The Evacuee Letter Exchange Project: using audiencecentred writing to improve progression from Key Stage 2 to Key Stage 3

Article

By Jenny Parsons, published 11th February 2000

Jenny Parsons' work in primary-secondary liaison in history is nationally acclaimed. She is often asked to share her department's practice at courses and conferences. Readers of Teaching History are already familiar with her work in another area: in the ‘Triumphs Show' of Teaching History 93 (the ICT edition in November 1998) she explained the reasons for the consistently high take-up of GCSE history at Rednock School. Two years on, there are still six large sets taking history in Year 10. Moreover, the same policy of ensuring that the full ability range is attracted to GCSE history is working as effectively as ever. Now that the growing success of so many history departments in ensuring that all Year 9 want to choose history is so widely shared and discussed, it has become a commonplace to say that high take-up for GCSE history ‘begins in Year 7'. Jenny Parsons would disagree. It begins in the primary classroom. Readers will be aware of this through yet another source: the new National Curriculum for history in England celebrates her Evacuee Letter Exchange Project with photographs and examples of children's work within the document. Here, Jenny Parsons explains her project's success and its significance. This is more than just ‘liaison'. It is about active and continued sharing of pedagogy between primary and secondary teachers of history. Jenny Parsons believes that this both strengthens primary pupils' conceptions of history as a separate discipline and raises standards in history throughout Key Stage 3.

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