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Christopher Hill: Marxism and Methodism
Historian article
Christopher Hill, the eminent historian of seventeenth century England, was a convinced Marxist throughout most of his long and productive life (1912-2003). He embraced this secular world-view when he was a young History student at Oxford in the polemical 1930s and never lost his ideological commitment, even though he resigned...
Christopher Hill: Marxism and Methodism
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The Historian 59: The Eighteenth Century Transformation of Bath
Article
4 The Eighteenth Century Transformation of Bath, by Trevor Fawcett
10 The Purpose and Political Significance of Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World, by Jenny Wilson
16 Working Class Conservatism and the Rise of Labour: a case study of Birmingham in the 1920s, by John Boughton
21 A National...
The Historian 59: The Eighteenth Century Transformation of Bath
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The wrong beach? Interpretation, location and film
Teaching History article
In this article Paul Sutton examines the concerns associated with place in films. He points out the problems that this poses for our students - problems mainly, but not only, associated with a common lack of geographical authenticity. But this, he suggests, can be turned to our advantage. For what...
The wrong beach? Interpretation, location and film
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Teaching History 23
Journal
Editorial, 2
The Contributors, 2
Teaching History: A Content Analysis of Numbers 1 to 20 - Keith Hodgkinson and J. B. Thomas, 3
History in Sixth Form Colleges in Hampshire - Joan Blyth, 7
`Booth at Hitchin': Assessing Thinking in History - Bernard Barker and Alan Southgate, 10
The Britannicus Letters...
Teaching History 23
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Cunning Plan 161: Magna Carta's legacy
Teaching History feature
Both Dawson and Hayes have recently written Cunning Plans that show how exciting Magna Carta is.
So why not stop there? Bring the barons to life with a flare of Dawson and send Magna Carta flying across the continent with just a hint of Hayes. Hey, from the same edition,...
Cunning Plan 161: Magna Carta's legacy
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Polychronicon 115: historians and the Holocaust
Teaching History feature
Polychronicon was a fourteenth-century chronicle that brought together much of the knowledge of its own age. Our Polychronicon in Teaching History is a regular feature helping school history teachers to update their subject knowledge, with special emphasis on recent historiography and changing interpretation. This edition of 'Polychronicon' focuses on historians...
Polychronicon 115: historians and the Holocaust
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Sutton Hoo - Classroom archaeology in the digital age
Primary History case study
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content and links may be outdated.
The class had composed its Anglo-Saxon funeral poem for Raedwald, an Anglo-Saxon king, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A6dwald_of_East_Anglia, the high king or Bretwalda of all seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the early seventh century as well as being King...
Sutton Hoo - Classroom archaeology in the digital age
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Verdun: the endless battle
Historian article
Most can agree that the battle of Verdun started 100 years ago, on 21 February 1916, when the Germans began attacking French positions north and east of the old fortress town on the Meuse river. Few can agree on when it ended. The Germans might draw a line under it...
Verdun: the endless battle
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Analysing Anne Frank: a case study in the teaching of thinking skills
Teaching History article
For those lucky history departments in and around Newcastle this article will not be news. Peter Fisher alludes to the quasi-religious atmosphere that is often discernible amongst history teachers who have been working with the Thinking Skills groups linked to University of Newcastle Department of Education. He is not exaggerating...
Analysing Anne Frank: a case study in the teaching of thinking skills
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Polychronicon 123: Gladstone and Disraeli
Teaching History feature
Our Polychronicon in Teaching History is a regular feature helping school history teachers to update their subject knowledge, with special emphasis on recent historiography and changing interpretation. This edition of 'Polychronicon' focuses on the interpretations of Gladstone and Disraeli.
Polychronicon 123: Gladstone and Disraeli
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Teaching pupils to analyse cartoons
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
In this practical account of a key aspect of history departmental policy, Joseph O'Neill presents a rationale for the systematic teaching of analytical techniques. Alert to the dangers of mechanistic and formulaic examination responses, the...
Teaching pupils to analyse cartoons
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Chartism
Classic Pamphlet
It is not surprising that Chartism has attracted a great deal of interest from historians and students, for at no other period in British history, with the possible exception of the second and third decades of the twentieth century, has so much excitement and activity been aroused at the working-class...
Chartism
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French chivalry in twelfth-century Britain?
Historian article
The year 1066 - the one universally remembered date in English history, so well-known that banks advise customers not to choose it as their PIN number - opened the country up to French influence in spectacular fashion. During the ‘long twelfth century' (up to King John's death in 1216) that...
French chivalry in twelfth-century Britain?
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MOOCs and the Middle Ages
Historian article
Deirdre O’Sullivan explains how history courses such as England in the Time of Richard III are now freely available to people anywhere in the world who have online access. She reports that in the past two years 40,000 learners have followed this course.
MOOCs (Massive Open Access Online Courses) are...
MOOCs and the Middle Ages
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Mushrooms and snake-oil: using film as AS/A level
Teaching History article
In this article, Seán Lang examines the power of film to shape AS/A students’ perception and even understanding of the past. He argues that teachers of Years 12 and 13 underestimate at their peril the impact film can have on how students shape their perception of history. Although, as he...
Mushrooms and snake-oil: using film as AS/A level
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Move Me On 134: Getting enough A-level experience
Teaching History feature
Problem for the history mentor: Tom Clarkson is worried that he will not have enough A level teaching experience to teach Year 12 effectively next year.
Tom Clarkson is well into his second teaching placement and fears that the outline plans on his timetable for working with Year 12 will...
Move Me On 134: Getting enough A-level experience
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Significant anniversaries: The Bristol Bus Boycott, 1963
Primary History article
It is sixty years since the Bristol Bus Boycott highlighted race inequalities and discrimination in the workplace. In this article, Stuart Boydell revisits this watershed moment and considers how the Bristol Bus Boycott could be incorporated into the curriculum today.
Sixty years ago, Bristol was at the centre of a...
Significant anniversaries: The Bristol Bus Boycott, 1963
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When computers don't give you a headache: the most able lead a debate on medicine through time
Teaching History article
Dan Moorhouse begins with a complaint about ICT. It is not the clichéd teacher-complaint – that the computers keep crashing, and the students are messing around on the Internet (and how, exactly, do you turn the things on?) Instead, he observes that the use of ICT in the classroom is...
When computers don't give you a headache: the most able lead a debate on medicine through time
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Ordinary pupils, extraordinary results: a structured approach to raising attainment at GCSE
Article
It is a very common complaint that history GCSE is unfairly demanding compared with other subjects. Well, it probably is. But that does not stop history at Robert Clack School from outperforming every other subject except art. Nor is this the story of one of those schools with an unusually...
Ordinary pupils, extraordinary results: a structured approach to raising attainment at GCSE
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From tragedy to triumph: The courage of Henrietta, Lady of Luxborough 1699-1756
Historian article
Why is Henrietta Luxborough, who was born in 1699, of interest today? In the first place because of whom she was; in the second because of what happened to her; and in the third because of her courage which enabled her to overcome adversity and lead a life utterly different...
From tragedy to triumph: The courage of Henrietta, Lady of Luxborough 1699-1756
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Polychronicon 122: The Gunpowder Plot
Teaching History feature
Our Polychronicon in Teaching History is a regular feature helping school history teachers to update their subject knowledge, with special emphasis on recent historiography and changing interpretation. This edition of 'Polychronicon' focuses on interpretations of the Gunpowder Plot.
Polychronicon 122: The Gunpowder Plot
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Move Me On 140: Getting students to generate their own enquiry questions
Teaching History feature
This Issue's Problem: Rafe Sadler has just started his second teaching placement and is worried about the very different ways of working and expectations of teachers in his new department.
In his first school, where history was taught within a humanities programme, the Key Stage 3 scheme of work had...
Move Me On 140: Getting students to generate their own enquiry questions
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Teaching about the translatlantic slave trade and emancipation
Primary History article
Introduction – slavery, abolition and emancipation 25 March 2007 marked the bicentenary of the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. It is not compulsory to teach about the slave trade. However, the links to the National Curriculum – particularly in history, citizenship and geography – are clear. The...
Teaching about the translatlantic slave trade and emancipation
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Move Me On 142: Makes assumptions about students' thinking
Teaching History feature
This issue's problem: Rob Collingwood keeps just making assumptions about his students' thinking.
Rob Collingwood seemed to make a very promising start to his first school placement, but as time goes on his mentor is becoming concerned about the lack of connection between Rob's thinking and that of his students. Rob...
Move Me On 142: Makes assumptions about students' thinking
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Why essay-writing remains central to learning history at AS level
Teaching History article
Richard Harris challenges those who play down the essay in their teaching of the new AS Level. He argues that essay-writing embodies historical thinking and that it is therefore an essential tool for developing students’ understanding of history as an opinion-forming, judgement making process. Students need to practise developed, evidential...
Why essay-writing remains central to learning history at AS level
