-
Teaching controversial issues...where controversial issues really matter
Teaching History article
This is the fourth in a series of Teaching History articles about teaching history in N orthern Ireland co-authored by Alan McCully. The first two articles (in editions 106 and 114) outlined teaching strategies to help pupils in N orthern Ireland understand and relate to complex and often controversial issues...
Teaching controversial issues...where controversial issues really matter
-
The Tenth Grade tells Bismarck what to do: using structured role-play to eliminate hindsight in assessing historical motivation
Teaching History article
Neomi Shiloah and Edna Shoham show how history teachers in Israel have begun to move away from traditional talk-and-chalk based teaching. They describe a blend of role-play and ICT that not only grabs pupils’ attention and caters for different styles of learning but also helps pupils to appreciate the difficulties...
The Tenth Grade tells Bismarck what to do: using structured role-play to eliminate hindsight in assessing historical motivation
-
Cunning Plan 126: What can Berlin tell us about Germany in the 20th century?
Teaching History feature
Berlin is a microcosm of twentieth century European history; a city that still bears many of the signs and scars of its experiences and upheavals. It is a must for any history department teaching the Modern World, taking history out of the textbooks and breathing life into it. All pupils...
Cunning Plan 126: What can Berlin tell us about Germany in the 20th century?
-
Promote the past, celebrate the present: putting your history department in the news
Teaching History article
Dan Collins urges history teachers to promote both their subject and their department in the local press. Drawing on his experience of a history department in a large, mixed, multi-cultural comprehensive school in West London, Dan argues that there are many opportunities available, from national anniversaries to the success of...
Promote the past, celebrate the present: putting your history department in the news
-
Triumphs Show 156: Fresh perspectives on the First World War
Teaching History feature: celebrating and sharing success
Year 9 think they know a lot about the First World War. After all, they read Michael Morpurgo's novel Private Peaceful in their English lessons all the way back in Year 7, they've seen Blackadder so many times they can recite it, and in the centenary year of the war's...
Triumphs Show 156: Fresh perspectives on the First World War
-
Polychronicon 142: 'instructive reversals' - (re)interpreting the 1857 events in Northern India
Teaching History feature
The dramatic, chaotic and violent events that took place in Northern India in 1857/8 have been interpreted in many ways, as, for example, the ‘Indian Mutiny', the ‘Sepoy War' and the ‘First Indian War of Independence'. The tales that have been told about these events have been profoundly shaped, however,...
Polychronicon 142: 'instructive reversals' - (re)interpreting the 1857 events in Northern India
-
Ensuring progression continues into GCSE: let's not do for our pupils with our plan of attack
Teaching History article
Dale Banham continues a theme explored by many other teacher-authors in recent years, how to ensure that progression does not just stop in Year 9, leaving pupils stagnant in key areas of historical learning before getting picked up again in Year 12. He produces a more thorough rationale and commentary...
Ensuring progression continues into GCSE: let's not do for our pupils with our plan of attack
-
A most horrid malicious bloody flame: using Samuel Pepys to improve Year 8 boys' historical writing
Teaching History article
Unusually, instead of moving from a narrative to an analytic structure, David Waters moves his pupils from causal analysis to narrative. By the time pupils are ready to produce their storyboard narrative, their thinking about the Great Fire has been shaped and re-shaped not only by structural exercises and argument...
A most horrid malicious bloody flame: using Samuel Pepys to improve Year 8 boys' historical writing
-
The Evacuee Letter Exchange Project: using audience-centred writing to improve progression from Key Stage 2 to Key Stage 3
Teaching History article
Jenny Parsons' work in primary-secondary liaison in history is nationally acclaimed. She is often asked to share her department's practice at courses and conferences. Readers of Teaching History are already familiar with her work in another area: in the ‘Triumphs Show' of Teaching History 93 (the ICT edition in November...
The Evacuee Letter Exchange Project: using audience-centred writing to improve progression from Key Stage 2 to Key Stage 3
-
Educational visits to Holocaust-related sites
Teaching History article
Kay Andrews, former history teacher and expert in Holocaust teacher education, relates how she found herself questioning the impact and purpose of overseas site visits for students. She raises questions about whether the typical eastern European destinations that dominate Holocaust-related travel are the most appropriate for student learning. She also...
Educational visits to Holocaust-related sites
-
Seeing, hearing and doing the renaissance (Part 2)
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
In the last edition of Teaching History, Maria Osowiecki described in detail the fourth lesson in a five-lesson enquiry entitled: What was remarkable about the Renaissance? She also shared her resources for two lively, interactive...
Seeing, hearing and doing the renaissance (Part 2)
-
English, history and song in Year 9: mixing enquiries for a cross-curricular approach to teaching the most able
Teaching History article
Several articles in previous editions of Teaching History have touched on the themes of crosscurricularity, Assessment for Learning and the most able. Tony McConnell and Mandy Monaghan bring these themes together in describing how the English and history departments in their school have taken advantage of a natural area of...
English, history and song in Year 9: mixing enquiries for a cross-curricular approach to teaching the most able
-
It's a lot harder than politics'...students' experience of history at Advanced Level
Teaching History article
Does the experience of studying history in the sixth form prepare students adequately for study at university? There is plenty of attention given to the issue of continuity across the Key Stages but much less attention given to the transition from school into higher education. It is largely assumed that...
It's a lot harder than politics'...students' experience of history at Advanced Level
-
Polychronicon 137: Bringing space travel down to Earth
Teaching History feature
It nearly began like this: ‘On Christmas Eve 1968, two episcopalians and a Roman Catholic were in orbit around the Moon.' I was writing a book called Earthrise, about the first views of Earth from space. Most other books about the Apollo programme of the 1960s and 1970s took an...
Polychronicon 137: Bringing space travel down to Earth
-
The 'structured enquiry' is not a contradiction in terms: focused teaching for independent learning
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated
Mike Gorman uses the language of the National Curriculum Order to describe and analyse his practice. Yet he throws down a challenge to those who use it uncritically rather than interpreting it to make their...
The 'structured enquiry' is not a contradiction in terms: focused teaching for independent learning
-
Reading and enquiring in Years 12 and 13
Teaching History article
Historical enquiry is blooming at Key Stage 3. Thanks to a rich array of source materials available on the web and in textbooks, superb history-specific training courses and genuinely innovative practice in schools, pupils can increasingly be found wrestling with demanding and often lengthy sources. They do this in order...
Reading and enquiring in Years 12 and 13
-
'Picture This': A simple technique to teach complex concepts
Teaching History article
When Peter Clements was introduced to the creative strategy that he describes in this article, his immediate reaction was to dismiss it as childish and trivial. Yet, upon closer examination, he realised that ‘Picture This' offered far more than a lively way of increasing variety and engagement in his GCSE...
'Picture This': A simple technique to teach complex concepts
-
The new history 'AS-Level': principles for planning a scheme of work
Teaching History article
The new AS and A2 specifications have led to paperwork, headaches and late nights for teachers. Rachael Rudham recognises the fresh demands that the new AS-level presents – not least of which is the opening up of post-16 history to a broader range of ability. Clearly it is not possible...
The new history 'AS-Level': principles for planning a scheme of work
-
Cunning Plan 152.2: using Gillray’s cartoons with Year 8
Teaching History feature
The past 30 years have seen a general revival in scholarly activity relating to ‘all aspects of 18th-century British history'. However, this increase in academic study, which has broadly coincided with the introduction and development of the National Curriculum in England, has not resulted in the period being studied in great...
Cunning Plan 152.2: using Gillray’s cartoons with Year 8
-
Cunning Plan 143: enquiries about the British empire
Teaching History journal feature
I wanted to give my Year 8 students ownership of their work on the British Empire by allowing them to suggest our ‘enquiry question'. In order to introduce the Empire, I brought in sugar, spices, bananas, chilli peppers and cotton. I then showed maps demonstrating the Empire at its height....
Cunning Plan 143: enquiries about the British empire
-
Teaching about heritage through a cross-curricular enquiry
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
What should we do with our brightest and best? Neal Watkin and Johannes Ahrenfelt suggest an enquiry for a very high ability Year 8 group which is both challenging and genuinely historical. The enquiry itself...
Teaching about heritage through a cross-curricular enquiry
-
Cunning Plan 135: challenging generalisations
Teaching History feature
Let's play ‘TOO SIMPLE!' (a.k.a. ‘the generalisation game').
Some years ago, in my own history classroom, in a not-very-inspired moment, I developed a straightforward, low-resource, low-preparation activity which turned out to have more power than I had anticipated in getting pupils to reflect on degree or type of similarity and...
Cunning Plan 135: challenging generalisations
-
How do we get better at going on trips: Planning for progression outside the classroom
Teaching History article
School trips are, it seems, always in the news. They are under threat, or vital, or the preserve of wealthier students, or a forum for poor behaviour, or a day out of the classroom to build relationships, or a fantastic learning experience where students learn important life skills (such as...
How do we get better at going on trips: Planning for progression outside the classroom
-
Move Me On 130: How to generate class discussion
Teaching History feature
This Issue's Problem: Dot Bradford would love to generate much more productive small group talk and worthwhile class discussion but can't work out how to manage it.
Dot came to the PGCE straight from a history degree and was originally inspired by approaches quite different from her own school experience....
Move Me On 130: How to generate class discussion
-
The Pittsburgh Conference on 'Teaching, Knowing and Learning'
Teaching History article
Peter Lee and Ros Ashby report on a landmark conference on the future of history education in the USA held at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh in 1998. They emphasise the substantial influence UK developments in history education continue to have in many parts of the world. They also warn that...
The Pittsburgh Conference on 'Teaching, Knowing and Learning'
