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Move Me On 164: Similarity & Difference
Teaching History feature
This issue’s problem: Sam Holberry is getting very confused about the concept of similarity and difference
Sam Holberry has returned to his main training school after a short placement in another school. Although he found it challenging to work with students he didn’t know, he enjoyed seeing a wider range...
Move Me On 164: Similarity & Difference
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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
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Cunning Plan… for teaching medieval Muslim Spain
Teaching History feature
Good morning Year 7. Once upon a time in the mid-eighth century, a young prince was forced to abandon his home. His home was in Damascus, and there, one night, his family had been taken by surprise. The young prince belonged to a family called the Ummayads. The Ummayads had...
Cunning Plan… for teaching medieval Muslim Spain
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Tracing the popular memory of Rosa Parks with Year 9
Teaching History article
Inspired by Jeanne Theoharis’s biography of Rosa Parks, Ed Durbin initially planned to challenge the ‘fable’ that had been constructed around her life. He soon realised, however, that he wanted to take the opportunity to get ‘behind’ the fable and help his students understand how and why it had been constructed. Drawing...
Tracing the popular memory of Rosa Parks with Year 9
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Why do we continue to study the Holocaust?
Teaching History article
Educators at Imperial War Museums (IWM) have been leading voices in Holocaust education since the Holocaust Exhibition opened at IWM London in June 2000. In this article, Clare Lawlor shares the design of IWM’s new Holocaust Learning Programme for schools, and the pedagogic research that underpinned the design process. The...
Why do we continue to study the Holocaust?
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Triumphs Show 121: 60th Anniversary commemoration of the end of WWII
Teaching History feature
It’s early July 2004, and the history department of Harrogate Grammar School are chatting in the staff room enjoying a bit of spare time now that exam classes have disappeared. The subject of what the department will do next year when it comes to trips, speakers and special days comes...
Triumphs Show 121: 60th Anniversary commemoration of the end of WWII
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Teaching Years 8 and 9 to write analytically about similarity and difference
Teaching History article
Reflecting on the quality of her pupils’ analyses of past diversity and complexity, Molly-Ann Navey was struck by the contrast with their writing geared to other types of disciplinary problem. Navey therefore set out to develop entirely new sequences of lessons which would teach pupils to shape arguments about similarity...
Teaching Years 8 and 9 to write analytically about similarity and difference
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‘What do they mean by that?’ Helping students to analyse academic writing from Key Stage 3 onwards
Teaching History article
Following her PGCE year, Alex Blelloch became concerned about the ways in which some of the students she observed struggled to engage with the complexities of texts written by historians. More broadly, she was also concerned about the limited opportunities younger students had to engage with historians’ works. In this...
‘What do they mean by that?’ Helping students to analyse academic writing from Key Stage 3 onwards
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Polychronicon 142: 'instructive reversals' - (re)interpreting the 1857 events in Northern India
Teaching History feature
The dramatic, chaotic and violent events that took place in Northern India in 1857/8 have been interpreted in many ways, as, for example, the ‘Indian Mutiny', the ‘Sepoy War' and the ‘First Indian War of Independence'. The tales that have been told about these events have been profoundly shaped, however,...
Polychronicon 142: 'instructive reversals' - (re)interpreting the 1857 events in Northern India
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Voices from Rwanda: when seeing is better than hearing
Teaching History article
Where were you when you last witnessed history being formed? How did you know that the events you had witnessed would turn out to be significant? The missile attack on a plane in Rwanda on 6 April 1994 passed Martyn Beer by at the time. It was later that he...
Voices from Rwanda: when seeing is better than hearing
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Why can't they just live together happily, Miss?' Unravelling the complexities of the Arab-Israeli conflict at GCSE
Teaching History article
How often do our students long for black and white rather than the shades of grey that history generally presents us with? Understanding the Arab-Israeli conflict is all about understanding diversity and complexity in all their shades of grey. Alison Stephen, teaching in an immensely diverse school herself, is determined...
Why can't they just live together happily, Miss?' Unravelling the complexities of the Arab-Israeli conflict at GCSE
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Do we have to read all of this?' Encouraging students to read for understanding
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
What’s the hardest part of history? Heads of Year 9 at options time seem depressingly clear - ‘Don’t do history, there’s too much writing.’ David Hellier and Helen Richards show that at The Green School...
Do we have to read all of this?' Encouraging students to read for understanding
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Triumphs Show 192: Balancing micro- and macronarratives of the Holocaust
Teaching History feature
Lien de Jong celebrates her 90th birthday in September 2023. In lots of ways, her biography is similar to many Europeans of her generation. She was born, grew up and went to school in The Hague during the 1930s. She trained to work in a nursery. In the 1950s, she...
Triumphs Show 192: Balancing micro- and macronarratives of the Holocaust
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Time for chronology? Ideas for developing chronological understanding
Teaching History article
The successful study of history requires many things, but few would contest that an understanding of time is one of them. Quite what we mean by ‘an understanding of time’ needs clarification, however. Chronological understanding is one feature. But it is not simply an ability to place events in order...
Time for chronology? Ideas for developing chronological understanding
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Empathy without illusions
Teaching History article
Empathy may have disappeared from official documents but the history teacher who does not still regularly think about it, plan for it and teach it would be hard to find. What is history if not, in part, an attempt to understand how people thought and felt in the past? This...
Empathy without illusions
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Using eighteenth-century material culture to develop evidential thinking in Year 8
Teaching History article
It seems that teapots really can talk. Eleanor Dimond took her undergraduate experience of studying material culture into the classroom, with startling results. Historians of material culture have developed distinctive evidential methods which, in stark contrast to typical GCSE and A-Level approaches, see a strong interplay between analysis of the physical attributes...
Using eighteenth-century material culture to develop evidential thinking in Year 8
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Thinking from the inside: je suis le roi
Teaching History article
Dale Banham and Ian Dawson show how active learning deepens students’ understanding of attitudes and reactions to the Norman Conquest. At the same time they build a bold argument for active learning, including a direct strike at the two most common objections to it. Many teachers still see it as...
Thinking from the inside: je suis le roi
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Cunning Plan 152.2: using Gillray’s cartoons with Year 8
Teaching History feature
The past 30 years have seen a general revival in scholarly activity relating to ‘all aspects of 18th-century British history'. However, this increase in academic study, which has broadly coincided with the introduction and development of the National Curriculum in England, has not resulted in the period being studied in great...
Cunning Plan 152.2: using Gillray’s cartoons with Year 8
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Why Gerry now likes evidential work
Teaching History article
Phil Smith resurrects the lovable Gerry who was first introduced to Teaching History readers by Ben Walsh. Gerry now pops up in another history classroom, and, sadly, has had a few terrible teachers since Ben was looking after him. Phil brings Gerry back to the path of righteousness. Through an...
Why Gerry now likes evidential work
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A poodle with bite: Using ICT to make AS level more rigorous
Teaching History article
Diana Laffin describes two substantial ICT activities designed to strengthen both motivation and rigour in Year 12. In her first activity, she uses the power of ICT to develop a critical sense of audience. She shows how this can have a direct impact on improving performance in relation to examination...
A poodle with bite: Using ICT to make AS level more rigorous
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Using Lesson Study to make microimprovements in teaching Year 8 how to use sources
Teaching History article
A highly distinctive and structured approach to teacher development, Lesson Study emerged in Japan but has since been adopted much more widely and now sees growing interest in the UK. Tony McConnell, Davinia Daley, Rebecca Levy, Lisa Waddell and Richard Waddington describe the process by which their school first investigated...
Using Lesson Study to make microimprovements in teaching Year 8 how to use sources
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Thinking about the ethical dimension
Teaching History article
Responding to concerns about Dutch students’ citizenship education, Tim Huijgen, Paul Holthuis, Roel Nijmeijer and Iris van den Brand set out to design online materials to help students understand the decisions and dilemmas faced by past actors. They focused on the life and actions of Rosie Glaser (1914–2000), a Dutch Holocaust survivor,...
Thinking about the ethical dimension
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Polychronicon 137: Bringing space travel down to Earth
Teaching History feature
It nearly began like this: ‘On Christmas Eve 1968, two episcopalians and a Roman Catholic were in orbit around the Moon.' I was writing a book called Earthrise, about the first views of Earth from space. Most other books about the Apollo programme of the 1960s and 1970s took an...
Polychronicon 137: Bringing space travel down to Earth
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It’s just reading, right? Exploring how Year 12 students approach sources
Teaching History article
Frustrated by the generic statements that her Year 12 students were making about sources, Jacqueline Vyrnwy-Pierce resolved to undertake a research project into how her students were approaching sources about the French Revolution. Fascinated by the research of American educational psychologist Sam Wineburg, Vyrnwy-Pierce decided to use Wineburg’s methods to find...
It’s just reading, right? Exploring how Year 12 students approach sources
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Educational visits to Holocaust-related sites
Teaching History article
Kay Andrews, former history teacher and expert in Holocaust teacher education, relates how she found herself questioning the impact and purpose of overseas site visits for students. She raises questions about whether the typical eastern European destinations that dominate Holocaust-related travel are the most appropriate for student learning. She also...
Educational visits to Holocaust-related sites
