After a Fellowship in Holocaust Education at the Imperial War Museum, Andy Lawrence decided that something was missing in normal approaches to teaching emotive and controversial issues such as genocide, a deficit demonstrated by recent research by the Holocaust Education Development Programme. As part of his fellowship, Lawrence created an...

‘Empathy with edge' was the editorial description given eight years ago to the kind of historical fiction that Dave Martin and Beth Brooke first argued history students should be writing (TH 108). The winning entries from the annual ‘Write Your Own Historical Story Competition' to which their work gave rise...

Year 8 use counterfactual reasoning to explore place and social upheaval in eighteenth-century France and Britain Two linked motivations inspired Ellen Buxton's research study: she wanted pupils to make connections between British and French history and she wanted to explore the potential of counter-factual reasoning within a causation enquiry. It...

Reflecting on the continuing problem of students holding an impoverished understanding of the value or ‘uses' of history, Steve Rollett turned his attention to the question of analogy. He took the axiom to which students make common appeal (‘we can learn from mistakes in the past') and set about trying...

Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Ed Brooker is as concerned as the other authors within this edition that students should be able to see and make meaning out of ‘big pictures' of the past. He is acutely aware, however, that...

Please note: these links were compiled in 2009. For a more recent resource, please see: What's the Wisdom on: Interpretations of the past.  A selection of useful Teaching History Articles on 'Interpretations' and are highly recommended reading to those who would like to get to grips with this key concept: 1....

Please note: these links were compiled in 2009. For a more recent resource, please see: What's the Wisdom on: Causation.  These Teaching History Articles on 'Causation' are highly recommended reading to those who would like to get to grips with this key concept: 1. Move Me On 92. Problem page for history mentors. Teaching...

Nutshell, HELP. My head wants to abandon separate subjects at Key Stage 3 and do projects linked only by content, such as ‘India', ‘Industry' or ‘Indigo' instead. SMT already stop 50% of pupils from choosing history at 13 as apparently they can't ‘achieve' in it (or can't achieve a C),...

Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. How can we help pupils make sense of the history that they learn so that the whole adds up to more than the sum of its parts? How can we help pupils develop and sophisticate...

Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Sally Burnham shares her practice and reflections on the value of the software, ‘Movie Maker', for developing particular aspects of historical thinking and learning. In Teaching History 130, in the context of her Key Stage...

Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. This article is about using story to construct a learning journey for a Year 7 class. It reports an innovative use of a virtual learning environment to construct a narrative e-book into which argument tasks...

Three years ago (TH 99, Curriculum Planning Edition), Michael Riley illustrated ways in which history departments could exploit the increased flexibility of the revised National Curriculum. He showed that precisely-worded enquiry questions, positioned thoughtfully across the Key Stage, help to ensure progression, challenge and coherence. His picturesque image for this...

Drawing upon a range of practice, Michael Riley analyses the characteristics of a good enquiry question. He explores the importance of careful wording of the question if it is genuinely to help the teacher to integrate areas of content into a purposeful learning journey and without distortion.He then moves on...

Please note: this resource pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum. For more recent resources, see How diverse is your history curriculum? and Diversity links and resources for Secondary history. This material enables history teachers to explore the concept of diversity. Section 1 discusses the concept of diversity and its importance in the...

Vice President of the HA provides a presentation on how to ensure effective practice within the Key Stage 3 history classroom. Click the link below>>>

James Woodcock, 'Does the linguistic release the conceptual? Helping Year 10 to improve their causal reasoning' in Teaching History 119: Language issue (June, 2005) In this subtle article, James Woodcock experiments with introducing new vocabulary to a mixed-ability year 10 class working towards the enquiry question '"Hitler was not to...

Dale Banham, 'Getting ready for the Grand Prix: learning how to build a substantiated argument in Year 7' in Teaching History 92: Explanation and Argument issue This seminal article demonstrated how the author planned an enquiry to be taught over a long period blending in-depth study with overviews of history. ...

This folder contains three examples of the use of layers-of-inference frames, a now popular form of scaffolding in history teaching.  They are taken from three different key stages and demonstrate how a form of scaffolding can be used across different age groups but needs to be adapted to take account...

Please note: this resource pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content and links may be outdated. This resource describes the rationale for helping teachers to think about the range of real and creative end-products (outcomes) that can be used for different enquiries across key stage 3. They include a...

Please note: this resource pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content and links may be outdated. This repeats the nine examples of outcomes or tasks described in Resource A. It also includes additional notes, summarising the preparation that led up to the outcome or task and its place in...