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Triumphs Show 119: bringing the big picture to life using a 3D rollercoaster
Teaching History feature
In this edition of 'Triumphs Show' Kate Dacey demonstrates the effectiveness of visual stimuli in improving pupils' historical understanding. Dacey achieved this by using a 3D wall display to depict the turbulent period of the Reformation.
Triumphs Show 119: bringing the big picture to life using a 3D rollercoaster
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Evidence: Specific examples
Article
Evidence: Specific examples
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Year 9 use a 'road map' to problematise change and continuity
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Rachel Foster, a trainee teacher on teaching placement in November of her PGCE year, wanted her Year 9 pupils to understand the complexity of historical change. She also wanted them to find the difficult challenge...
Year 9 use a 'road map' to problematise change and continuity
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Approaches to the History Curriculum: Project based learning
Briefing Pack
Rationale/Origins
Project based learning has been around for decades; it is not a new idea. When we think back to the curriculum of the 1970s and early 80s, integrated Humanities was once again all the rage. As the Nuffield review of 2008 highlights "between 1975 and 1983, HMI tried to...
Approaches to the History Curriculum: Project based learning
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Reflecting on rights: teaching pupils about pre-1832 British politics using a realistic role-play
Teaching History article
Ian Luff’s discussion of role-play and his many practical examples (Ian Luff (2000) in Issue 100) drew a huge and positive response from readers. Luff emphasised the simple and the realistic, and, at the same time, showed how to get maximum value from these winning activities through a tight learning...
Reflecting on rights: teaching pupils about pre-1832 British politics using a realistic role-play
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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
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The Investiture Disputes
Classic Pamphlet
Historical labels are dictated by a wayward fashion; and the name which is still most commonly associated with the first struggle of Empire and Papacy (1076-1122). "The Investiture Disputes," is neither lucid or appropriate. It has been commoner for historians to name the great wars of history after the issues...
The Investiture Disputes
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Being ambitious with the causes of the First World War: interrogating inevitability
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated
Gary Howells asks hard questions about typical teaching and assessment of historical causation at Key Stage 3. Popular activities that may be helpful in addressing particular learning areas, or in teaching pupils to use the...
Being ambitious with the causes of the First World War: interrogating inevitability
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Developing awareness of the need to select evidence
Teaching History article
Let's play Supermarket ‘Evidential' Sweep: developing students' awareness of the need to select evidence
Despite having built a sustained focus on historical thinking into their planning for progression across Years 7 to 13, Rachel Foster and Sarah Gadd remained frustrated with stubborn weaknesses in the evidential thinking of students in...
Developing awareness of the need to select evidence
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Move Me On 192: analytical focus with diverse histories
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 192: analytical focus with diverse histories
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'What's that stuff you're listening to Sir?' Rock and pop music as a rich source for historical enquiry
Teaching History article
Building on the wonderful articles by Mastin and Sweerts & Grice in TH 108, Simon Butler urges us here to make greater use of rock and pop music in history classrooms. His reasons are persuasive. First, it provides a rich vein of initial stimulus material to tap, helping us to...
'What's that stuff you're listening to Sir?' Rock and pop music as a rich source for historical enquiry
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The Tenth Grade tells Bismarck what to do: using structured role-play to eliminate hindsight in assessing historical motivation
Teaching History article
Neomi Shiloah and Edna Shoham show how history teachers in Israel have begun to move away from traditional talk-and-chalk based teaching. They describe a blend of role-play and ICT that not only grabs pupils’ attention and caters for different styles of learning but also helps pupils to appreciate the difficulties...
The Tenth Grade tells Bismarck what to do: using structured role-play to eliminate hindsight in assessing historical motivation
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Evidential understanding, period knowledge and the development of literacy: a practical approach to 'layers of inference' for Key Stage 3
Teaching History article
Claire Riley explains how she developed and improved the ‘layers of inference' diagram-already a popular device since Hilary Cooper's work-as a way of getting pupils fascinated by challenging texts and pictures. Working with the whole ability range in Year 9 she analyses her successes and failures, offering many practical suggestions...
Evidential understanding, period knowledge and the development of literacy: a practical approach to 'layers of inference' for Key Stage 3
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Podcast Series: German History 1918-1948
Multipage Article
An HA Podcasted History of Modern German History: 1918-1948 featuring: Sir Ian Kershaw, Professor Jill Stephenson of the University of Edinburgh, Dr Christina von Hodenberg of Queen Mary, University of London and Professor Benjamin Ziemann of the University of Sheffield.
Podcast Series: German History 1918-1948
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How Michael moved us on: transforming Key Stage 3 through peer review
Teaching History article
Thomas Tallis history department have an interesting approach to planning. Whereas, all too often, this most time-consuming and intellectually demanding of teachers’ tasks is rendered invisible, and is supposed to happen by magic in the middle of the night, this department chose to make the planning process genuinely collaborative, pivotal...
How Michael moved us on: transforming Key Stage 3 through peer review
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Getting Year 7 to set their own questions about the Islamic Empire, 600-1600
Teaching History article
Sometimes particular problems can lead to unexpected solutions. In this case, Sally Burnham decided to solve a problem that she had identified among her Year 12 students by changing the way in which she teaches Year 7. Her Year 12s were finding it difficult to set appropriate questions for their...
Getting Year 7 to set their own questions about the Islamic Empire, 600-1600
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Protestantism and art in early modern England
Article
“I am greatly honoured to receive the Medlicott medal and I thank the President for his much-too-kind remarks. It is fifty years since I attended my first meeting of the Historical Association and heard a lecture by Professor Medlicott himself, no less. The Association does a wonderful job in encouraging...
Protestantism and art in early modern England
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Counterfactual Reasoning: Comparing British and French History
Teaching History article
Year 8 use counterfactual reasoning to explore place and social upheaval in eighteenth-century France and Britain
Two linked motivations inspired Ellen Buxton's research study: she wanted pupils to make connections between British and French history and she wanted to explore the potential of counter-factual reasoning within a causation enquiry. It...
Counterfactual Reasoning: Comparing British and French History
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Seeing, hearing and doing the renaissance (Part 2)
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
In the last edition of Teaching History, Maria Osowiecki described in detail the fourth lesson in a five-lesson enquiry entitled: What was remarkable about the Renaissance? She also shared her resources for two lively, interactive...
Seeing, hearing and doing the renaissance (Part 2)
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Working with Boudicca texts - contemporary, juvenile and scholarly
Teaching History article
Please note: this article was written before the the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may now be outdated.
Robert Guyver describes a model for teaching Boudicca’s rebellion to pupils aged 7 to 13. Drawing on the tradition of critical source evaluation, he nonetheless shuns aspects of that tradition in favour of...
Working with Boudicca texts - contemporary, juvenile and scholarly
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Challenging not balancing: developing Year 7's grasp of historical argument through online discussion and a virtual book
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
This article is about using story to construct a learning journey for a Year 7 class. It reports an innovative use of a virtual learning environment to construct a narrative e-book into which argument tasks...
Challenging not balancing: developing Year 7's grasp of historical argument through online discussion and a virtual book
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Does differentiation have to mean different?
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Richard Harris questions common assumptions about differentiation. In particular, he encourages teachers to avoid accepting too readily the view that pupils of different abilities must be given different resources or activities. Instead he builds a...
Does differentiation have to mean different?
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Seeing, hearing and doing the Renaissance (Part 1): Let's have a Renaissance party!
Teaching History article
In two, linked articles, appearing in this and the next edition, Maria Osowiecki shares an account of a five-lesson enquiry, based on the concept of historical significance (National Curriculum Key Element 2e) for mixed ability Year 8. She wanted to experiment with an array of creative teaching techniques that would...
Seeing, hearing and doing the Renaissance (Part 1): Let's have a Renaissance party!
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'Which was more important Sir, ordinary people getting electricity or the rise of Hitler?' Using Ethel and Ernest with Year 9
Teaching History article
Mike Murray offers further new perspectives on the relationship between overview and depth in pupils’ historical learning. In an account of his teaching with Raymond Briggs’ Ethel and Ernest to a ‘below-average ability’ class in Year 9, he constructs a rationale for using this moving strip cartoon to motivate, intrigue...
'Which was more important Sir, ordinary people getting electricity or the rise of Hitler?' Using Ethel and Ernest with Year 9
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From anecdote to argument: using the word processor to connect knowledge and opinion through revelatory writing
Teaching History article
Jayne Prior and Peter John argue that it is time to build upon what has been learned about historical writing using ICT and to acknowledge both opportunities and dangers in some current and popular practice. Critical of some of the weaker uses of ‘cut and paste’ activities, where pupils are...
From anecdote to argument: using the word processor to connect knowledge and opinion through revelatory writing
