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Reading with other readers in mind
Teaching History article
Peter Turner, along with his colleagues, wished to design a cross-curricular activity for post-16 students in history and English. The enquiry they devised addressed the issue of the changing reception of the classic novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in the immediate aftermath of its publication, and...
Reading with other readers in mind
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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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Using Virtual Reality to promote historical contextualisation in classrooms
Teaching History article
In this article, Mannak, Huijgen and Tuithof share their experience of using Virtual Reality to promote historical contextualisation of the Berlin Blitz with their 13–15 year old students. They outline some strategies for using VR well in the classroom, and ways to avoid potential pitfalls. They then introduce a pedagogical...
Using Virtual Reality to promote historical contextualisation in classrooms
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Designing an enquiry in a challenging setting
Teaching History article
The Association for Historical Dialogue and Research (AHDR) is a Cyprus-based organization that works to foster dialogue among history teachers and other educators across the divide in Cyprus. In one of their UN-funded projects, ADHR members worked with UK colleagues to shape a lesson sequence and resources on the Ottoman period...
Designing an enquiry in a challenging setting
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Virtual Branch Recording: From Pirates to Princes Normans in Eleventh Century Europe
Article
Normandy originated from a grant of land to Rollo, a Viking leader, in the early tenth century. By the end of that century Normans were to be found in southern Italy, then in Britain and, at the end of the eleventh century, in the near East on the First Crusade....
Virtual Branch Recording: From Pirates to Princes Normans in Eleventh Century Europe
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Recorded Webinar: African economic development in historical perspective
Article
Popular discussions of Africa often focus on the region’s relative poverty, and ask what role historical events like colonialism and the slave trade have played in shaping its development over time. For a long time, the absence of systematic data on African economies before c. 1960 meant these discussions were...
Recorded Webinar: African economic development in historical perspective
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Rescuing assessment from ‘knowledge-rich gone wrong’
Teaching History article
Christine Counsell sets out her concerns about the effects on history teaching of recent trends in secondary assessment practice. Situating her analysis within a long-term story of interplay between government policy, classroom practice and school leadership responses to inspection, Counsell sees new distortions emerging in the name of knowledge. She argues...
Rescuing assessment from ‘knowledge-rich gone wrong’
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Studying our own school’s archives to promote historical understanding in Year 7
Teaching History article
Helen Southwood here sets out an example of a hyperlocal history study the focus of which is her own school. She presents a rationale both for the study of hyperlocal history as a means of engaging students and developing their skills, and for the pedagogical use of previously uncatalogued school archives....
Studying our own school’s archives to promote historical understanding in Year 7
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Using visual sources to generate conversation
Teaching History article
Jane Card has long been fascinated by the power of visual sources to stimulate pupil thought and discussion. In previous articles she has shared insights from her own expert practice, fusing deep subject knowledge with careful planning to generate highly skilful questioning. Here she presents another rich example of classroom...
Using visual sources to generate conversation
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Broadening Year 7’s British history horizons with Welsh medieval sources
Teaching History article
Hiscox wanted to broaden her students’ understanding of the complexity of the British past, and developed an enquiry into the Norman Conquest of Wales to help achieve that aim. Hiscox reports her enquiry design and its outcomes, sharing how she broadened both content and the types of sources that students...
Broadening Year 7’s British history horizons with Welsh medieval sources
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Cunning Plan 192: A suggested itinerary for visiting Berlin
Teaching History feature
The principles and approaches outlined in our article on Pages 59 to 64 of this edition can be applied to any site, although not necessarily all on the same trip! If you are visiting Berlin, and you want to examine it as a contested space, in what order might you...
Cunning Plan 192: A suggested itinerary for visiting Berlin
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Broadening horizons: using cross-curricular conversations to support historical understanding
Teaching History article
Bettney and Ridley focus on the context in which we teach and in which our students learn and on history in the context of the whole school curriculum and in relation to education about personal development. Taking the example of learning about parliament, they explore how the history curriculum and the...
Broadening horizons: using cross-curricular conversations to support historical understanding
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Practical demonstration: powerful and rigorous history teaching for all
Teaching History article
In this article, Ian Luff returns to the theme of ‘practical demonstration’ which he developed in three articles twenty years ago. Luff restates his original rationale for the enduring power of the approach, advances some new reasons why history teachers should give serious attention to it and shares several practical examples...
Practical demonstration: powerful and rigorous history teaching for all
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Recorded Webinar: Teaching Jewish histories
Article
Where Jews appear on school curricula, they tend to appear as victims, particularly in the context of the Nazi genocide. The vibrant diversity of Jewish life in preceding centuries is underexplored, and students are given little context for understanding the growth of antisemitism.
This webinar delves into this vibrant richness...
Recorded Webinar: Teaching Jewish histories
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Recorded webinar: Teaching history during a climate emergency: how can we respond?
HA Virtual Forum, November 2021
We are at a vital moment in our attempt to tackle the climate crisis. Global warming is an inter-disciplinary challenge for the world and an inter-disciplinary challenge in education, too. In this talk, Alison Kitson argues that history provides a vital perspective that enables young people to understand our interaction...
Recorded webinar: Teaching history during a climate emergency: how can we respond?
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Developing effective collaboration between schools and universities
Teaching History article
Sarah Longair launched a collaborative project between school history teachers and university historians in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. In this article, Longair and her teacher colleagues, Kerry Milligan and Emma McKenna, share how they used online collaboration to develop a flexible and practical approach to school–university collaboration, and...
Developing effective collaboration between schools and universities
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Using metaphor to highlight causal processes with Year 13
Article
Alarmed by his students’ random use of causal language in their essays, James Edward Carroll resolved to help his students improve their understanding of causal processes. Carroll decided to introduce his students to the metaphors that historians use to describe causation in the historiography of the Salem witch trials. By modelling...
Using metaphor to highlight causal processes with Year 13
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Short cuts to deep knowledge
Teaching History article
Sam Pullan explains how a chance encounter has helped him to improve his introduction to the modern themes and founding documents of US politics. Working with a professional historian whom he met, by chance, over dinner, he was able to produce lessons at the cutting edge of subject knowledge to...
Short cuts to deep knowledge
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Creating a progression model for teaching historical perspectives in Key Stage 3
Teaching History article
Jacob Olivey set out to design enquiries which would enable his pupils to reconstruct, using evidence, the perspectives of people in the past. In this article he shares in detail the planning and outcomes of two enquiries: one for Year 7 and one for Year 8. Olivey offers a example...
Creating a progression model for teaching historical perspectives in Key Stage 3
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Norman Barons
Classic Pamphlet
What I have done in preparing this lecture on the Norman Barons is to choose three or four important families, with one or two individuals. I shall try to describe their fortunes briefly to you, pick out what appear to be common characteristics and generalize them - not as conclusions,...
Norman Barons
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Recorded webinar: Exploring representations and attitudes to disability across history
Webinar
This webinar was presented by Richard Rieser, who is a campaigner and champion for disability rights and the coordinator of UK Disability History Month.
His presentation is part of our ongoing work to explore disability history and the arguments and representations of it and ensure that people from disability groups...
Recorded webinar: Exploring representations and attitudes to disability across history
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Creating confident historical readers at A-level
Teaching History article
How can we help pupils learn to read historically? Gary Howells explores this question by explaining how he builds reading challenges into the course of his pupils' post-16 studies and by describing some of the tasks that pupils are set and the principles that underpin them. Howells argues that over...
Creating confident historical readers at A-level
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Move Me On 128: Assessment without Levels
Teaching History feature
This Issue's Problem: Meg Dawson is keen to find ways of recognising and recording students’ progress and achievements without resorting to ‘levels’.
Move Me On 128: Assessment without Levels
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Using oral history to enhance a local history partnership
Teaching History article
Eliza West and Emily Toettcher explain how a partnership between school and museum has evolved into a four-year enquiry into local history. The article focuses on the successful introduction of an oral history element in the GCSE syllabus and how the investigation into ‘remembered’ history helps students to appreciate the complexities of truth...
Using oral history to enhance a local history partnership
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Film: China's Good War
How World War II is shaping a new nationalism
In this lecture Professor Mitter uses film and other propaganda works to explore how key events of global history are being represented in China to develop a different understanding of its own past. The talk addresses a number of the factors for this change in how China is reflecting on...
Film: China's Good War
