Aspects of Africa
The magazine of the Historical Association
4 Reviews
5 Editorial (Read article for free)
6 The British Empire on trial – Gregory Gifford (Read article)
12 Zulu and the end of Empire – Nicolas Kinloch (Read article)
17 Legacies of the Cement Armada – Steven Pierce (Read article)
22 The Christian Kingdoms of Nubia and Ethiopia: neighbouring strangers? –...
The Historian 150: Aspects of Africa
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Ancient Egypt
Reference guide for primary
This resource is free to everyone. For access to hundreds of other high-quality resources by primary history experts along with free or discounted CPD and membership of a thriving community of teachers and subject leaders, join the Historical Association today
Please note: this guide was written before the new National Curriculum...
Ancient Egypt
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HA activities and impact
10th November 2025
An understanding of history has the potential to change lives. The HA’s continuing work seeks to empower learners at every age and level to access high quality history education, inside and outside of formal learning contexts. We want everyone to be able to engage with, debate, examine and shape history.
In...
HA activities and impact
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Pupils as apprentice historians (2)
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
"Without knowing how the history we receive was arrived at, we can only take it as a series of mysterious assertions, which can only be learned in the sense of learning off by heart. Rote-learned history...
Pupils as apprentice historians (2)
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How can I improve my use of ICT? Put history first!
Teaching History article
What is the difference between using lots of ICT and using it well? Dave Atkin draws upon work in his own department and with other Gloucestershire teachers in order to identify criteria for effective ICT use. These boil down to ‘putting history first' and getting maximum value out of the...
How can I improve my use of ICT? Put history first!
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Teaching Year 9 to take on the challenge of structure in narrative
Teaching History article
Reflecting on challenges that had surfaced in their own and others’ efforts to get pupils to write historical narratives, Rachel Foster and Kath Goudie went back to the drawing board to consider the disciplinary purposes of narrative. They used both historical scholarship and theoretical works by historians on narrative construction....
Teaching Year 9 to take on the challenge of structure in narrative
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The International Journal Volume 4 Number 2
Journal
Jannet van Drie and Carla van BoxtelEnhancing Collaborative Historical Reasoning by Providing Representational Guidance
Nadine Fink Pupils' Conceptions of History and History Teaching
Alan HodkinsonMaturation and the Assimilation of the Concepts of Historical Time: a Symbiotic Relationship, or Uneasy Bedfellows? An Examination of the Birth-Date Effect on Educational...
The International Journal Volume 4 Number 2
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Effective essay introductions
Teaching History article
Struck by the dullness of some of her students’ essay introductions, Paula Worth reflected on the fact that she had never focused specifically on introductions. After surveying existing work by history teachers on essay structure in general and introductions in particular, she turns to the work of historians. Drawing on...
Effective essay introductions
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Teaching History 112: Empire
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
Special 64 page themed edition of Teaching History including: A case study in planning the teaching of the British Empire at key Stage 3, Using this map and all of your knowledge become Bismark, National Archives and the british Empire, Imperialism and the Roman Empire, History's challenge: facing the future,...
Teaching History 112: Empire
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Tony Blair, the Iraq War, and a sense of history
Historian article
Blair the war leader provided historians with countless opportunities to get their names in the newspapers, let alone voice their opinions across the airwaves. The usual suspects were lined up (Eric Hobsbawm and Ben Pimlott in the Guardian, Andrew Roberts and John Keegan in the Telegraph, Niall Ferguson in The...
Tony Blair, the Iraq War, and a sense of history
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Making history meaningful: helping students see why history matters
Teaching History article
October 17 saw thousands of people writing a blog of a normal Tuesday as part of the ‘History Matters’ campaign. There was great media interest in the event and the papers were full of the blogs of the famous and not so famous; people were keen to write up their...
Making history meaningful: helping students see why history matters
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Shaping what matters: Year 9 decide why we should care about the Windrush scandal
Teaching History article
Mark Fowle began work on an enquiry to contextualise the Windrush scandal for his pupils in south London, in response to the first national Stephen Lawrence Day, in 2018. He went on to work with his colleagues in a new school to broaden pupils’ historical perspective through stories of migration...
Shaping what matters: Year 9 decide why we should care about the Windrush scandal
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Primary History 34: What the Dickens?
The primary education journal of the Historical Association
3 Editorial
4 Primary Noticeboard
6 In My View: Enjoying a good story – Paul Bracey
9 Breadth, Balance and the Literacy Hour – Roger Beard
11 “But why did Guy Fawkes try to blow up the king, Miss?” Investigating support for explanatory understanding in primary history books – A....
Primary History 34: What the Dickens?
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'How do ideas travel?' East meets west - and history meets science
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Jamie Byrom is well-known to readers of Teaching History, not least for introducing us to the concept ‘professional wrestling' in the history department (Teaching History,133, Empire Edition). That article, authored with Michael Riley, focused on...
'How do ideas travel?' East meets west - and history meets science
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Teaching History 78
The HA's journal for history teachers
5 Using History to Develop Citizenship Education in the National Curriculum - Peter John and Ian Davies
8 Developing a Multicultural Perspective Within Key Stage 3 National Curriculum History - Paul Bracey
11 History Education in a Democratic South Africa- Peter Kallaway
17 History Teaching and the Council of Europe -...
Teaching History 78
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The Historian 166: Out now
The magazine of the Historical Association
Read The Historian 166: Crime and Punishment
Last summer, crime and punishment made the headlines as Britain’s prisons came close to full capacity. In response, the Justice Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, ordered the release of nearly 10,000 prisoners who had served a significant portion of their sentence. The aim was to...
The Historian 166: Out now
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Absence and myopia in A-level coursework
Teaching History article
It is a charge commonly laid at history teachers that we, myopically, teach only the same-old same-old. Steven Driver has taken extreme steps to avoid this by focusing on a particular neglected event – the American occupation of Nicaragua in the early twentieth century – as part of his preparation...
Absence and myopia in A-level coursework
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Developing pupils' chronological understanding
Article
In its latest triennial history survey report, History for all, Ofsted concluded that, ‘history teaching was good or better in most primary schools' and, ‘most pupils reached the end of Key Stage 2 with detailed knowledge derived from well-taught studies of individual topics'. The report went on to note, though,...
Developing pupils' chronological understanding
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Building meaningful models of progression
Teaching History article
Setting us free? Building meaningful models of progression for a ‘post-levels' world
Alex Ford was thrilled by the prospect of freedom offered to history departments in England by the abolition of level descriptions within the National Curriculum.
After analysing the range of competing purposes that the level descriptions were previously...
Building meaningful models of progression
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The 1789 French Revolution – not just a revolution in France
HA short course, October–December 2025
Book Now
(Registration is via Cademy which opens in a new window. Please read the course terms and conditions before registering)
What does the course cover?
The French Revolution 1789–99 was not just a turning point in French history but also for the other nations of Europe and beyond. The...
The 1789 French Revolution – not just a revolution in France
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The Historian 147: The Historic Environment
The magazine of the Historical Association
5 Editorial (Read article)
6 ‘The cradle of the Industrial Revolution’: landscapes of early textile Lancashire – Michael Winstanley (Read article)
12 The invisible building: what was the forgotten purpose of St. John’s in Bridgend? – Molly Cook (Read article)
16 Grave matters: what the landscape and architecture of Britain’s largest cemetery might tell us...
The Historian 147: The Historic Environment
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