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Building memory and meaning
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Sarah Gadd attempted to re-think her department's usual approach to the two-year Key Stage 3. Concerned that a thematic approach might not be securing the overview perspective it was designed to achieve, she decided instead...
Building memory and meaning
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Triumphs Show 136: how one history department changed pupils' and parents' perceptions of homework
Teaching History feature
Devising worthwhile and engaging homework tasks, week in week out, can prove both demanding and frustrating - particularly in contexts where we know students will have be chased to complete them.
How can we make homework planning easier and more effective - and cut down the time spent chasing recalcitrant...
Triumphs Show 136: how one history department changed pupils' and parents' perceptions of homework
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Shaping macro-analysis from micro-history
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Many history teachers are inspired by the work of historians and want to share their stories and arguments with students in school. Hywel Jones found Malcolm Gaskill's Witchfinders ‘gripping and intriguing'.
He decided to use...
Shaping macro-analysis from micro-history
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Exploring change and continuity with Year 7
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
A great deal has been written about causation in the pages of Teaching History. From camels to linguistics, this is a second-order concept that teachers and pupils frequently deliberate.
Departments balance the need for substantive knowledge with explicit...
Exploring change and continuity with Year 7
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The Nation of the Scots and the Declaration of Arbroath
Classic Pamphlet
This pamphlet seeks to chart the progress of the Scottish struggle for independence after 1291 by considering the changing nature of the Scottish resistance. The primary sources are exiguous when compared to those bearing upon the English attempt at subjugation, and the interpretation offered is at best tentative: that initially...
The Nation of the Scots and the Declaration of Arbroath
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Education Objectives for the Study of History: A suggested framework
Classic Teaching History Pamphlets
Teachers of history in many parts of the country are now trying to formulate objectives for the study of their subject. This framework is put forward as a possible aid to them in a task which all admit to be a difficult one. Here, we try to spell out the...
Education Objectives for the Study of History: A suggested framework
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Prehistoric Bristol
Classic Pamphlet
This period is represented in the valley of the Bristol Avon by the Acheulian industries, named from the type station of St. Acheul in the Somme valley, which has yielded many ovate and pear-shaped hand-axes characteristic of the period. These industries flourished during the very long Second Interglacial phase, a...
Prehistoric Bristol
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English Puritanism
Classic Pamphlet
When the modern world was christened Puritanism appeared as a bad fairy and bestowed upon it certain dubious gifts: capitalism, democracy, America. This is a fairy story, but like all fairy stories it contains a small grain of truth. But what was Puritanism? Already in the seventeenth century a critic...
English Puritanism
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Teaching Red Scarf Girl
Article
Facing History and Ourselves is excited to announce a new study guide. Teaching Red Scarf Girl has been developed to help classrooms explore essential Facing History themes, including conformity, obedience, prejudice and justice. Red Scarf Girl, Ji-li Jiang's engaging memoir, provides an insightful window into the first tumultuous years of...
Teaching Red Scarf Girl
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The Great Revolt of 1381
Classic Pamphlet
The Great Revolt of 1381 began in South-West Essex sometime between late May and 2 June: contemporary narratives and record sources differ irreconcilably about the dates. It all started with the arrival of a royal tax commissioner, John Bampton, at Brentwood inBarnstable Hundred. He came to inquire into the evasion...
The Great Revolt of 1381
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Historical Interpretation: Why is it still such a major issue?
E-CPD
This E-CPD unit was produced for the previous National Curriculum, when Interpretations in History were still relatively new. In the current National Curriculum, Interpretations are still central to the skills necessary for success. Perhaps more so, as it is now a separate assessment objective [AO4] at GCSE, starting in 2016,...
Historical Interpretation: Why is it still such a major issue?
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Chronology Project
E-CPD
Please note: this resource pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content and links may be outdated
What are we trying to achieve?
This is an excellent example of a small-scale co-operative project between several schools, each addressing the issue of Chronology in a way that is particularly pertinent to...
Chronology Project
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Change and Continuity
Key Concepts
Please note: these links were compiled in 2009. For a more recent resource, please see: What's the Wisdom on: Change and Continuity.
This selection of useful Teaching History articles on Change and Continuity are highly recommended reading to those who would like to get to grip with these key concepts:
1. Michael Riley: Big Stories and...
Change and Continuity
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The Northern Ireland Question 1886-1986
Classic Pamphlet
The nature of the rights of majorities and minorities is one of the most intractable of the issues raised by the Northern Ireland question, especially since much depends on definitions. Ulster Protestants are a majority in that province but a minority in both Ireland and the United Kingdom, while Catholics,...
The Northern Ireland Question 1886-1986
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What is APP?
Article
Assessing Pupils' Progress in History
APP is a tool to view pupil progress periodically by making use of collections of day to day learning in order to ‘make periodic judgements on pupils' progress using a wide range of evidence taken from a variety of classroom contexts.'[i] QCDA is currently working...
What is APP?
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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 know to the normal form of questions at GCSE, might...
What is bias?
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The People's Pensions
Recorded lecture
Why did the British get pensions when they did? What part did the great social surveys (Booth and Rowntree) play? Was there something rotten at the heart of Empire? What part did fears of a Red Peril play? Was Britain slow, with Bismarck and even the Tsar providing some measures of...
The People's Pensions
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Circle Time in the secondary history classroom
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Circle Time is a commonly used technique in primary classrooms and is sometimes used in secondary personal and social education lessons. This open form of classroom organisation allows pupils to share opinions in a democratic...
Circle Time in the secondary history classroom
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The strange death of King Harold II: Propaganda and the problem of legitimacy in the aftermath of the Battle of Hastings
Historian article
How did King Harold II die at the Battle of Hastings? The question is simple enough and the answer is apparently well known. Harold was killed by an arrow which struck him in the eye. His death is depicted clearly on the Bayeux Tapestry in one of its most famous...
The strange death of King Harold II: Propaganda and the problem of legitimacy in the aftermath of the Battle of Hastings
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Nutshell 135: The challenge of analysing 'difference'
Teaching History feature
Hello Nutshell. What's all this stuff in the NC Attainment Target about ‘nature', ‘extent' and ‘interplay' of diversity?
The trick is to look behind the word ‘diversity'. Then it all makes sense...
Nutshell 135: The challenge of analysing 'difference'
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Interdisciplinary forays within the history classroom
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
How might history and art mutually enrich each other and enhance pupil experience? The short answer, and there is much more to be said as Liz Dawes Duraisingh and Veronica Boix Mansilla show, is by...
Interdisciplinary forays within the history classroom
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Approaches to the History Curriculum: Project based learning
Briefing Pack
Rationale/Origins
Project based learning has been around for decades; it is not a new idea. When we think back to the curriculum of the 1970s and early 80s, integrated Humanities was once again all the rage. As the Nuffield review of 2008 highlights "between 1975 and 1983, HMI tried to...
Approaches to the History Curriculum: Project based learning
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The Tudor Court
Classic Pamphlet
In 1976, in one of his challenging Presidential addresses to the Royal Historical Society, Professor Geoffrey Elton drew attention to the importance of the court as a ‘point of contact' between the Tudors and their subjects. It was, he suggested, a central and essential aspect of personal government, but in...
The Tudor Court
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Peter the Great
Classic Pamphlet
No European ruler except Napoleon I has impressed both contemporise and later historians so profoundly as Peter I of Russia by the originality and the personal character of his achievements. Like Napoleon, Peter appeared to some observers, at least in his later years, as almost more than human. He seemed...
Peter the Great
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Unnatural and essential: the nature of historical thinking
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Sam Wineburg's work, in particular his groundbreaking Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts (2001), has a great deal to teach us about the discipline of history, the nature of historical education, and the specific cognitive framework...
Unnatural and essential: the nature of historical thinking
