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HA News, Spring 2025
Welcome to the spring 2025 edition of HA News magazine
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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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Taking control of assessment
Teaching History article
Ian Luff recognised that in a post-levels world efforts to devise new assessment systems risked replicating old problems or creating new ones. Drawing on his many years’ experience of teaching and school leadership Luff argues that for assessment in history to be truly useful to teachers and pupils it needs...
Taking control of assessment
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Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime: using external support, local history and a group project to challenge the most able
Teaching History article
The most able can be challenged in a variety of ways and at a number of levels, from the extension question for the individual child to the extended enquiry for the most able class. In a Leading Edge History project, Guy Woolnough and his colleagues took the concept of challenge...
Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime: using external support, local history and a group project to challenge the most able
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The Urban Working Classes in England 1880-1914
Historian article
On reading the title of this article, any reader at all familiar with the social history of late Victorian and Edwardian England is likely to think of the revelations at the time of the extent of urban poverty. Two major enquiries, one into London poverty, and the other into poverty...
The Urban Working Classes in England 1880-1914
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Viking and Anglo-Saxon struggle for the kingdom of England
Primary History Article
The Vikings will be familiar territory to many primary teachers. For many, therefore, this section of the history curriculum should cause fewer headaches than others. This does not mean, however, that it is all straightforward. This article contains a number of elements that teachers might welcome including a timeline of...
Viking and Anglo-Saxon struggle for the kingdom of England
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Teaching famous people at key stage one
Primary History article
The draft English NC for history highlights the study of ‘significant individuals and people'. Michelle Dexter provides an insight on how to approach this biographical requirement; it also opens up biography as a major genre for pupils to master - augmenting their development of literacy...
Teaching famous people at key stage one
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The Historian 95: An American showman
The magazine of the Historical Association
Featured articles:
The 2007 Medlicott Medal Lecture: What kind of history should school history be? Chris Culpin (Read article)
P. T. Barnum - Promoter of 'freak shows' for the family - John Springhall (Read Article)
Roald Dahl and the Lost Campaign - Trevor Fisher (Read Article)
Presenting Naseby: Documents, terrain, findings and...
The Historian 95: An American showman
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Frameworks for linking pupils' evidential understanding with growing skill in structured, written argument: the 'evidence sandwich'
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
History teachers are increasingly good at designing exercises which develop skill in evidence analysis. The ubiquitous ‘source' is invariably analysed for utility and reliability. But how do pupils integrate such understandings with extended written work?...
Frameworks for linking pupils' evidential understanding with growing skill in structured, written argument: the 'evidence sandwich'
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Any place for a database in the teaching and learning of history at KS1?
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum.
Early in July of this year I was involved in a meeting at BECTA in which a lively discussion took place about whether ICT should be a requirement, or not, in the teaching of history at KS1. As those participating included representatives...
Any place for a database in the teaching and learning of history at KS1?
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'I just wish we could go back in the past and find out what really happened': progression in understanding about historical accounts
Teaching History article
This is the second in a series of articles for Teaching History in which Peter Lee and Denis Shemilt share the findings of Project Chata (Concepts of History and Teaching Approaches). In their first article (see Edition 113), they questioned the wisdom of using the National Curriculum attainment target as...
'I just wish we could go back in the past and find out what really happened': progression in understanding about historical accounts
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Using timelines in assessment
Teaching History 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...
Using timelines in assessment
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Exploring the spices of the east: how curry got to our table
Primary History article
Every migrant to our shores brings with them the flavours and dishes of home, every trader searches for exotic and exciting new taste sensations. Britain’s culinary history has been shaped by migration, trade and empire.
How curry, exploration and empire building are linked
At the end of the Tudor period...
Exploring the spices of the east: how curry got to our table
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Evidential understanding, period knowledge and the development of literacy: a practical approach to 'layers of inference' for Key Stage 3
Teaching History article
Claire Riley explains how she developed and improved the ‘layers of inference' diagram-already a popular device since Hilary Cooper's work-as a way of getting pupils fascinated by challenging texts and pictures. Working with the whole ability range in Year 9 she analyses her successes and failures, offering many practical suggestions...
Evidential understanding, period knowledge and the development of literacy: a practical approach to 'layers of inference' for Key Stage 3
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Women’s friendship in late eighteenth-century America and its relevance to lockdown
Historian article
Rowan Cookson offers us the opportunity to compare our contemporary anxieties with a stressful era in American history.
Eighteenth-century women’s friendship is worth considering at this time. In my undergraduate dissertation, I concluded that white wealthy women’s friendship in eighteenth-century America equired long distance communication, involved labour and perpetuated race and class...
Women’s friendship in late eighteenth-century America and its relevance to lockdown
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The Historian 94: Civil Rights: How did the Civil Rights movement change America?
The magazine of the Historical Association
Featured articles:
Civil Rights: How did the Civil Rights movement change America? - A.J. Badger (Read Article)
The creation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707 - Alexander Murdoch (Read Article)
Historians in the National Archives - A.D. Harvey (Read article)
The Japanese history textbook controversy: a content analysis -...
The Historian 94: Civil Rights: How did the Civil Rights movement change America?
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Teaching and learning about Grace O'Malley as a significant woman at Key Stage 1
Article
"Why are you so angry Grace?" Teaching and learning about Grace O'Malley as a significant woman at Key Stage 1
Grace O'Malley was an Irish queen in the Tudor period and her story provides insights about life in Ireland at the time of the Elizabethan conquests. Grace, also known as...
Teaching and learning about Grace O'Malley as a significant woman at Key Stage 1
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Helping students put shape on the past; systematic use of analogies to accelerate understanding
Teaching History article
One of the challenges facing pupils in the history classroom is conceptual understanding. Pupils also find it difficult to recognise themes or patterns across different parts of time and space. Ian Myson has recognised the importance of analogy as a way to facilitate pupils’ understanding. He is quick to recognise,...
Helping students put shape on the past; systematic use of analogies to accelerate understanding
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Move Me On 168: teaching exam classes
Teaching History feature
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)...
Move Me On 168: teaching exam classes
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New, Novice or Nervous? 156: Analysing interpretations
Teaching History feature
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 others...
New, Novice or Nervous? 156: Analysing interpretations
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More than just the Henries: Britishness and British history at Key Stage 3
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the current national curriculum
With the first teaching of a revised history curriculum due in September 2008 the debate over content and order is well under way. Robert Guyver, involved in the design of the curriculum development experiment that evolved into the 1991 version of...
More than just the Henries: Britishness and British history at Key Stage 3
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Teaching History 37
Journal
In this issue:
Editorial, 2
School History Visits and Piagetian Theory - Mike Pound, 3
Film and the Study of History - The Imperial War Museum as a Practical Example - Paul Sargent, 7
Teaching History in the Soviet Secondary General Education School - A.G. Koloskov, 12
How to be...
Teaching History 37
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Move Me On 148: Using 'Bloom's taxonomy'
Teaching History feature
This issue's problem: Matt Boulton is using Bloom's taxonomy in very mechanistic ways to plan lesson objectives and think about progression in history.
Matt Boulton worked for 18 months as a Teaching Assistant before deciding to become a qualified teacher. His previous experience and understanding of the needs of students with...
Move Me On 148: Using 'Bloom's taxonomy'
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Britain, Europe and the World?
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
With the current debate on what content we should teach, and especially with the focus on pupils understanding the history of Britain before they leave school, it is perhaps pertinent to ask how this should link...
Britain, Europe and the World?
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The Darien Scheme - Pamphlet
Classic Pamphlet
The colonisation project that became known as the Darien Scheme or Darien Disaster was an unsuccessful attempt by the Kingdom of Scotland to become a world trading nation by establishing a colony called "Caledonia" on the Isthmus of Panama on the Gulf of Darién in the late 1690s.
This pamphlet...
The Darien Scheme - Pamphlet
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How technology has changed our lives
Primary History article
This article links teaching about Sir Tim Berners-Lee to Changes in Living Memory and Significant Individuals and makes comparisons between Caxton and the impact of earlier developments in communications technology.
It provides interesting topics for discussion about significance (pupils may be surprised by the idea that they are living through an exciting period of history at the moment). It even has the...
How technology has changed our lives
