-
Holistic assessment through speaking and listening
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Giles Fullard and Kate Dacey wanted to enrich their department's planning for progression across Key Stage 3 with a strong sequence of activities fostering argument. They wanted an opportunity for students to draw together their...
Holistic assessment through speaking and listening
-
Where are we? The place of women in history curricula
Teaching History article
Joanne Pearson reflects on her experiences as a history teacher and teacher educator, considering the ways in which she has seen women represented in the history curricula of different schools in England. She makes the case that greater attention needs to be paid by history teachers to the criteria against...
Where are we? The place of women in history curricula
-
Triumphs Show 130: Righting the Revolution
Teaching History feature
It was period 5 on a wet Wednesday afternoon deep into the winter term. Year 9 were even more difficult than usual. Being cooped up inside at lunch, without supervision, had not helped the situation. What was I going to do with this untamed bunch? Put on a trusted video?...
Triumphs Show 130: Righting the Revolution
-
Polychronicon 146: Interpreting the history of 'big history'
Teaching History feature
In recent decades, a novel approach to history has emerged, called ‘big history', which provides an overview of all of human history, embedded within biological, geological and astronomical history covering the grandest sweep of time and space, from the beginning of the universe to life on Earth here and now....
Polychronicon 146: Interpreting the history of 'big history'
-
Polychronicon 116: The Roman Empire
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' examines the study...
Polychronicon 116: The Roman Empire
-
Polychronicon 145: Interpreting the history of the modern prison
Teaching History feature
On the morning of Sunday 24 January 1932 convicts paraded in the exercise yards at Dartmoor Convict Prison in Devon. Suddenly, inmates began to break ranks, encouraging others to do likewise. Some prisoners were shepherded into cell blocks by officers but control mechanisms quickly collapsed and the remaining inmates had...
Polychronicon 145: Interpreting the history of the modern prison
-
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?
-
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
-
Cunning Plan 143: enquiries about the British empire
Teaching History journal feature
I wanted to give my Year 8 students ownership of their work on the British Empire by allowing them to suggest our ‘enquiry question'. In order to introduce the Empire, I brought in sugar, spices, bananas, chilli peppers and cotton. I then showed maps demonstrating the Empire at its height....
Cunning Plan 143: enquiries about the British empire
-
Using visual sources to understand the arguments for women's suffrage
Teaching History article
Visual sources, Jane Card argues, are a powerful resource for historical learning but using them in the classroom requires careful thought and planning. Card here shares how she has used visual source material in order to teach her students about the women's suffrage movement. In particular, Card shows how a...
Using visual sources to understand the arguments for women's suffrage
-
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
-
Developing sixth-form students' thinking about historical interpretation
Teaching History article
Understanding historical interpretation involves understanding how historical knowledge is constructed. How do sixth formers model historical epistemology? In this article Arthur Chapman examines a small sample of data relating to sixth form students' ideas about why historians construct differing interpretations of the past. He argues that understanding interpretation requires students to...
Developing sixth-form students' thinking about historical interpretation
-
Telling rich stories about women’s lives in the American West at GCSE
Teaching History article
Concerned by the absence of women’s voices in her school’s scheme of work on the American West, and struck by the narrow, male-dominated narrative in her GCSE textbook, Nicole Ridley set out to rethink the way the topic was taught. Galvanised by her research into different ways to integrate women’s history,...
Telling rich stories about women’s lives in the American West at GCSE
-
Teaching Year 9 about the ordinary people who fought in the Spanish Civil War
Teaching History article
Teaching Year 9 about the ordinary people who fought in the Spanish Civil War
-
Polychronicon 112: The Angevin Empire
Teaching History feature
Polychronicon was a fourteenth-century chronicle that brought together much of the knowledge of its ownage. 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 the 'Polychronicon' concentrates on the...
Polychronicon 112: The Angevin Empire
-
Cunning Plan… for using the story of Eunice Foote to bring environmental history into the curriculum
Teaching History feature
It was during a rainy Tuesday breaktime that I realised why I was so flippant about including environmental history in my curriculum. ‘The climate, you see,’ I said to my colleague Tamsin as I double-boiled the staffroom kettle, ‘can’t challenge you when you don’t include it.’
Kate Hawkey’s book History and the Climate...
Cunning Plan… for using the story of Eunice Foote to bring environmental history into the curriculum
-
Beyond the bolt-on: placing local history at the heart of a diverse and decolonial curriculum
Teaching History article
Students’ rapt response to a filmed interview with a former miner now working as part of the school’s premises team convinced Fred Oxby of the power of local stories. This was not simply because they captured students’ attention, nor even because such stories enabled them to see that history was not...
Beyond the bolt-on: placing local history at the heart of a diverse and decolonial curriculum
-
Whose past is it anyway? Telling Russian and Soviet history through diverse Jewish voices
Teaching History article
When Alistair Dickins came to teach A-level Russian and Soviet history (1855–1964) he was rather surprised by the very limited references to Jewish history within the exam board specification. His own detailed knowledge in this area (a ‘little side-project’ from his doctorate on the Russian Revolution), led to a revision of the course. This article...
Whose past is it anyway? Telling Russian and Soviet history through diverse Jewish voices
-
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... schooling and the British Empire
Teaching History feature
The history of schooling and the British Empire encompasses a complex body of literature. Histories of formal education intersect with work on race, class and capitalism and link to adjacent fields such as histories of childhood. A basic contention shared throughout this field, however, is that there was a profound...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... schooling and the British Empire
-
Who inherits the house? Using heritage to shape pupils’ thinking about historical significance
Teaching History article
Reflecting on the reasons why generic models for teaching historical significance are never quite adequate, Rachel Foster found herself considering, instead, the specific contexts in which arguments about historical significance arise. These reflections took her to the fascinating example of stately homes. Drawing on scholarship such as that of Peter...
Who inherits the house? Using heritage to shape pupils’ thinking about historical significance
-
Shaping what matters: Year 9 decide why we should care about the Windrush scandal
Teaching History article
Mark Fowle began work on an enquiry to contextualise the Windrush scandal for his pupils in south London, in response to the first national Stephen Lawrence Day, in 2018. He went on to work with his colleagues in a new school to broaden pupils’ historical perspective through stories of migration...
Shaping what matters: Year 9 decide why we should care about the Windrush scandal
-
Triumphs Show: Embracing scholarship to guide Year 7 on an exploration of the Silk Roads
Teaching History feature
It has been the same for history teachers all over the country: the dramatic shift in perspective after reading Peter Frankopan’s The Silk Roads. Frankopan’s groundbreaking scholarship transported me to distant lands. His book introduced me to cultures and civilisations previously unknown. I wanted my pupils to venture along the same...
Triumphs Show: Embracing scholarship to guide Year 7 on an exploration of the Silk Roads
-
Move Me On 197: struggling to manage the history teacher education programme alongside part-time work
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. Each issue presents a situation in initial teacher education/training with an emphasis upon...
Move Me On 197: struggling to manage the history teacher education programme alongside part-time work
-
The Holocaust in history and history in the curriculum
Teaching History article
In this powerfully argued article Paul Salmons focuses directly on the distinctive contribution that a historical approach to the study of the Holocaust makes to young people's education. Not only does he question the adequacy of objectives focused on eliciting purely emotional responses; he issues a strong warning that turning...
The Holocaust in history and history in the curriculum
-
Deepening post-16 students' historical engagement with the Holocaust
Teaching History article
Peter Morgan represents what is best about the reflective practitioner - an experienced teacher of some 15 years' standing, he continues to challenge himself and to seek ways to improve and develop his classroom practice. Deeply influenced by the pedagogy and resources that he encountered on the CPD of the Institute...
Deepening post-16 students' historical engagement with the Holocaust
