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The how of history: using old and new textbooks in the classroom to develop disciplinary knowledge
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
What are textbooks for and how do we think of them? As inevitably partial views of the past that reflect their purpose and moment of construction and their authors' location in physical and ideological time...
The how of history: using old and new textbooks in the classroom to develop disciplinary knowledge
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Bringing psychology into history: why do some stories disappear?
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
History is always a relationship between the present and the past and the meaning of the past shifts as values and events change in the present. In this article Anne Llewellyn and Helen Snelson use...
Bringing psychology into history: why do some stories disappear?
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Triumphs Show 135: how trainee teachers learned to put history back into GCSE
Teaching History feature
What do you know about how your local museums can help your GCSE planning and teaching? How can your new GCSE courses for September make use of the free resources, artefacts and images that our local and national museums house? That's just what the PGCE history group from Leeds Trinity...
Triumphs Show 135: how trainee teachers learned to put history back into GCSE
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Big Stories and Big Pictures: Making Outlines and Overviews Interesting
Teaching History journal article
An examination, with practical strategies, of the teaching of 'outlines and overviews' by Michael Riley.
Why teach overviews?
One of the problems of the first phase of National Curriculum history was the percieved overload of content. Some teachers felt obliged to race through the Programme of Study, treating issues in...
Big Stories and Big Pictures: Making Outlines and Overviews Interesting
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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Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.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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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
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Stepping into the past: using images to travel through time
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Pupils are eternally curious about their teachers. Do they really have lives outside the classroom? Could Miss Jones have once been a child? Does she have parents and grandparents and a past of her own?...
Stepping into the past: using images to travel through time
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Scott's 5-stage model for progression in conceptual understanding of causation
Model
The following model examines progression in learning within a particular domain - cause and consequence. The Teaching History Research Group produced a series of stage descriptions which they tell us were based on a mixture of "personal experience, observation in many schools, discussions with teacher and research findings". It is...
Scott's 5-stage model for progression in conceptual understanding of causation
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Triumphs Show 133: Getting more pupils choosing History at GCSE
Teaching History feature
It is often remarked that history is under pressure nationally at GCSE. Our history numbers have never been enormous, and we have recently gone down from 2 sets to one set. The crunch came in 2007 when we collapsed to a dismal 12 students. A variety of factors may have...
Triumphs Show 133: Getting more pupils choosing History at GCSE
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Nutshell 133
Article
Did we really need a new Attainment Target?
Yes. The first one, developed in 1995, was a best effort to craft the old 1991 ‘statements of attainment' into holistic, ‘best fit' Level Descriptions. Since then, the history education community has learned a lot and some of the goals for pupils'...
Nutshell 133
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What is Bias?
Article
There is a nice story about how Calvin Coolidge went to hear a clergyman preach on sin. "What did he say?" he was asked. 'He said he was against it', Coolidge replied. The history teacher or student, well used by now to the normal form of questions at GCSE, might...
What is Bias?
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Past Foward: Continuity and progression
Article
I recently had the pleasure of teaching a class about a Victorian “inventor” (although we eventually agreed that ‘innovator” may be a more appropriate term). The man in question was Joseph Lister. I told the class the story of how he came to use carbolic acid as an antiseptic. I...
Past Foward: Continuity and progression
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Does scaffolding make them fall? Reflecting on strategies for developing causal argument in Years 8 and 11
Teaching History article
Jennifer Evans and Gemma Pate, history teachers in two Essex schools, had noticed that sometimes a writing frame did the opposite of what was intended. Sometimes a card sort fostered rich discussion and ownership; sometimes it led the students down a reductive rather than mind-opening path. Sometimes modelling of paragraphs...
Does scaffolding make them fall? Reflecting on strategies for developing causal argument in Years 8 and 11
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History and the perils of multiculturalism in 1990s Britain
Teaching History article
Ian Grosvenor's article points both to dangers and to positive potential in the National Curriculum for history. Critical of the published proposals for history in the current curriculum review, he points not only at the continuing narrowness of the perspectives enshrined by the proposed curriculum but at the reasons why...
History and the perils of multiculturalism in 1990s Britain
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Polychronicon 127: The Crusades
Teaching History feature
Modern research on the crusades has concentrated on three basic questions. What were they? How were they justified? What motivated the crusaders? The first of these questions became controversial twenty-five years ago, when historians with a traditional approach to the subject, who took into consideration only those expeditions launched to...
Polychronicon 127: The Crusades
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A team-taught conspiracy: Year 8 are caught up in a genuine historical debate
Teaching History article
Are top sets always our top priority? Of course, we know that every child matters (should that now have capital letters?) but those of us who teach in an ability-setted context also know that a bottom set left unable to access the curriculum is likely to pose bigger problems than...
A team-taught conspiracy: Year 8 are caught up in a genuine historical debate
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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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The return of King John: using depth to strengthen overview in the teaching of political change
Teaching History article
Dale Banham's article in Teaching History 92, ‘Getting ready for the Grand Prix: learning to build a substantiated argument in Year 7' has influenced much debate about extended writing. It has been influential way beyond the history education community. It also raised new questions about the management of historical content....
The return of King John: using depth to strengthen overview in the teaching of political change
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Triumphs Show 116: A practical way of teaching the complexities of ‘The Troubles’ at GCSE
Teaching History feature
Helping pupils to understand sectarian divisions in Northern Ireland is not easy. For pupils to comprehend the origins and complexities of ‘the Troubles’ they need a big picture. That big picture could be viewed as the interaction of three concepts: time, place and identity. If pupils can at least glimpse...
Triumphs Show 116: A practical way of teaching the complexities of ‘The Troubles’ at GCSE
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Beyond bias: making source evaluation meaningful to year 7
Teaching History article
In this article, Heidi Le Cocq demonstrates how to introduce Year 7 pupils to sophisticated techniques for evaluating sources. Taking up Seán Lang's criticism of the inappropriate use of the term ‘bias', she shows how even very young pupils can be encouraged to move beyond this wearisome response to questions...
Beyond bias: making source evaluation meaningful to year 7
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Triumphs Show 102: communicating historical difference to children with literacy problems
Teaching History feature
With the summer break stretching forth its welcome hand and the final lesson with my lowband Year 7 class looming, I wanted to ensure that the enthusiasm and dedication that this class had shown throughout the year was kept alive over the holiday period. We had been studying the Norman...
Triumphs Show 102: communicating historical difference to children with literacy problems
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Sharing The Past: Northamptonshire's Black History
Book Review
Northamptonshire Black History Association Pub 2008; ISBN:978 0 9557139 1 0; £12.95 [+£2.30 p and p] from: NBHA, Doddridge Centre, 109 St James Road, Northampton, NN5 5LD.
How fortunate Northamptonshire history teachers are! With the current emphasis on community cohesion and diversity in the New Secondary Curriculum, they are presented...
Sharing The Past: Northamptonshire's Black History
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Helping students put shape on the past; systematic use of analogies to accelerate understanding
Teaching History article
One of the challenges facing pupils in the history classroom is conceptual understanding. Pupils also find it difficult to recognise themes or patterns across different parts of time and space. Ian Myson has recognised the importance of analogy as a way to facilitate pupils’ understanding. He is quick to recognise,...
Helping students put shape on the past; systematic use of analogies to accelerate understanding
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You are members of a United Nations Commission...' Recent world crises simulations
Teaching History article
David Ghere presents a teaching and learning rationale for simulations where the location is not identified. This creates a deliberately artificial situation where the student can tackle the problems and carry out the decision-making and problem-solving exercise without preconceptions. The author does not recommend leaving the activity at this stage,...
You are members of a United Nations Commission...' Recent world crises simulations
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'Don't worry, Mr. Trimble. We can handle it' Balancing the rationale and the emotional in teaching of contentious topics
Teaching History article
A common line amongst teachers and policy-makers seeking to theorise a workable relationship between history and the new subject of citizenship is to say that there must be a link with the present. This is harder than it sounds. If the implication is that the study of the past should...
'Don't worry, Mr. Trimble. We can handle it' Balancing the rationale and the emotional in teaching of contentious topics
