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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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Polychronicon 130: Dental, transcendental, regimental: Making Mangal Pandey
Teaching History feature
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 to develop a local study on the Poor Law and to create opportunities for students...
Polychronicon 130: Dental, transcendental, regimental: Making Mangal Pandey
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Polychronicon 158: Reinterpreting Napoleon
Teaching History feature
On 18 June 2015, the two-hundredth anniversary of the great battle of Waterloo will be commemorated in Britain and on the continent (though not in France). It will represent the climax of the Napoleonic bicentenary, which has been in full flow since the turn of the twenty-first century. Fresh biographies...
Polychronicon 158: Reinterpreting Napoleon
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Move Me On 158: Modelling tasks
Teaching History feature
This issue's problem: Arthur Wellesley is struggling to model tasks effectively for students.
Arthur has made a positive start to his training, but remains rather nervous in the classroom. He recognises the importance of well-planned lessons and his outline plans generally have a clear, logical structure. His mentor thinks that he...
Move Me On 158: Modelling tasks
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Building meaningful models of progression
Teaching History article
Setting us free? Building meaningful models of progression for a ‘post-levels' world
Alex Ford was thrilled by the prospect of freedom offered to history departments in England by the abolition of level descriptions within the National Curriculum.
After analysing the range of competing purposes that the level descriptions were previously...
Building meaningful models of progression
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Assessment after levels
Free Teaching History article
Ten years ago, two heads of department in contrasting schools presented a powerfully-argued case for resisting the use of level descriptions within their assessment regimes. Influenced both by research into the nature of children's historical thinking and by principles of assessment for learning, Sally Burnham and Geraint Brown argued that...
Assessment after levels
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Essay writing for everyone: an investigation into different methods used to teach Year 9 to write an essay
Teaching History article
Essay writing is at the very heart of school history, yet despite the wide range of developments in this area over the past decade, pupils still struggle. Alex Scott and his department decided to investigate a variety of methods to see what methods worked in enabling pupils to construct essays...
Essay writing for everyone: an investigation into different methods used to teach Year 9 to write an essay
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Move Me On 199: handling differences between history lead's advice and history teachers' approaches
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 199: handling differences between history lead's advice and history teachers' approaches
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New, Novice or Nervous? 155: Similarity & Difference
Teaching History feature
This page is for those new to the published writings of history teachers. Every problem you wrestle with, other 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 better: an international conversation in which...
New, Novice or Nervous? 155: Similarity & Difference
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Move Me On 198: trainee finds it difficult to explain substantive concepts effectively
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 198: trainee finds it difficult to explain substantive concepts effectively
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Can we educate Year 9 in genocide prevention?
Teaching History article
Patterns of genocide: can we educate Year 9 in genocide prevention?
Alison Stephen, who has wrestled for many years with the challenges of teaching emotional and controversial history within a multiethnic school setting, relished the opportunity to link her school's teaching of the Holocaust with a comparative study of other genocides....
Can we educate Year 9 in genocide prevention?
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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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Vive la France! A comparison of French and British history teaching, with practical suggestions from across La Manche
Teaching History article
It is possible for teachers to learn a great deal within their own classrooms, departments and schools. However, stepping outside that daily experience, whether by reading a journal, contributing to a web debate or attending a conference, can always provide refreshing ideas. Evelyn Sweerts takes the concept of sharing good...
Vive la France! A comparison of French and British history teaching, with practical suggestions from across La Manche
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Historical consciousness in sixth-form students
Teaching History article
Moving forwards while looking back: historical consciousness in sixth-form students
A key concern driving debates about curriculum reform in England is anxiety that young people's knowledge of the past is too episodic - that they lack a coherent ‘narrative' or ‘map' of the past. While recent debate focused on what...
Historical consciousness in sixth-form students
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Employment, employability and history
Teaching History article
Employment, employability and history: helping students to see the connection
Five years ago, in Teaching History 132, Harris and Haydn drew attention to the fact that while the vast majority of Key Stage 3 students claimed to enjoy history and even to regard it as a useful subject, relatively few...
Employment, employability and history
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Year 9 face up to historical difference
Teaching History article
How many people does it take to make an Essex man? Year 9 face up to historical difference
Teaching her Key Stage 3 students in Essex, Catherine McCrory was struck by the stark contrast between their enthusiasm for studying diverse histories of Africa and the Americas and their reluctance to...
Year 9 face up to historical difference
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Move Me On 193: struggling with essential management issues
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 193: struggling with essential management issues
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Music, blood and terror: making emotive and controversial history matter
Teaching History article
Lomas and Wrenn, co-authors and compilers of the Historical Association’s DfES-funded T.E.A.C.H 3-19 Report (Teaching Emotive and Controversial History), explore further ideas and examples of good practice from issues arising out of the report’s conclusions. Lomas and Wrenn propose five distinct categories of emotive and controversial history that further develop...
Music, blood and terror: making emotive and controversial history matter
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Move Me On 190: taking questions about historical significance
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 190: taking questions about historical significance
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Planning and teaching linear GCSE
Teaching History article
Planning and teaching linear GCSE: inspiring interest, maximising memory and practising productively
As proposed changes to the National Curriculum are furiously debated, and details of future changes to GCSE are anxiously awaited, history teachers in England are already wrestling with the implications of one change to the public examination system:...
Planning and teaching linear GCSE
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Ralph Sadleir: Hackney's Local Hero or Villain: Examples of learning opportunities in museums and historic sites at Key Stage 3
Teaching History article
The benefits of learning in historical sites and museums are well documented. De Silva, Smith and Tranter wrote in Teaching History 102, Inspiration and Motivation Edition, about exploring identity through the biography of a house, suggesting the possibility of teaching from the local to capture the national picture. However, students...
Ralph Sadleir: Hackney's Local Hero or Villain: Examples of learning opportunities in museums and historic sites at Key Stage 3
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Hidden histories and heroism: post-14 course on multi-cultural Britain since 1945
Teaching History Article
A school-designed, post-14 course on multi-cultural Britain since 1945
Robin Whitburn and Sharon Yemoh describe the design of a school-generated GCSE course on the challenges that British people faced in forging a multicultural society in post-imperial Britain. Drawing on their own research into their students' experience, they build a discipline-based case...
Hidden histories and heroism: post-14 course on multi-cultural Britain since 1945
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Cunning Plan 147: Getting students to use classical texts
Teaching History feature
The following plan provides a more detailed practical example of the approaches discussed in the article on using ancient texts.
Having puzzled over what ancient texts actually are - carefully constructed interpretations? testimonies? (but testimonies to what?) myths? - I wanted my Ancient History GCSE class to engage in this...
Cunning Plan 147: Getting students to use classical texts
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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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Making history meaningful: helping students see why history matters
Teaching History article
October 17 saw thousands of people writing a blog of a normal Tuesday as part of the ‘History Matters’ campaign. There was great media interest in the event and the papers were full of the blogs of the famous and not so famous; people were keen to write up their...
Making history meaningful: helping students see why history matters
