-
Cunning Plan 99: 'a world study after 1900'
Teaching History feature
This unit could still become a trawl through two World Wars and then the Cold War (if you don't run out of time). So, when reviewing your planning why not take advantage of being at the turn of a century? Ask pupils what will the twentieth century be remembered for?...
Cunning Plan 99: 'a world study after 1900'
-
Practical classroom approaches to the iconography of Irish history or: how far back do we really have to go?
Teaching History article
Ben Walsh presents a structured practical activity for teaching pupils about Northern Ireland through the use of murals. The activity can be carried out in Year 9 as part of a study on the twentieth-century world, or as part of a GCSE course. He stresses the importance of an informed...
Practical classroom approaches to the iconography of Irish history or: how far back do we really have to go?
-
Mentioning the War: does studying World War Two make any difference to pupils' sense of British achievement and identity?
Teaching History article
All of this edition is based on the assumption that the teaching of history can have a significant impact upon the values, views and attitudes of our pupils. But how much impact does it have and of what type? And do we ever examine that impact in order to rethink...
Mentioning the War: does studying World War Two make any difference to pupils' sense of British achievement and identity?
-
Pride and delight: motivating pupils through poetic writing about the First World War
Teaching History article
This project emerged from team-teaching with history teachers in history lessons. Gill Minikin draws upon her expertise as an English teacher to help pupils become excited by the challenge of ‘squeezing language' into poems. History teachers often ask pupils to write poems but they do not necessarily draw upon all...
Pride and delight: motivating pupils through poetic writing about the First World War
-
Analysing Anne Frank: a case study in the teaching of thinking skills
Teaching History article
For those lucky history departments in and around Newcastle this article will not be news. Peter Fisher alludes to the quasi-religious atmosphere that is often discernible amongst history teachers who have been working with the Thinking Skills groups linked to University of Newcastle Department of Education. He is not exaggerating...
Analysing Anne Frank: a case study in the teaching of thinking skills
-
Three lessons about a funeral: Second World War cemeteries and twenty years of curriculum change
Article
Mike Murray analyses the way in which curriculum development has broadened and strengthened our conceptions of high standards in historical learning for school students. He pays tribute to ground-breaking new theoretical principles from the Schools History Project and from new emphases upon contextual knowledge and ‘interpretations' in the first National...
Three lessons about a funeral: Second World War cemeteries and twenty years of curriculum change
-
Ants and the Tet Offensive: teaching Year 11 to tell the difference
Article
The history department at Morpeth School in East London has improved performance at GCSE. The department has also done something unusual: it has abandoned coursework. This might seem a surprising decision but the rationale is interesting and clear. Arguably, the fundamental examination skills are identical to those needed for coursework...
Ants and the Tet Offensive: teaching Year 11 to tell the difference
-
Cunning Plan 92: The Weimar Republic
Article
Teaching the Weimar Republic is rather like teaching the voyage of the Titanic. However much you stress the strengths of the Weimar vessel, they just can't wait to see it sink into the Nazi sea. I have found this problem to be so bad that many of them perceive the...
Cunning Plan 92: The Weimar Republic
-
History, citizenship and Oliver Stone
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
When is a work of art a work of history? How can we get our students to appreciate the difference without ignoring the overlap? How should we ask our students to approach the historical film...
History, citizenship and Oliver Stone
-
'I've been in the Reichstag': Rethinking roleplay
Teaching History article
Ian Luff constructs a rationale for the use of drama, practical demonstration and roleplay in pupils' learning. He follows this with a wealth of practical examples and detailed advice based on his own professional experience and his experience in running training sessions for other teachers. His analysis of the value...
'I've been in the Reichstag': Rethinking roleplay
-
Polychronicon 131: At your leisure
Teaching History feature
Leisure time - like time itself - is fluid, and keeps changing its social meanings. From a ‘serious' high political perspective there is no history of leisure and leisure is trivial. Such perspectives have long lost their grip on the historical imagination, of course, and we have had histories of...
Polychronicon 131: At your leisure
-
The great Liberal landslide: the 1906 General Election in perspective
Historian article
On 1 May 1997 the Conservative party suffered an electoral defeat so overwhelming that political commentators were left rummaging through the statistics of the previous two centuries to find anything similar. The Times concluded on 3 May that it was the party's worst performance since 1832, though 'The disaster suffered...
The great Liberal landslide: the 1906 General Election in perspective
-
England Arise! The General Election of 1945
Historian article
‘The past week will live in history for two things’, announced the Sunday Times of 29 July 1945, ‘first the return of a Labour majority to Parliament and the end of Churchill's great war Premiership.’ Most other newspapers concurred. The Daily Mirror, of 27 July, proclaimed that the 1945 general election...
England Arise! The General Election of 1945
-
Lloyd George & Gladstone
Article
Lloyd George, who died sixty years ago on 26 March 1945, grew up and began his Parliamentary career in Queen Victoria's reign. In taking up a major Welsh issue, disestablishment of the Church of Wales, he memorably clashed with William Ewart Gladstone, perhaps the greatest of all Liberal Prime Ministers....
Lloyd George & Gladstone
-
Brazil and the two World Wars
Article
Brazil and the outbreak of the First World War At the beginning of the twentieth century Brazil was on the periphery of a world order that revolved around decisions made by the great European powers. Although it was the largest and most populated nation in South America, Brazil possessed an...
Brazil and the two World Wars
-
The origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
Historian article
On 29 January 1949 there was a debate in the British House of Commons. When Winston Churchill, the leader of the opposition, interrupted Ernest Bevin’s history of the Palestine problem he was told by the Foreign Secretary: ‘over half a million Arabs have been turned by the Jewish immigrants into...
The origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
-
The Press and the Public during the Boer War 1899-1902
Article
Dr Jacqueline Beaumont Hughes considers some aspects of the role of the Press during the Boer War. The conflict between Great Britain and the Republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State which slipped into war in October 1899 was to become the most significant since the Crimean war. It...
The Press and the Public during the Boer War 1899-1902
-
Stalin, Propaganda, and Soviet Society during the Great Terror
Historian article
Sarah Davies explores the evidence that even in the most repressive phases of Stalin’s rule, there existed a flourishing ‘shadow culture’, a lively and efficient unofficial network of information and ideas. 'Today a man only talks freely with his wife — at night, with the blankets pulled over his head.’...
Stalin, Propaganda, and Soviet Society during the Great Terror
-
Polychronicon 119: The Second World War and popular culture
Teaching History feature
Polychronicon was a fourteenth-century chronicle that brought together much of the knowledge of its own age. Our Polychronicon in Teaching History is a regular feature helping school history teachers to update their subject knowledge, with special emphasis on recent historiography and changing interpretation. This edition of 'Polychronicon' investigates World War...
Polychronicon 119: The Second World War and popular culture
-
Polychronicon 115: historians and the Holocaust
Teaching History feature
Polychronicon was a fourteenth-century chronicle that brought together much of the knowledge of its own age. Our Polychronicon in Teaching History is a regular feature helping school history teachers to update their subject knowledge, with special emphasis on recent historiography and changing interpretation. This edition of 'Polychronicon' focuses on historians...
Polychronicon 115: historians and the Holocaust
-
Cunning Plan 111: Year 8 lesson on C.V. Wedgwood's writing
Teaching History feature
This edition of 'Cunning Plan' is a Year 8 lesson on C.V. Wedgwood's writing. There is also a supplementary download commenting on the C.V. Wedgwood text used.
Cunning Plan 111: Year 8 lesson on C.V. Wedgwood's writing
-
Triumphs Show 105: Year 9s respond directly to 9/11
Teaching History feature
Caroline Godsell describes the reactions and concerns of two Year 9 classes after the 9/11 attack.
Triumphs Show 105: Year 9s respond directly to 9/11
-
Mussolini's marriage and a game in the playground: using analogy to help pupils understand the past
Teaching History article
Diana Laffin and Maggie Wilson want their pupils to connect with people in the past and to experience some of their emotions. The emotional factor is a difficult one in history, both for pupils and professional historians. When studying Eden’s actions at Suez, for example, what we lack is a...
Mussolini's marriage and a game in the playground: using analogy to help pupils understand the past
-
Breaking the 20 year rule: very modern history at GCSE
Teaching History article
History is the study of the past; some of the past is more recent than a glance over many schemes of work might lead us to think. Chris Culpin makes the case for ignoring the 20 year rule and tackling head on – and, crucially, historically – the big issues...
Breaking the 20 year rule: very modern history at GCSE
-
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
