-
Move Me On 159: Writing Frames
Teaching History feature
This issue's problem: Hannah Mitchell would like to wean pupils off the use of writing frames.
Hannah Mitchell has embarked on her PGCE training after a year spent working as a Teaching Assistant. Her varied experiences in that role - sometimes working one-to-one with young people, within a targeted intervention programme,...
Move Me On 159: Writing Frames
-
Cunning Plan 159: Putting the people into Magna Carta
Teaching History feature
Does your heart skip with excitement at the prospect of a Year 7 lesson on Magna Carta? No? Magna Carta may be an important part of the long-term story of royal power and individual liberties but it is not a topic that excites many teachers. If it were, teachers would...
Cunning Plan 159: Putting the people into Magna Carta
-
How should we remember Rosa Parks?
Primary History Article
Rosa Parks died in October 2005, aged 92. It's a life story which resonates with any age group. In a recent visit to a nursery, I saw 4 year olds who had lined up the chairs to make a bus, playing out Rosa's refusal to move from her seat. She...
How should we remember Rosa Parks?
-
What did ‘Mature Socialism’ mean for the Soviet Union?
Historian article
David Shipp analyses the state of socialism in the Soviet Union, from Brezhnev to Chernenko.
‘What is he thinking of? Reform, reform. Who needs it, and who can understand it? We need to work better, that is the only problem.’
These reported words of Leonid Brezhnev epitomise the view of the period...
What did ‘Mature Socialism’ mean for the Soviet Union?
-
Oracy and writing: Speaking, listening, discussion and debate
Primary History article
Editorial note: Writing is an outcome of its preparatory phase. In reviewing over fifty case-studies of writing and history for this edition of Primary History, it became clear that oracy is central to pupil development of written language, ideas and the formulation, planning, creation, drafting and revision of writing.
Introduction...
Oracy and writing: Speaking, listening, discussion and debate
-
New, Novice or Nervous? 153: Good Enquiry Questions
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...
New, Novice or Nervous? 153: Good Enquiry Questions
-
Using ancient texts to improve pupils' critical thinking
Teaching History article
Did Alexander really ask, ‘Do I appear to you to be a bastard?' Using ancient texts to improve pupils' critical thinking
Beth Baker and Steven Mastin make the case for teaching ancient history in the post-14 curriculum. Pointing out the damaging messages that could be conveyed by assuming that ancient...
Using ancient texts to improve pupils' critical thinking
-
Thinking across time: planning and teaching the story of power and democracy at Key Stage 3
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Ian Dawson's seminal work on developing chronological understanding - in Teaching History 117, on the website thinkinghistory.co.uk and elsewhere - will be familiar to readers. In this article Dawson considers the question, very much on...
Thinking across time: planning and teaching the story of power and democracy at Key Stage 3
-
Out and About in Madagascar
Historian feature
Madagascar is one of the world’s more intriguing destinations. If it is famous for anything – apart from sharing a name with a truly terrible film franchise – it is probably for its wildlife, much of which is found nowhere else. But whereas most people have at least an idea of...
Out and About in Madagascar
-
(Un)exceptional women: queenship and power in medieval Europe
Historian article
How was the power of a Queen described and how far did It extend? In this article some of the most important queens of the Medieval period are examined for the authority they were able to wield.
When we think of queens, the idea that they are extraordinary women, elevated to the highest status...
(Un)exceptional women: queenship and power in medieval Europe
-
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
-
The Historian 96: What did you do in the Hundred Years War, Daddy?
The magazine of the Historical Association
Featured articles:
What did you do in the Hundred Years War, Daddy? The soldier in later medieval England - Adrian R Bell, Adam Chapman, Anne Curry, Andy King and David Simpkin (Read Article)
Upwards till Lepanto: The Ottoman Turks in early modern Europe - Sarah Newman (Read article)
The Death of Lord...
The Historian 96: What did you do in the Hundred Years War, Daddy?
-
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
-
The River Don Engine
Article
Sarah Walters explores The River Don Engine - her favourite history place.
The River Don Engine, though strictly an object, is almost big enough to be labelled as a place in its own right. It certainly needs its own high-ceilinged museum annex and it is in this room that I...
The River Don Engine
-
Vive la France! A comparison of French and British history teaching, with practical suggestions from across La Manche
Teaching History article
It is possible for teachers to learn a great deal within their own classrooms, departments and schools. However, stepping outside that daily experience, whether by reading a journal, contributing to a web debate or attending a conference, can always provide refreshing ideas. Evelyn Sweerts takes the concept of sharing good...
Vive la France! A comparison of French and British history teaching, with practical suggestions from across La Manche
-
Investigating the Indus Valley (2600-1900 B.C.)
Primary History article
In 1924 The Illustrated London News broke the story of a sensational discovery in the Indian subcontinent. Ruined mounds at Mohenjodaro and Harappa, 600 km apart, were forgotten cities of a lost civilisation. Nearly all we know about the Indus Civilisation comes from archaeology. What survives leaves many unanswered questions,...
Investigating the Indus Valley (2600-1900 B.C.)
-
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
-
Subject leaders: The importance of subject knowledge
Primary History feature
By now, we should be used to hearing the term ‘knowledge-rich curriculum’ as this has been a focus of the government for some time now. The new Ofsted inspection framework mentions the expectation to ‘develop detailed knowledge and skills across the curriculum’ several times within intent, implementation and impact sections....
Subject leaders: The importance of subject knowledge
-
Using narratives and big pictures to address the challenges of a 2-year KS3 curriculum
Teaching History article
Faced with cutting her Key Stage 3 curriculum to two years, Natalie Kesterton and her department were determined to do more with less. Not only did they want to ensure that their pupils developed a secure, wide-ranging knowledge of British and world history, they also wanted to address deficits in pupils’...
Using narratives and big pictures to address the challenges of a 2-year KS3 curriculum
-
Triumphs Show 136: how one history department changed pupils' and parents' perceptions of homework
Teaching History feature
Devising worthwhile and engaging homework tasks, week in week out, can prove both demanding and frustrating - particularly in contexts where we know students will have be chased to complete them.
How can we make homework planning easier and more effective - and cut down the time spent chasing recalcitrant...
Triumphs Show 136: how one history department changed pupils' and parents' perceptions of homework
-
Powerful Pedagogy
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
The introduction of National Curriculum History in England as a statutory subject in 1989/90 faced primary teachers with a major challenge of how to teach a de facto new subject. The Nuffield Foundation funded a curriculum...
Powerful Pedagogy
-
New, Novice or Nervous? 151: Getting beyond bad ‘source work'
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...
New, Novice or Nervous? 151: Getting beyond bad ‘source work'
-
The Sykes-Picot agreement and lines in the sand
Historian article
Paula Kitching reveals how a secret diplomatic negotiation 100 years ago provides an insight into the political complexities of the modern-day Middle East.
The Middle East is an area frequently in the news. Over the last ten years the national and religious tensions appear to have exploded with whole regions...
The Sykes-Picot agreement and lines in the sand
-
Expertise in its development stage: planning for the needs of gifted adolescent historians
Teaching History article
The Director of the National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth (NAGTY), Deborah Eyre, is one of the foremost advocates of gifted and talented children, and their education, in the UK. She plans to improve the education of the most able students by asking subject communities to work on how...
Expertise in its development stage: planning for the needs of gifted adolescent historians
-
Robert Peel: Portraiture and political commemoration
Article
On 4 March 1856, during a debate in the House of Lords on a motion to form a ‘Gallery of National Portraits', the Conservative peer Earl Stanhope quoted Thomas Carlyle's view that ‘one of the most primary wants [of the historian is] to secure a bodily likeness of the personage...
Robert Peel: Portraiture and political commemoration
