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Cunning Plan 202: interdisciplinary teaching of landscape through time
Teaching History feature
From a young age I have been fascinated by the history of the landscape. Family holidays in the Lake District offered early encounters with the past that did not come mediated through textbooks, but through place. Driving over Dunmail Raise, my father would point out that the ancient ruler, Dunmail...
Cunning Plan 202: interdisciplinary teaching of landscape through time
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Virtual Branch Recording: Hotel Exile: Paris in the Shadow of War
Article
Jane Rogoyska tells the story of the Hôtel Lutetia, the only ‘grand’ hotel on the city’s bohemian Left Bank, serving as a meeting place for artists, musicians and politicians. André Gide took his lunch here, James Joyce lived in one of its rooms, Picasso and Matisse were regular guests. But...
Virtual Branch Recording: Hotel Exile: Paris in the Shadow of War
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Making substantive concepts (do the) work
Teaching History article
Several years back, Alistair Dickins and Tommy-James Alexander realised they wanted to incorporate explicit consideration of substantive concepts into their Key Stage 3 teaching, to enable students to make sense of and order information about the past and to offer students a usable language that would support their historical reasoning. In reality,...
Making substantive concepts (do the) work
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Lesson sequence: Muslim Tommies - taster lesson
Article
This series of lessons has been designed to teach students something of the role of Muslim soldiers in the British Army in the First World War. By working with what remains of the War and how the Muslim contribution has been remembered, students will learn that the narrative is more...
Lesson sequence: Muslim Tommies - taster lesson
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Using the concept of place to help Year 9 students to visualise the complexities of the Holocaust
Teaching History article
Inspired by the work of the social and cultural historian Tim Cole, Stuart Farley decided to look again at the way he teaches the Holocaust. He wanted to focus on the geographical concept of place as a way of enabling his Year 9 students to build far more diverse narratives,...
Using the concept of place to help Year 9 students to visualise the complexities of the Holocaust
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Lesson sequence: Muslim Tommies
Lesson sequences
The first lesson of this sequence is available free to all secondary members here.
This series of lessons has been designed to teach students something of the role of Muslim soldiers in the British Army in the First World War. By working with what remains of the War and how the Muslim contribution...
Lesson sequence: Muslim Tommies
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Exploring a logical conceptualisation of continuity with Year 9 pupils
Teaching History article
As a PGCE student, Miles Eades confronted the challenge of teaching about change and continuity. Reflecting on scientific, mathematical and sociological conceptualisations of change as a constantly occurring process led him to reconsider the common characterisation of continuity in history as the opposite of or absence of change. Eades set...
Exploring a logical conceptualisation of continuity with Year 9 pupils
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Film: What's the wisdom on... Extended Reading
Your Virtual History Department Meeting
'What’s the wisdom on…' is a popular feature in our secondary journal Teaching History and provides the perfect stimulus for a department meeting. 'What’s the wisdom on…' provides history teachers with an overview of the ‘story so far’ of many years of practice-based professional thinking about a particular aspect of history teaching.
To...
Film: What's the wisdom on... Extended Reading
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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... piracy and empire in the early modern world
Teaching History feature
The topic of early modern global piracy has attracted increasing scholarly attention in recent decades, partly due to its own intrinsic interest and, it must be said, its entertainment value. However, historians have also explored its connections with broader themes such as empire and colonisation, social history, global economic networks,...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... piracy and empire in the early modern world
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How foundational concepts, supporting concepts and concrete examples can help untangle the past at Key Stage 3
Teaching History article
A central organising principle of any curriculum is the substantive concepts that underpin it. They provide a secure structure and enable students to develop deep understanding through multiple encounters with essential abstract ideas that are given concrete form in different historical contexts. Identifying the different levels or tiers to which different...
How foundational concepts, supporting concepts and concrete examples can help untangle the past at Key Stage 3
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Interpreting Cyrus the Great for the lower school curriculum
Teaching History article
Tom Leather describes in this article the process by which he and his department extended their ancient history curriculum through an interpretations enquiry about Cyrus the Great. This tested both the subject knowledge of a number of members of the department, and their planning process. His reflections are illuminating not just...
Interpreting Cyrus the Great for the lower school curriculum
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Planning a more diverse and coherent Year 7 curriculum
Teaching History article
In this article, Jacob Olivey describes his department’s efforts to both diversify their Key Stage 3 curriculum and secure greater curricular coherence. Building on a large body of research and practice, Olivey sought new forms of curricular coherence through the selection and sequencing of substantive content across the curriculum. He...
Planning a more diverse and coherent Year 7 curriculum
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Recorded webinar: Sensory approaches to history with the National Archives
In partnership with the National Archives Education & Outreach department
This recorded webinar explores methods that the Education & Outreach department at The National Archives is using to teach and engage audiences by allowing them to explore original documents using touch, hearing, and smell. This includes projects for school-age blind and visually impaired students, Early Years audiences, intergenerational audiences with...
Recorded webinar: Sensory approaches to history with the National Archives
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On-demand webinar: Teaching the whole class
Webinar series: Direct history teaching
Webinar series: Direct history teaching
Session 3: Teaching the whole class
In this third session, Jacob and Mike will argue that a history teacher should always be a sage on the stage – and not a guide on the side. They will share strategies that allow history teachers to drive learning...
On-demand webinar: Teaching the whole class
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Using turning points in anti-racist history to explore historical significance at Key Stage 3
Teaching History article
In this article, Joel Sharples explains the organising principles that underpinned his planning for a new enquiry sequence inspired by a local photography exhibition. The exhibition’s title ‘Brick Lane 1978: The Turning Point’ prompted him to think afresh about the idea of ‘a turning point’ – a concept that he...
Using turning points in anti-racist history to explore historical significance at Key Stage 3
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Broadening and deepening narratives of Benin for Year 8
Teaching History article
Josh Garry describes his effort to refresh his approach to teaching the British transatlantic slave trade. Drawing on reading, lectures and discussions during an Historical Association Teacher Fellowship programme, Garry built a sequence of lessons designed to contextualise the trade while showing African agency and complexity. The result was a sequence...
Broadening and deepening narratives of Benin for Year 8
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Using Femina to reframe Year 7 pupils’ understanding of the medieval world
Teaching History article
Concerned about the absence of women’s perspectives in her Year 7 curriculum, and inspired by Ramirez’s book Femina, Freya George set out on a research project that sought to put medieval women at the heart of a new enquiry. Rather than simply telling stories about medieval women, however, George encouraged...
Using Femina to reframe Year 7 pupils’ understanding of the medieval world
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Using local history to illuminate the complexities of interpretation with Year 8
Teaching History article
Jack Harris found that his pupils had little knowledge of Sir Harry Smith, the historical figure after whom their school was named, and who was commemorated in various ways in their local community. Researching Smith’s career and reputation, including his role in British colonialism, he uncovered varied interpretations. Harris worked...
Using local history to illuminate the complexities of interpretation with Year 8
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Teaching History 202: Organising Principles
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
Please note: The print version of this edition will start arriving with members from around Monday 13 April.
03 Editorial (Read article)
04 HA Secondary News
06 HA Update
08 How foundational concepts, supporting concepts and concrete examples can help untangle the past at Key Stage 3 – Gareth Lennon (Read article)...
Teaching History 202: Organising Principles
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Move Me On 202: trainee is struggling to make history accessible...
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 202: trainee is struggling to make history accessible...
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On-demand webinar: Building different types of historical knowledge
Webinar series: Developing students’ historical thinking at A-level
Webinar series: Developing students’ historical thinking at A-level
Session 1: Building different types of historical knowledge
This first session will focus on building students’ knowledge of the particular periods they are studying. It will also consider the different methods teachers have used to help their students to apply their knowledge to...
On-demand webinar: Building different types of historical knowledge
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Working 9–5: how painters, plumbers and programmers help our pupils understand the role of the historian
Teaching History article
Struck by the misinformation that their pupils were bringing from social media to the history classroom, Phillips and Jackson-Buckley were keen to help their pupils identify the signs of good quality history. They decided to focus on developing their pupils’ understanding of how history works, specifically, how historians construct their...
Working 9–5: how painters, plumbers and programmers help our pupils understand the role of the historian
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Teaching Year 9 pupils to see and sense social memory as an expression of knowledge about the past
Teaching History article
Prompted by the attacks on statues in summer 2020, William Mason began to question how effectively he taught his students about popular interpretations or historical ‘myths’. He designed an enquiry about the myth of Churchill to introduce his pupils to the concept of collective memory and to ways in which...
Teaching Year 9 pupils to see and sense social memory as an expression of knowledge about the past
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Recorded webinar: Revisiting the witch trials
Article
The East Anglian witch hunt under Matthew Hopkins, self-appointed Witchfinder General, has garnered a great deal of popular and historical interest over the years. An image has developed of a zealous, misogynistic young man serving crazed 'justice' against supposed witches, whipping up panic and turning neighbours against each other in...
Recorded webinar: Revisiting the witch trials
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200 editions of Teaching History!
Teaching History feature
In 1968, Mary Price wrote an article for the HA journal, History. Entitled ‘History in danger’, it told a shocking story. The subject of history in Britain’s schools was losing its identity, argued Price, disappearing into various species of integrated humanities and civics. Pupils could see little purpose for it,...
200 editions of Teaching History!
