Principles of planning
The process of planning has been memorably described as a form of ‘professional wrestling’ because of the many brutal choices that it routinely requires: choices about what to include (and what to leave out); about how much attention to give to those elements that have been selected; and about how best to structure them to promote students’ learning. The resources contained in these sections will help teachers to think about all the different elements that are involved in the development of historical knowledge and understanding and about the choices that teachers need to make about how those elements are combined and sequenced most effectively – within individual lessons, across enquiry sequences and schemes of work, and over the course of the key-stage or whole-school curriculum maps (from Year 7 to Year 13!).
Overview & Depth
- The role of takeaways in shaping a history curriculum
- ‘Compressing and rendering’: using biography to teach big stories
- Short cuts to deep knowledge
- Cunning Plan 186: teaching Samurai Japan in Key Stage 3
- Using individuals’ stories to help GCSE students to explain change and causation
- Cunning Plan 179: using TV producers’ techniques to make the most effective use of retrieval practice
Disciplinary concepts
- Doing a Gombrich: Year 9 make connections by shaping big narratives
- Triumphs Show: Seeing consequences in 3D
- Why history is the future: the centrality of historical thinking in the AI age
- Film Series: Active Learning & History
- Move Me On 190: taking questions about historical significance
- Using metaphor to highlight causal processes with Year 13
Substantive Knowledge
- Move Me On 198: trainee finds it difficult to explain substantive concepts effectively
- What Have Historians Been Arguing About... youth culture?
- Broadening horizons: using cross-curricular conversations to support historical understanding
- Investigating ‘sense of place’ with Year 9 pupils
- Triumphs Show: The BeBold Network
- What Have Historians Been Arguing About... the impact of the British Empire on Britain?
Using enquiry questions
- Cunning Plan… the fight for the Lincolnshire Fens and attitudes towards the land
- Unpacking the enquiry puzzle
- Broadening Year 7’s British history horizons with Welsh medieval sources
- How representing women can convey a more complex narrative of the Russian Revolution to Year 9
- Creating a progression model for teaching historical perspectives in Key Stage 3
- Why does anyone do anything? Attempts to improve agentive explanations with Year 12
Diversity in the past
- How diverse is your history curriculum?
- Challenging misconceptions and highlighting hidden histories in teaching the Holocaust
- Teaching Jewish, Queer and Roma experiences of Nazi persecution
- Look again: teaching about disability in history
- Film: Disability in Britain and Ireland – 1714 to 1785
- Film: Black British History – 1714 to 1785
Controversial issues
- Challenging misconceptions and highlighting hidden histories in teaching the Holocaust
- Teaching Jewish, Queer and Roma experiences of Nazi persecution
- Shaping what matters: Year 9 decide why we should care about the Windrush scandal
- Why do we continue to study the Holocaust?
- What Have Historians Been Arguing About... gender and sexuality
- Cunning Plan 191: diving deep into ‘history from below’ with Year 8
Progression & Assessment
- No more mark schemes: manageable and meaningful assessment for Years 7–9
- The role of takeaways in shaping a history curriculum
- Creating a progression model for teaching historical perspectives in Key Stage 3
- What’s The Wisdom On... history assessment?
- Move Me On 168: teaching exam classes
- Cunning Plan 167: teaching the industrial revolution
Using historical scholarship
- Triumphs Show: Embracing scholarship to guide Year 7 on an exploration of the Silk Roads
- Disembarking the religious rollercoaster
- Making History Accessible
- How ‘good’ are Key Stage 3 textbooks in supporting the teaching of the Holocaust?
- What Have Historians Been Arguing About... Histories of education – and society?
- What can rituals reveal about power in the medieval world? Teaching Year 7 pupils to apply interdisciplinary approaches
Extended Reading
- It’s just reading, right? Exploring how Year 12 students approach sources
- What Have Historians Been Arguing About... Histories of education – and society?
- Film: What's the wisdom on... Extended Reading
- What’s The Wisdom On... Extended Reading
- ‘This extract is no good, Miss!’
- Reading? What reading?
Extended Writing
- Film: What's the wisdom on... Extended Writing
- ‘Weaving’ knowledge
- What’s The Wisdom On... Extended writing
- Deepening Year 9’s knowledge for better causation arguments
- ‘One big cake’: substantive knowledge of the mid-Tudor crisis in Year 7 students’ writing
- The mechanics of history: interpretations and claim construction processes
Historical Argument
- Move Me On 192: analytical focus with diverse histories
- Short cuts to deep knowledge
- Historical learning using concept cartoons
- Move Me On 186: trainee provides little scope for students to use their knowledge in analysis/argument
- Year 7 use oral traditions to make claims about the rise and fall of the Inka empire
- The mechanics of history: interpretations and claim construction processes
Narrative in history
- Doing a Gombrich: Year 9 make connections by shaping big narratives
- Making History Accessible
- Maximising the power of storytelling in the history classroom
- ‘Compressing and rendering’: using biography to teach big stories
- Helping Year 8 to understand historians’ narrative decision-making
- Year 7 use oral traditions to make claims about the rise and fall of the Inka empire
Inclusion
- Look again: teaching about disability in history
- Move Me On: what adjustments are reasonable to accommodate a trainee’s neurodivergence?
- Film: Disability in Britain and Ireland – 1714 to 1785
- Making History Accessible
- Disability history resources
- Decolonising sources: helping Year 9 pupils critically evaluate colonial sources
Independent Learning
- The mechanics of history: interpretations and claim construction processes
- How history learners can ‘dig school’ under lockdown
- Making reading routine
- Allowing A-level students to choose their own coursework focus
- ‘This extract is no good, Miss!’
- From road map to thought map: helping students theorise the nature of change
Digital history
- Why history is the future: the centrality of historical thinking in the AI age
- What Have Historians Been Arguing About... The role of digital archives
- Using oral history to enhance a local history partnership
- Harnessing the power of community to expand students’ historical horizons
- Using Google Docs to develop Year 9 pupils’ essay-writing skills
- Triumphs Show 160: Prezi and propaganda
Triumphs Show
- Triumphs Show: Embracing scholarship to guide Year 7 on an exploration of the Silk Roads
- Triumphs Show 193: Year 8 imagine the First World War trenches
- Triumphs Show 192: Balancing micro- and macronarratives of the Holocaust
- Triumphs Show: ‘The Strands of Memory’
- Triumphs Show: The BeBold Network
- Triumphs Show 182: A public lecture series