-
Polychronicon 160: Interpreting 'The Birth of a Nation'
Teaching History feature
Controversial from the first year of its release in 1915, 'The Birth of a Nation' has been hailed as both the greatest film ever made and the most racist. On 8 February 1915, it premiered in Los Angeles as 'The Clansman', the name of the novel and play upon which...
Polychronicon 160: Interpreting 'The Birth of a Nation'
-
Triumphs Show 150.1: meeting the challenges of the A2 synoptic unit
Teaching History article
A collaborative project between Richard Rose Central Academy and University of Cumbria PGCE History trainees to meet the challenges of the A2 synoptic unit.
"If I tell you to eat, you will eat! You wanted cake! You stole cake! And now you've got cake! What's more, you're going to eat...
Triumphs Show 150.1: meeting the challenges of the A2 synoptic unit
-
Polychronicon 154: Elizabeth I
Teaching History feature
Elizabeth I is admired today for her power dressing and her power portraits; her political acumen and her success in a man's world.
The adulation of Elizabeth started during her own lifetime when she was praised as a goddess and even as a celestial power. Elizabeth's semi-mythical status is reflected...
Polychronicon 154: Elizabeth I
-
Teaching History 194: Climate and Environment
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
This edition of HA's Teaching History journal is free to download via the link at the bottom of the page (individual articles are also free to access).
For a subscription to Teaching History (published quarterly), plus access to our library of high-quality secondary history materials along with free or discounted CPD and...
Teaching History 194: Climate and Environment
-
Teaching History 171: Knowledge
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
This edition is free to download via the link at the bottom of the page (individual articles are also free to access).
For a subscription to the journal (published quarterly), plus access to our library of high-quality secondary history materials along with free or discounted CPD and membership of a thriving community...
Teaching History 171: Knowledge
-
200 editions of Teaching History!
Teaching History feature
In 1968, Mary Price wrote an article for the HA journal, History. Entitled ‘History in danger’, it told a shocking story. The subject of history in Britain’s schools was losing its identity, argued Price, disappearing into various species of integrated humanities and civics. Pupils could see little purpose for it,...
200 editions of Teaching History!
-
Using turning points in anti-racist history to explore historical significance at Key Stage 3
Teaching History article
In this article, Joel Sharples explains the organising principles that underpinned his planning for a new enquiry sequence inspired by a local photography exhibition. The exhibition’s title ‘Brick Lane 1978: The Turning Point’ prompted him to think afresh about the idea of ‘a turning point’ – a concept that he...
Using turning points in anti-racist history to explore historical significance at Key Stage 3
-
How visual evidence reflects change and continuity in attitudes to the police in the 19th and early 20th centuries
Teaching History article
While history teachers (and examiners) regularly invite students to consider what cartoons or paintings reveal about contemporary attitudes to particular social or political developments, such sources are often difficult to interpret and to use appropriately. Drawing on a wealth of detailed research and a passion to support teachers and students with...
How visual evidence reflects change and continuity in attitudes to the police in the 19th and early 20th centuries
-
An introduction to Teaching History
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
Teaching History – the HA's journal for secondary history teachers
Teaching History is the UK’s leading professional journal for history teachers at secondary level. Published quarterly with a distribution of over 3,000, Teaching History also boasts a growing international readership. These include teachers, heads of department, trainees, and libraries.
Teaching History is free...
An introduction to Teaching History
-
Building historical thinking together: breathing new life into mini whiteboards
Teaching History article
Formative assessment, in particular Assessment for Learning, created waves in classrooms in the early 2000s. Mini whiteboards, with pen and cloth, became popular and remain part of the toolkit in some classrooms. Teachers work hard to assess the learning of all students in a class, rather than just those who...
Building historical thinking together: breathing new life into mini whiteboards
-
Reading with other readers in mind
Teaching History article
Peter Turner, along with his colleagues, wished to design a cross-curricular activity for post-16 students in history and English. The enquiry they devised addressed the issue of the changing reception of the classic novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in the immediate aftermath of its publication, and...
Reading with other readers in mind
-
No more mark schemes: manageable and meaningful assessment for Years 7–9
Teaching History article
In seeking to answer the question of how to make valid, reliable, and meaningful judgements about students’ work in history, Elizabeth Carr’s department abandoned criteria-based mark schemes and replaced them with a form of comparative judgement conducted in relation to a series of exemplars. In this article, Carr explains the...
No more mark schemes: manageable and meaningful assessment for Years 7–9
-
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
-
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... Modern British LGBTQ+ history
Teaching History feature
While academic historians began to make important contributions to our understanding of British LGBTQ+ history in the 1970s (and, indeed, this built on historical scholarship from as early as the 1880s), the field of British queer history became properly established within university history departments and mainstream academic scholarship from the...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... Modern British LGBTQ+ history
-
Using Virtual Reality to promote historical contextualisation in classrooms
Teaching History article
In this article, Mannak, Huijgen and Tuithof share their experience of using Virtual Reality to promote historical contextualisation of the Berlin Blitz with their 13–15 year old students. They outline some strategies for using VR well in the classroom, and ways to avoid potential pitfalls. They then introduce a pedagogical...
Using Virtual Reality to promote historical contextualisation in classrooms
-
Teaching History 195: Perspectives in Time
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
03 Editorial (Read article)
04 HA Secondary News
06 Disembarking the religious rollercoaster: a new ‘direction’ for studying the consequences of the Reformation – Sarah Jackson-Buckley and Jessie Phillips (Read article)
18 ‘Public guardians, bold yet wary’? How visual evidence reflects change and continuity in attitudes to the police in...
Teaching History 195: Perspectives in Time
-
The Power of Context: using a visual source
Teaching History article
Drawing on her wealth of experience and expertise in using visual sources in the classroom, in this article Jane Card explores how a single painting, a portrait of Dido Elizabeth Belle Lindsay and her cousin Lady Elizabeth Murray, might form the basis for a sequence of lessons.
Arguing that although highly...
The Power of Context: using a visual source
-
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... youth culture?
Teaching History feature
For such a boldly iconoclastic work, the Key Stage 3 textbook A New Focus on ... British Social History, c.1920–2000 (2023) provides a disarmingly conventional account of youth in the 1960s as ‘mostly better educated and informed than their parents had been at their age [and able] … to find...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... youth culture?
-
Historiography from below: how undergraduates remember learning history at school
Teaching History article
What do our students make of the history that we teach them? As part of an introductory module on historiography, Marcus Collins asked his undergraduate students to analyse the history that they had been taught at school and college using historiographic concepts. The results make for interesting reading. What do...
Historiography from below: how undergraduates remember learning history at school
-
Teaching History 202: Organising Principles
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
Please note: The print version of this edition will start arriving with members from around Monday 13 April.
03 Editorial (Read article)
04 HA Secondary News
06 HA Update
08 How foundational concepts, supporting concepts and concrete examples can help untangle the past at Key Stage 3 – Gareth Lennon (Read article)...
Teaching History 202: Organising Principles
-
Teaching History 192: Out now
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
Read Teaching History 192: Breadth
If the length of a curriculum relates to how long it lasts – to its duration in classroom time and to the volume of historical time it covers – then curricular breadth refers us to the number and the variety of the dimensions of human...
Teaching History 192: Out now
-
Teaching History 191: Out now
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
Read Teaching History 191
Please note: the print edition of Teaching History 191 will arrive with members in mid-July.
Has the materiality of the past been neglected in secondary school history? Many history teachers might be surprised at the question. After all, enquiries featuring social, economic and cultural realities have...
Teaching History 191: Out now
-
Bringing historical method into the classroom
Teaching History article
Shortly before their final A-level examination, Peter Turner was alarmed to discover some fundamental weaknesses in his Year 13 students’ understanding of the nature of historical interpretations. Determined to address this concern at a much earlier point with his next cohort of students he developed a new six-lesson enquiry. His...
Bringing historical method into the classroom
-
Teaching History 189: Collaboration
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
02 Editorial (Read article)
03 HA Secondary News
04 HA Update
08 Adding up marginal gains: using Lesson Study to make microimprovements in teaching Year 8 how to use sources – Tony McConnell, Davinia Daley, Rebecca Levy, Lisa Waddell and Richard Waddington (Read article)
23 Triumphs Show: ‘The Strands of Memory’: how a...
Teaching History 189: Collaboration
-
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... Royal Studies
Teaching History feature
‘Royal Studies’ is much more than the study of kings and queens as individuals. It draws in their families, the institution of monarchy and monarchical government, court studies, relationships with the church, artistic and literary patronage, and more. While history ‘from below’ and studies of non-elite figures have enriched the...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... Royal Studies
