Progression & Assessment

Effective planning depends on a strong vision of what it is teachers want their students to know, understand and be able to do at the end of the lesson (term/year/key stage/exam course) that they didn’t know or understand or couldn’t do before. While exam specifications provide some of this vision, many teachers have also looked to the work of historians for models of more powerful historical knowledge and argument. Since responsibility for mapping out progression at Key Stage 3 and developing systems to assess and report it effectively now rests with teachers and schools, this section includes a range of resources illustrating how teachers have developed and implemented such systems. It also includes a number of research articles (on which many of those teachers have also drawn) about common patterns of development in students’ historical thinking. Read more

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  • The role of takeaways in shaping a history curriculum

    Article

    Jonathan Grande explains how he and his department faced up to the paradox that teaching rich detail is vital for good historical learning and is vital for students to remember in the short term, but is not essential to remember for ever. This article sets out his exploration of why...

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  • Creating a progression model for teaching historical perspectives in Key Stage 3

    Article

    Jacob Olivey set out to design enquiries which would enable his pupils to reconstruct, using evidence, the perspectives of people in the past. In this article he shares in detail the planning and outcomes of two enquiries: one for Year 7 and one for Year 8. Olivey offers a example...

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  • What’s The Wisdom On... history assessment?

    Article

    Between 1991 and 1995, secondary history teachers in England and Wales had something of a collective awakening about assessment. It followed a huge policy shift in history education: history’s first National Curriculum, rolled out in 1991. What's the Wisdom On... is a short guide providing new history teachers with an overview...

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  • Move Me On 168: teaching exam classes

    Article

    Move Me On is designed to build critical, informed debate about the character of teacher training, teacher education and professional development. It is also designed to offer practical help to all involved in training new history teachers.  This issue’s problem: Robert Nivelle is nearing the end of his first (relatively long)...

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  • Cunning Plan 167: teaching the industrial revolution

    Article

    ‘Disastrous and terrible.’ For Arnold Toynbee, the historian who gave us the phrase ‘industrial revolution’, these three words sum up the period of dramatic technological change that took place in Britain across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We may not habitually use Toynbee’s description in the classroom, but it is...

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  • Low-stakes testing

    Article

    The emphasis on the power of secure substantive knowledge reflected in recent curriculum reforms has prompted considerable interest in strategies to help students retain and deploy such knowledge effectively. One strategy that has been strongly endorsed by some cognitive psychologists is regular testing; an idea that Nick Dennis set out...

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  • New, Novice or Nervous? 164: Constructing narrative

    Article

    Narrative is shedding its status as the ‘underrated skill’, re-emerging as a requirement of the new GCSE in England. As Counsell has argued, constructing a narrative is ‘no easy option’, however, and asking students to ‘Write an account…’ lacks the comfortable familiarity of ‘Explain why…’ or ‘How far…’. Fortunately, many...

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  • Adventures in assessment

    Article

    In Teaching History 157, Assessment Edition, a number of different teachers shared the ways in which their departments were approaching the assessment and reporting of students’ progress in a ‘post-levels’ world. This article adds to those examples, first by illustrating how teachers from different schools in the Bristol area are...

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  • New, Novice or Nervous? 160: Progression in evidential understanding

    Article

    You have a wealth of fascinating sources you would love to explore with students but despair at their seeming inability to connect ‘source work' with the construction of historical claims. Year 7 get stuck in the ‘it's biased so we can never know' trap again and again. Year 9 students...

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  • Assessment after levels

    Article

    Ten years ago, two heads of department in contrasting schools presented a powerfully-argued case for resisting the use of level descriptions within their assessment regimes. Influenced both by research into the nature of children's historical thinking and by principles of assessment for learning, Sally Burnham and Geraint Brown argued that...

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  • Using timelines in assessment

    Article

    Bridging a twenty-year gap in their practice, Elizabeth Carr and Christine Counsell bring out the similarities in their use of timelines in their planning, teaching and assessment. What they also have in common is the fact that their experimentation with timelines as a way of strengthening cumulative knowledge emerged in...

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  • Securing contextual knowledge in year 10

    Article

    Using regular, low-stakes tests to secure pupils' contextual knowledge in Year 10 Lee Donaghy was concerned that his GCSE students' weak contextual knowledge was letting them down. Inspired by a mixture of cognitive science and the arguments of other teachers expressed in various blogs, he decided to tackle the problem...

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  • Building meaningful models of progression

    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...

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  • Building and assessing historical knowledge on three scales

    Article

    The knowledge that ‘flavours' a claim: towards building and assessing historical knowledge on three scales While marking some Year 11 essays, Kate Hammond found her interest caught by significant differences between one kind of strong analysis and another. Some scored high marks but were less convincing. The achievement in these...

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  • Teaching History Curriculum Supplement 2014

    Article

    Although modifications to the content of the National Curriculum for history have not been as dramatic as once feared, the effective revocation of the previous attainment target is radical indeed. When these changes are considered alongside the fact that more than half of maintained secondary schools (all academies and free...

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  • New, Novice or Nervous? 152: Describing Progression

    Article

    'New, Novice or Nervous?' 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...

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  • Knowledge and the Draft NC

    Article

    Silk purse from a sow's ear? Why knowledge matters and why the draft History NC will not improve it Katie Hall and Christine Counsell attempt to construct a Key Stage 3 scheme of work out of the draft National Curriculum for history that was released for consultation in England in...

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  • New, Novice or Nervous? 151: Getting beyond bad ‘source work'

    Article

    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...

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  • Move Me On 144: Defines GCSE teaching in terms of a diet of practice exam questions

    Article

    This issue's problem: Roger Wendover has come to define GCSE teaching in terms of a diet of practice exam questions. Roger is a few weeks into his second placement and his mentor, John, has been taken aback by the rigid approach that he has adopted in teaching Year 10. John was...

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  • Using ‘Assessment for Learning' to help students assume responsibility

    Article

    Robin Conway's interest in student led enquiry derived from a concern to encourage his students to take much more responsibility for their own learning. Here he explains how his department gradually learned to entrust students with defining the enquiry questions and planning the kinds of teaching and learning activities to be...

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