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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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A View from the Classroom - Chronology
Primary History feature
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
As a teacher, the passing of time in a classroom may be: challenging, stimulating, appear endless, be subject to constant change, though never dull. Years pass, yet at times it can seem but yesterday, when I...
A View from the Classroom - Chronology
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Developing pupils' chronological understanding
Article
In its latest triennial history survey report, History for all, Ofsted concluded that, ‘history teaching was good or better in most primary schools' and, ‘most pupils reached the end of Key Stage 2 with detailed knowledge derived from well-taught studies of individual topics'. The report went on to note, though,...
Developing pupils' chronological understanding
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Teaching Time
Primary History article
History is about time, it subsists in time, time is the medium by which it happens. No-one can deny the importance of time in teaching history, yet it is probably the one element that causes more dispute than any other. The meaning of time
Understanding time
There is time we...
Teaching Time
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Primary history in the 21st century: Back to the past?
Primary History article
During my teaching of history I have been amazed by the asinine questions that children and adults ask about the subject matter. For example, a child once asked, ‘Sir, if Queen Cleopatra hadn't been bitten by the asp would she still be alive today?'. This question suggests that despite comprehensive...
Primary history in the 21st century: Back to the past?
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Primary History 59: Chronology
The primary education journal of the Historical Association
Editorial
06 Primary history in the 21st century: Back to the past? - Alan Hodkinson (Read article)
07 Teaching Time - John Fines (Read article)
08 Developing pupils' chronological understanding: The view from OFSTED - Michael Maddison HMI (Read article)
Features
10 A view from the classroom: Chronology - Cathie McIlroy...
Primary History 59: Chronology
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Norman Barons
Classic Pamphlet
What I have done in preparing this lecture on the Norman Barons is to choose three or four important families, with one or two individuals. I shall try to describe their fortunes briefly to you, pick out what appear to be common characteristics and generalize them - not as conclusions,...
Norman Barons
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William the First and the Sussex Rapes
Classic Pamphlet
During his reign, and in particular in the five years after the battle of Hastings, William I carried out the most thorough reallocation of land in England ever to take place in so short a period of time; the results were summarized in Domesday Book in 1086.That great record shows...
William the First and the Sussex Rapes
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Edward the Confessor and the Norman Conquest
Classic Pamphlet
Nine hundred years have elapsed since the death of Edward the Confessor, the last English king descended directly from Cerdic, king of Wessex in the sixth century - and so from the pagan gods. Nine hundred years are a long time; and if Edward had been succeeded by a son,...
Edward the Confessor and the Norman Conquest
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The Historian 111: An Intimate History of Your Home
The magazine of the Historical Association
5 Editorial
6 An Intimate History of Your Home - Lucy Worsley (Read Article)
10 The Tale of Two Winstons - Warren Dockter (Read Article)
13 The President's Column - Jackie Eales
14 Drought, Dust and Despair: The Story of pioneering British settlers' heartbreaking struggle to survive in the Victorian Mallee - 1923-1936 -...
The Historian 111: An Intimate History of Your Home
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Out and about in Cromford Mill, Lea Mills and the Lumsdale Valley
Historian feature
Cromford Mill, one of the best known, and the Lumsdale Valley, one of the least known of the early industrial sites, are linked today by being managed by the Arkwright Society. They have also been the subject of a recent BBC1 programme in a series: ‘Britain's Hidden Heritage'. They are...
Out and about in Cromford Mill, Lea Mills and the Lumsdale Valley
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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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John Wilkes 1725-1797: A Man of Principle
Historian article
For Lord North in 1775, one John Wilkes was enough, ‘though ... to do him justice, it was not easy to find many such'. The impact of Wilkes between 1760 and 1780 was profound, a cause as much as a person. For Philip Francis, thought to be the satirist ‘Junius',...
John Wilkes 1725-1797: A Man of Principle
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Were industrial towns 'death-traps'? Year 9 learn to question generalisations and to challenge their preconceptions about the 'boring' 19th century
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Kimberley Anthony and her history colleagues were troubled by Year 9's assumption that World War II was the only interesting thing that they were going to do in Year 9. Nineteenth-century industrialisation, even their own...
Were industrial towns 'death-traps'? Year 9 learn to question generalisations and to challenge their preconceptions about the 'boring' 19th century
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Cunning Plan 135: challenging generalisations
Teaching History feature
Let's play ‘TOO SIMPLE!' (a.k.a. ‘the generalisation game').
Some years ago, in my own history classroom, in a not-very-inspired moment, I developed a straightforward, low-resource, low-preparation activity which turned out to have more power than I had anticipated in getting pupils to reflect on degree or type of similarity and...
Cunning Plan 135: challenging generalisations
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The Tale of Two Winstons
Historian article
Winston Churchill is generally regarded as one of the most prominent figures of the twentieth century. As Prime Minister he led Britain to victory against the Nazi war machine, leading Time to name him ‘Man of the Year' in 1940 and ‘Man of the Half Century' in 1949. As recently...
The Tale of Two Winstons
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An Intimate History of Your Home - Lucy Worsley
Historian Article
‘You've gone over to The Dark Side'.
These were the words of a well-respected historian to whom I'd been enthusing about the pleasures and perils of Dressing Up.
During 2009-10 I spent several months in historic costume, recreating the habits and rituals of domestic life in the past. It was...
An Intimate History of Your Home - Lucy Worsley
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Cunning Plan 144: promoting independent student enquiry
Teaching History feature
Getting students to generate their own questions can seem like a formidable challenge, even for experienced teachers with extensive subject knowledge developed over years of teaching. Imagine how much more alarming it appeared to a student-teacher being encouraged to take risks by handing more responsibility to the students. Could it...
Cunning Plan 144: promoting independent student enquiry
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Using ‘Assessment for Learning' to help students assume responsibility
Teaching History article
Robin Conway's interest in student led enquiry derived from a concern to encourage his students to take much more responsibility for their own learning. Here he explains how his department gradually learned to entrust students with defining the enquiry questions and planning the kinds of teaching and learning activities to be...
Using ‘Assessment for Learning' to help students assume responsibility
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Pupil-led historical enquiry: what might this actually be?
Teaching History article
The current National Curriculum for history requires pupils to ‘identify and investigate specific historical questions, making and testing hypotheses for themselves'.
While Kate Hammond relished the encouragement that this gave to her pupils to engage in the process of historical enquiry, she was keen to develop a much clearer sense...
Pupil-led historical enquiry: what might this actually be?
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Strategies for A-Level marking to motivate and enable
Teaching History article
Jane Facey was unsatisfied with the way in which her A-Level students responded to typical assessment practice. This would normally involve their teacher marking their work and then providing them with written feedback. In looking to move beyond this, Facey drew upon a wide range of research and practice which...
Strategies for A-Level marking to motivate and enable
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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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Triumphs Show 144: Active learning to engage ‘challenging students'
Teaching History feature
Active learning to engage and challenge ‘challenging students'
Historical significance may have been the ‘forgotten element' in 2002 when Rob Phillips first offered us the acronym ‘GREAT', but it has been seized upon with enthusiasm by the history education community. Christine Counsell's now famous five ‘R's (remarkable, remembered, resonant, resulting...
Triumphs Show 144: Active learning to engage ‘challenging students'
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Witchcraft - Using fiction with Year 8s
Teaching History article
Which women were executed for witchcraft? And which pupils cared?
Paula Worth was concerned that her low-attaining set were only going through the motions when tackling causal explanation. Identifying, prioritising and weighing causes seemed an empty routine rather than a fascinating puzzle engaging intellect and imagination. She was also concerned...
Witchcraft - Using fiction with Year 8s
