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Making rigour a departmental reality
Teaching History article
Faced with the introduction of a two-year key stage and a new whole-school assessment policy, Rachel Arscott and Tom Hinks decided to make a virtue out of necessity and reconsider their whole approach to planning, teaching and assessment at Key Stage 3. In this article they give an account of...
Making rigour a departmental reality
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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
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Getting Year 10 to understand the value of precise factual knowledge
Teaching History article
Up until the early 1990s, historical knowledge sometimes had rather a bad press. Various developments, in National Curriculum, at GCSE and, importantly, in ordinary teachers’ practice and debate, then led to a much closer integration of what we once called ‘content’ and ‘skills’. Tony McAleavy examined changing perceptions of the...
Getting Year 10 to understand the value of precise factual knowledge
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New, Novice or Nervous? 150: Getting pupils to see change over time
Teaching History feature
This page is the starting point for all who are new to the published writings of history teachers. Every problem you wrestle with, other history teachers have wrestled with too. Quick fixes don't exist. But if you discover others' writing, you'll soon find - and want to join - something...
New, Novice or Nervous? 150: Getting pupils to see change over time
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Diversifying the curriculum: one department’s holistic approach
Teaching History article
In this article, Theo Woods shares the experience of one history department as they embarked on a substantial process of curriculum review and development. The department sought to address concerns that the range of history taught in their school, across the full seven years of students’ secondary experience, was too ‘traditional,...
Diversifying the curriculum: one department’s holistic approach
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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'
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Learning from the Aftermath of the Holocaust
Article
International Journal of Historical Learning, Teaching and Research [IJHLTR], Volume 14, Number 2 – Spring/Summer 2017
ISSN: 14472-9474
Abstract
In this article I seek to encourage those involved in Holocaust education in schools to engage not just with the Holocaust but also with its aftermath. I conceptualise the latter in terms of two...
Learning from the Aftermath of the Holocaust
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Developing transferable knowledge at A-level
Teaching History article
From a compartmentalised to a complicated past: developing transferable knowledge at A-level
Students find it difficult to join up the different things they study into a complex account of the past. Examination specifications do not necessarily help with this because of the way in which history is divided up into...
Developing transferable knowledge at A-level
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Triumphs Show: ‘The Strands of Memory’
Teaching History feature
In 2014, a group of French pupils from Lycée Léopold Sédar Senghor in Évreux was due to meet a British Second World War veteran, Eric Rackham, to hear him talk about his war experiences. Sadly, he passed away before the planned meeting. Paradoxically, this failed meeting led to the development...
Triumphs Show: ‘The Strands of Memory’
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Triumphs Show 176: Using material culture as a means to generate an enquiry on the British Empire
Teaching History feature
Triumphs Show is a regular feature which offers a quick way for teachers to celebrate their successes and share inspirational ideas with one another. While the ideas are always explained in sufficient depth for others to be able to take them forward in their own practice, the simple format allows...
Triumphs Show 176: Using material culture as a means to generate an enquiry on the British Empire
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What time does the tune start? From thinking about 'sense of period' to modelling history at Key Stage 3
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
A ‘sense of period' is the contextual backdrop to the study of any aspect of history. As experienced historians, we tend to take for granted both our structural map of the past and our rich...
What time does the tune start? From thinking about 'sense of period' to modelling history at Key Stage 3
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Cunning Plan 181: Incorporating a more global perspective within Key Stage 3
Teaching History feature
While lockdown, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020, brought a period of turbulence to the education sector, it also brought a wealth of generosity, with a vast range of free online CPD offered by different providers. One in particular was the webinar series ‘West African History before the 1600s’ hosted...
Cunning Plan 181: Incorporating a more global perspective within Key Stage 3
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A comparative revolution?
Teaching History Article
Although the curriculum changes of 2008 brought with them new GCSE specifications, Jonathan White was disappointed by the dated feel of some ‘Modern World' options, particularly the depth studies on offer. Drawing on his experience of teaching comparative history within the International Baccalaureate, and building on previous arguments in Teaching History...
A comparative revolution?
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Planning and teaching linear GCSE
Teaching History article
Planning and teaching linear GCSE: inspiring interest, maximising memory and practising productively
As proposed changes to the National Curriculum are furiously debated, and details of future changes to GCSE are anxiously awaited, history teachers in England are already wrestling with the implications of one change to the public examination system:...
Planning and teaching linear GCSE
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Representations of Empire: Learning through Objects
Key Stages 2 and 3
Produced by the Northamptonshire Black History Association and originally published in 2008, this is one of a set of resources for schools offering a more inclusive map of the past that includes an appreciation of Black History within the local, national and global context. The resources provide a range of opportunities to promote diversity within the curriculum.
Contents of...
Representations of Empire: Learning through Objects
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Changing thinking about cause
Article
Aware both that causation is the bread and butter of the historian’s craft, and that trainee teachers find it far harder to teach well than they anticipate, Alex Ford sought to get to the heart of the problem with causation, especially at GCSE. When teaching to a specification and mark...
Changing thinking about cause
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Teaching pupils to analyse cartoons
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
In this practical account of a key aspect of history departmental policy, Joseph O'Neill presents a rationale for the systematic teaching of analytical techniques. Alert to the dangers of mechanistic and formulaic examination responses, the...
Teaching pupils to analyse cartoons
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Bringing Rwanda into the classroom
Teaching History article
A short 20 years: meeting the challenges facing teachers who bring Rwanda into the classroom
As the twentieth anniversary of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda approaches, Mark Gudgel argues that we should face the challenges posed by teaching about Rwanda. Drawing on his experience as a history teacher in the...
Bringing Rwanda into the classroom
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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
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Understanding Key Concepts: Diversity
Article
Please note: this resource pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum. For more recent resources, see How diverse is your history curriculum? and Diversity links and resources for Secondary history.
This material enables history teachers to explore the concept of diversity.
Section 1 discusses the concept of diversity and its importance in the...
Understanding Key Concepts: Diversity
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Move Me On 184: struggling to see beyond tightly regimented teaching strategies
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 184: struggling to see beyond tightly regimented teaching strategies
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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... medieval science and medicine?
Teaching History feature
The phrase ‘medieval science’ may seem nonsensical. ‘How can... a synonym for “backward”,’ the editors of The Cambridge History of Science Volume 2 ask rhetorically, ‘modify a noun that signifies the best available knowledge from the natural world?’ To answer their question, we must rethink our assumptions, both about the...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... medieval science and medicine?
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Using databases to explore the real depth in the data
Teaching History article
Is it a good thing to have a lot of evidence? Surely the historian would answer that yes, it is: the more evidence that can be used, the better. The problem with this approach, though, is that too much data can be overwhelming for the history student - and, in...
Using databases to explore the real depth in the data
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Unpacking the enquiry puzzle
Teaching History article
The defining qualities of a good enquiry question have been regularly revisited by contributors to Teaching History in the 25 years since Riley first outlined what he saw as three essential characteristics. Despite these endeavours, Ben Arscott notes that the properties of a good enquiry question remain somewhat elusive. His...
Unpacking the enquiry puzzle
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Polychronicon 173: From American Indians to Native Americans
Teaching History journal feature
Few sub-fields of American history have undergone as many changes over time as the study of Native Americans/American Indians. While nineteenth- and early twentieth-century historians portrayed Native Americans as savage barbarians or ignored them entirely, late twentieth-century historians portrayed them as victims of circumstance and aggressive European conquest. Today, modern...
Polychronicon 173: From American Indians to Native Americans
