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Redrawing the Renaissance - non verbal assessment in Year 7
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Matt Stanford is not exactly fed up of marking essays, but he could do with a change. His pupils, he realises, could too. History assessments have often been based on words - either the written...
Redrawing the Renaissance - non verbal assessment in Year 7
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Was the workhouse really so bad? An encounter with a cantekerous tramp
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Have you stuggled to find an invigorating, exciting local enquiry to motivate your Year 9 class ? How do you engage students in lively debate? This was the challenge for one Norfolk school who wanted...
Was the workhouse really so bad? An encounter with a cantekerous tramp
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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
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Mughal moments made memorable by Movie Maker
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Rosalind Stirzaker has introduced some fascinating topics at Key Stage 3. Her pupils, living in Dubai, have the opportunity to study the Islamic Empire, the Mughal Empire and Mespotamia as well as many of the...
Mughal moments made memorable by Movie Maker
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Carr, Evans, Oakshott and Rudge: the benefits of AEA history
Teaching History article
Sometimes the only way to go beyond the exam is to take another, more difficult, test. For the top—the very top—A2 students, there is such a test available. The Advanced Extension Award [AEA] is a history paper which encourages students finishing their school careers to think about history in a...
Carr, Evans, Oakshott and Rudge: the benefits of AEA history
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Polychronicon 127: The Crusades
Teaching History feature
Modern research on the crusades has concentrated on three basic questions. What were they? How were they justified? What motivated the crusaders? The first of these questions became controversial twenty-five years ago, when historians with a traditional approach to the subject, who took into consideration only those expeditions launched to...
Polychronicon 127: The Crusades
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Building a better past: plans to reform the curriculum
Teaching History article
David Nicholls summarises some of the problems facing history education and offers a commentary on various cases for reform. He argues that we need to look at provision holistically from 5 to 21 and urges collaboration across phases and sectors. By working more closely together, the history community as a...
Building a better past: plans to reform the curriculum
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Teaching Year 9 about historical theories and methods
Teaching History article
Kate Hammond sets out a rationale for linking the National Curriculum requirement to study interpretations of history with her pupils’ own evidence handling skills. She makes connections with history-teacher-led debates and innovations in both areas, but particularly the work of Howells (2005). She describes and evaluates a learning sequence that...
Teaching Year 9 about historical theories and methods
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Identity shakers: cultural encounters and the development of pupils' multiple identities
Teaching History article
History teachers are increasingly used to the idea that helping pupils reflect on and understand identities is one of the central purposes of history education. In this article Jamie B yrom and Michael Riley reflect on what thinking about identity historically might mean; by considering the history of encounters between...
Identity shakers: cultural encounters and the development of pupils' multiple identities
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Does scaffolding make them fall? Reflecting on strategies for developing causal argument in Years 8 and 11
Teaching History article
Jennifer Evans and Gemma Pate, history teachers in two Essex schools, had noticed that sometimes a writing frame did the opposite of what was intended. Sometimes a card sort fostered rich discussion and ownership; sometimes it led the students down a reductive rather than mind-opening path. Sometimes modelling of paragraphs...
Does scaffolding make them fall? Reflecting on strategies for developing causal argument in Years 8 and 11
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"Is it the Tuarts and then the Studors or the other way round?" The importance of developing a usable big picture of the past
Teaching History article
What should pupils know and understand as a result of their historical studies? This question is much in the news currently and too often quickly posed and glibly answered. In this article, Jonathan Howson poses this problem in the light of an ongoing research tradition that has sought complex answers...
"Is it the Tuarts and then the Studors or the other way round?" The importance of developing a usable big picture of the past
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Triumphs Show 127: using the Anne Frank House's 'A Family Secret'
Teaching History feature: celebrating and sharing success
The Anne Frank House recently translated its comic book A Family Secret into English. By stressing the choices and dilemmas of ordinary people living in Amsterdam during the German Occupation, the comic seeks to revise the black and white ideas students hold of right and wrong. With five other history...
Triumphs Show 127: using the Anne Frank House's 'A Family Secret'
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‘You should be proud about your history. They make you feel ashamed’: Teaching history hurts
Teaching History article
As history teachers we are used to encouraging pupils to think; enabling them to express thoughts with clarity both verbally and in written form. Yet, if history as a school subject becomes purely cognitive, then something is missing. History deals with human behaviour and therefore the affective and the emotional...
‘You should be proud about your history. They make you feel ashamed’: Teaching history hurts
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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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Triumphs Show 128: Speed-dating with Queen Elizabeth
Teaching History feature
Some of the most effective role play activities are those which draw on the common experiences of pupils to promote serious learning outcomes. Chris Higgins experiments with a number of situations and strategies that draw upon popular games and television show formats. These are used to engage, to provide structure...
Triumphs Show 128: Speed-dating with Queen Elizabeth
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Is it time to forget Remembrance?
Teaching History article
Remembering those who have fallen in active service is an annual event in most schools and communities; the collective memory and respect that Remembrance engenders can enhance a sense of identity and belonging. Acts of Remembrance can be seen as an aspect of citizenship, but how often are they viewed...
Is it time to forget Remembrance?
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Life by sources A to F: really using sources to teach AS history
Teaching History article
The work of Gary Howells will be familiar to many readers of Teaching History—indeed, his last article is heavily cited elsewhere in this edition. He presents here the case in favour of using sources at AS level (16-17 years old). Clearly, historians need to have some form of acquaintance with...
Life by sources A to F: really using sources to teach AS history
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Move Me On 127: Using PowerPoint as anything more than glorified chalk and talk
Teaching History feature
This Issue's Problem: Nat Turner is feeling confused and aggrieved about what is expected of him in using ICT in his teaching.
Move Me On 127: Using PowerPoint as anything more than glorified chalk and talk
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Cunning Plan 127: Abolitionist icons
Teaching History feature
What makes someone an Icon? A cunning plan to explore the relative significance of individuals involved in abolishing the slave trade.
Cunning Plan 127: Abolitionist icons
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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
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Getting ready for the Grand Prix: Learning how to build a substantial argument in year 7
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated
Dale Banham’s Grand Prix race has helped many history teachers in Suffolk to think freshly about metaphors and images that will inspire and enable pupils (especially underachieving boys) to write analytically and at length. In...
Getting ready for the Grand Prix: Learning how to build a substantial argument in year 7
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A search beyond the classroom: using a museum to support the renewal of a scheme of work
Teaching History Article
How many times have you been to a museum or a historical building or a significant place and thought that you want to capture some of its essence to bring back to your pupils? The challenges of geography, risk, expense and staffing can all act as limitations in the planning...
A search beyond the classroom: using a museum to support the renewal of a scheme of work
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What they think they know: the impact of pupils' preconceptions on their understanding of historical significance
Teaching History article
Robin Conway suspected that his students’ concepts of the significance of different aspects of historical periods was affected by the preconceptions that they brought to his lessons. These preconceptions were leading his students into making unhistorical judgments, without any real understanding on their part of what had affected their thinking....
What they think they know: the impact of pupils' preconceptions on their understanding of historical significance
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Expertise in its development stage: planning for the needs of gifted adolescent historians
Teaching History article
The Director of the National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth (NAGTY), Deborah Eyre, is one of the foremost advocates of gifted and talented children, and their education, in the UK. She plans to improve the education of the most able students by asking subject communities to work on how...
Expertise in its development stage: planning for the needs of gifted adolescent historians
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Move Me On 125: Lack of conceptual clarity
Teaching History feature
This Issue's Problem: Steve Cloye is over half way through his first main teaching placement and has been struggling with the PGCE. His degree was in American Studies, and although this included American history he lacks confidence in his subject knowledge, and particularly in his understanding of the nature of the...
Move Me On 125: Lack of conceptual clarity
