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Animation case study: Indus Valley figurines
Primary History case study
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum.
Since the advent of animation software for schools, I wanted to trial an animation project, inspired by the quirky human and animal figurines, model wheeled carts and toys, all of terracotta, from the Bronze Age Indus Valley civilisation which clamour for clay...
Animation case study: Indus Valley figurines
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Case Study: Effectively using the census in the classroom
Primary History case study
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum.
The British government introduced the census in 1801 to count every man, woman and child in the UK. The Census has been repeated, with increasing detail, every 10 years, with the exception of 1941, since then. This gives us an amazing...
Case Study: Effectively using the census in the classroom
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Teaching History 149: In Search of the Question
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
02 Editorial
03 HA Secondary News
04 HA Update
08 Ed Podesta - Helping Year 7 put some flesh on Roman bones (Read article)
18 Diana Laffin - Marr: magpie or marsh harrier? The quest for the common characteristics of the genus ‘historian' with 16- to 19-year-olds (Read article)
26 Cunning...
Teaching History 149: In Search of the Question
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HA News, Autumn 2025
Welcome to the spring 2025 edition of HA News magazine
Welcome to this packed autumn edition of HA News.
Alexandra Walsham unpacks the challenges, dilemmas and opportunities of AI in her President's Letter; and Abdul Mohamud lets us in on what got him into history.
We have reports on this year's awards evening and our annual conference, along with competition updates and winners. We also remember much-missed...
HA News, Autumn 2025
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ICT and Students with Special Educational Needs
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum.
Turner writing in 1998 acknowledged that there was insufficient research into teaching history to pupils with SEN. He believed that this was one reason why there was little to challenge Wilson's declaration that ‘history as the term is generally understood, cannot...
ICT and Students with Special Educational Needs
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The digital revolution
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum.
Developments in information technology continue at an extraordinary pace. Many young children will have little or no idea of what it was like to live in a world without mobile phones, computers and the Internet.
Most children will regularly make use...
The digital revolution
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Bring on the iPad revolution
Primary History case study
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum.
The opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic games celebrated change whilst demonstrating the challenges revolutions have on the world. From green pastures to belching chimneystacks, from post-war Britain to the World Wide Internet and text messaging, the way society interacts is...
Bring on the iPad revolution
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The British Museum: Creative ICT for Kids
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum.
With school budgets as they are it is amazing that any primary schools can fund history trips to the British Museum [BM]. The education department of the British Museum [BM] is well aware of these constraints and tries to meet the...
The British Museum: Creative ICT for Kids
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Chronology through ICT
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum.
Introduction: Research into chronological understanding
Chronological understanding is both one of history's most important disciplinary organising concepts (Lee and Shemilt: 2004) required for developing a full understanding of history, and certainly one of the most researched, though often with a broader remit...
Chronology through ICT
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The Interactive Whiteboard or Smart Board
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum.
The interactive whiteboard [smartboard] has opened a pathway to explore sources and develop historical interest for children of all ages. It can be used in varied ways that allow a teacher to customise activities to match their intended outcomes. Support for this...
The Interactive Whiteboard or Smart Board
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Primary pedagogy: Lessons from Early Years and Primary ITT Students
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum.
The last decade has witnessed a massive increase in the use of ICT as a teaching and learning tool within the Primary classroom. Schools are indeed perceived as outmoded without the tools of the trade: the Interactive White Boards, ICT suites,...
Primary pedagogy: Lessons from Early Years and Primary ITT Students
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English Heritage's Heritage Explorer
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum.
[THINK BUBBLE, has burst, r.i.p... Diogenes, a curmudgeonly Ancient Greek cynic, has taken its place. The original Grumpy Old Man Diogenes typically looks back to a mythical golden age]
Introduction
Unfortunately I'm old enough to remember a time when primary school...
English Heritage's Heritage Explorer
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Co-ordinators' concerns: ICT and OFSTED
Primary History feature
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum.
There is an expectation that we extensively use information technology across the curriculum. I don't mind this but I've always felt a bit uncomfortable. Using it with history always seems to compromise the quality of the history. I am worried though...
Co-ordinators' concerns: ICT and OFSTED
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Enriching young children's understanding of time
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
As a primary teacher in the United States, I was sometimes caught off guard by students' ideas about time. Some 10-year-olds, I noticed, still could not read a clock or calculate the time between recess and...
Enriching young children's understanding of time
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Think Bubble - Jumping stories: selective chronology
Primary History feature
I recently finished a most interesting commission with the educational publishers, Schofield and Sims. They asked me to help put together a comprehensive timeline of British History to cover as broad a chronological perspective as possible. They wanted this to be the complete Cavemen to Cybermen story all on one...
Think Bubble - Jumping stories: selective chronology
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HA News, Spring 2025
Welcome to the spring 2025 edition of HA News magazine
Have your say about HA News
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Please fill out our survey here (takes about 5 minutes)
Welcome to this packed spring edition of HA News.
Take a look at the programme for our Annual Conference in May, including the top 10 things to do at the HA Conference,...
HA News, Spring 2025
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Teaching History 133: Simulating History
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
02 Editorial
03 HA Secondary News
04 Stories and their sources: the need for historical thinking in an information age – Ben Walsh (Read article)
10 How to make historical simulations adaptable, engaging and manageable – Dan Moorhouse (Read article)
17 Nutshell
18 ‘If everyone’s got to vote then, obviously…...
Teaching History 133: Simulating History
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The mechanical heroes of the Battle of Britain
Historian article
The Battle of Britain is often described as the point at which the Nazi threat began to diminish and cracks began to form in Hitler's regime. The air campaign launched by the Germans in the summer of 1940 intended to wipe out the existence of the British Royal Air Force...
The mechanical heroes of the Battle of Britain
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Polychronicon 144: Interpreting the 1930s in Britain
Teaching History feature
For students of my generation (born in 1954) the 1930s had a very clear identity; so, when the far-left Socialist Workers Party launched a campaign against unemployment, in 1975, with the slogan: ‘No Return to the Thirties', we all knew what they meant: unemployment, economic deprivation and the political betrayal...
Polychronicon 144: Interpreting the 1930s in Britain
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Exploring diversity at GCSE
Teaching History article
Having already reflected on ways of improving their students' understanding of historical diversity at Key Stage 3, Joanne Philpott and Daniel Guiney set themselves the challenge of extending this to post-14 students by means of fieldwork activities at First World War battlefields sites. In addition, they wanted to link the study...
Exploring diversity at GCSE
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Understanding 'change and continuity' through colours and timelines
Teaching History article
The small-scale research that Yosanne Vella reports in this article was driven by concern to help pupils develop ‘big picture' visions of the past and to engage effectively with the idea of change as a process rather than an event. The strategy that she adopts - asking groups of students...
Understanding 'change and continuity' through colours and timelines
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Central and Local Government in Scotland Since 1707
Classic Pamphlet
This pamphlet provides an interesting approach to a historical topic which has been too frequently covered from a single viewpoint. The pamphlet delivers a thoroughly Scottish approach to the nature of the 1707 Union and the changing nature of Scotland in the following centuries. It highlights the disparity of the...
Central and Local Government in Scotland Since 1707
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The Historian 69: Don't Blame the Messengers
The magazine of the Historical Association
Featured articles:
4 The adventures of Peter Porcupine: William Cobbett in the United States, 1792-1800 - Noel Thompson
9 Don't Blame the Messengers: News Agencies Past and Present
16 ‘The War against God': Napoleon, Pope Pius VII and the People of Italy, 1800-1814.
22 Squalor and rough justice in Watford
The Historian 69: Don't Blame the Messengers
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The Historian 115: The Long Winding Road to the White House
The magazine of the Historical Association
5 Editorial
6 The Long Winding Road to the White House: caucuses, primaries and national party conventions in the history of American presidential elections - Michael Dunne (Read Article)
13 The President's Column - Jackie Eales
14 Focus on Asa Briggs - Donald Read
16 My Favourite History Place -...
The Historian 115: The Long Winding Road to the White House
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William Brookes and the Olympic Games
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
History flows like a river, sometimes quiet and unobtrusive, sometimes a raging torrent with wide-ranging effects on the world around us. It is punctuated by momentous events and significant individuals, who impact on its direction and...
William Brookes and the Olympic Games