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What’s The Wisdom On... Extended Reading
Teaching History feature
Why, in a history lesson (or out of a history lesson; let’s say, for a homework perhaps) might we want pupils to read more than a paragraph, to stay with the text, to actually read? We don’t mean plucking facts from information boxes, nor ploughing through four comprehension questions. We...
What’s The Wisdom On... Extended Reading
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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
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Building and assessing a frame of reference in the Netherlands
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Concerns about our ability to equip young people with a frame of reference that they can actually use to orient themselves in time are widespread. The challenges were extensively debated within the last issue of...
Building and assessing a frame of reference in the Netherlands
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Building and assessing learner autonomy within the Key Stage 3 history classroom
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Oliver Knight is an experienced Advanced Skills Teacher who has taught in four different secondary schools, three of them multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-cultural and at least two wrestling with significant problems arising from social deprivation....
Building and assessing learner autonomy within the Key Stage 3 history classroom
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How can I improve my use of ICT? Put history first!
Teaching History article
What is the difference between using lots of ICT and using it well? Dave Atkin draws upon work in his own department and with other Gloucestershire teachers in order to identify criteria for effective ICT use. These boil down to ‘putting history first' and getting maximum value out of the...
How can I improve my use of ICT? Put history first!
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My essays could go on forever: using Key Stage 3 to improve performance at GCSE
Teaching History article
History teachers are waking up to the fact that you cannot raise standards in GCSE by very much if you leave this work until Year 10. To leave it that late is to resort to surface, tactical moves rather than to address the deep reasons why so many pupils find...
My essays could go on forever: using Key Stage 3 to improve performance at GCSE
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The use of sources in school history 1910-1998: a critical perspective
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
The arrival of sources of evidence into secondary school history classrooms amounted to a small revolution. What began as a radical development is now establishment orthodoxy, with both GCSE and now National Curriculum in England...
The use of sources in school history 1910-1998: a critical perspective
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History, citizenship and Oliver Stone
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
When is a work of art a work of history? How can we get our students to appreciate the difference without ignoring the overlap? How should we ask our students to approach the historical film...
History, citizenship and Oliver Stone
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International relations at GCSE... they just can't get enough of it
Teaching History article
There is no reason why pupils of so-called ‘average’ and ‘below-average ability’ cannot both understand and enjoy studying complicated international events. Indeed, in the interests of inclusion and raised standards, it is vital that they do. Our Letters Pages in the last two editions captured something of the history teaching...
International relations at GCSE... they just can't get enough of it
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Teaching History 190: Out now
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
Read Teaching History 190
As the collection of articles for this issue of Teaching History began to take shape, its title remained rather uncertain. While some of the articles referred explicitly to teaching historical significance, others focused more on teaching students the processes involved in shaping stories about the past....
Teaching History 190: Out now
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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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Bruce! You're history.' The place of history in the Scottish curriculum
Teaching History article
History teachers in Scotland are feeling vulnerable. A curriculum review is leading to debates about history’s place in schools – will it or should it be a statutory part of Scotland’s curriculum for 11-14 year olds? Many of the concerns in Sam Henry’s article will ring true for teachers throughout...
Bruce! You're history.' The place of history in the Scottish curriculum
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How Michael moved us on: transforming Key Stage 3 through peer review
Teaching History article
Thomas Tallis history department have an interesting approach to planning. Whereas, all too often, this most time-consuming and intellectually demanding of teachers’ tasks is rendered invisible, and is supposed to happen by magic in the middle of the night, this department chose to make the planning process genuinely collaborative, pivotal...
How Michael moved us on: transforming Key Stage 3 through peer review
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Triumphs Show 150.2: Year 13 game for reaching substantiated judgements
Teaching History feature
Year 13 play a competitive game to help them arrive at strong and substantiated judgements.
Year 13 were in the library again, sinking under tomes of weighty works on the German Reformation. James was feverishly rifling through a book on the ‘Reformation World' for something (anything!) to do with Luther's...
Triumphs Show 150.2: Year 13 game for reaching substantiated judgements
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Computers don't bite! Your first tentative steps in using ICT in the classroom.
Article
This article is for beginners. It will also provide perspectives and ideas for those training history teachers in the use of ICT for improving pupils’ learning. Drawing upon his experience in managing the HA’s NOF training programme, Alf Wilkinson outlines some practical activities that are ideal for getting the novice...
Computers don't bite! Your first tentative steps in using ICT in the classroom.
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Teaching History 186: Out now
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
Read Teaching History 186: Removing Barriers
We have in the past two years encountered a series of novel barriers to learning. Are the schools open? Are both students and teachers well enough to be there? How do you monitor learning on a Friday afternoon across a series of patchy network...
Teaching History 186: Out now
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Cunning Plan 105: Crusades enquiry
Teaching History feature
Jamie Byrom’s article ‘Using a concluding enquiry to reinforce and assess earlier learning’ (TH 99) offered a practical solution both to weak knowledge acquisition in Year 7 and to effective, worthwhile assessment. This enquiry follows the same model. The assumption is that pupils would be carrying out this enquiry at...
Cunning Plan 105: Crusades enquiry
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Teaching History 202: Out now
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
Read Teaching History 202: Organising Principles
Late last year, the government responded to the final report of the Curriculum and Assessment Review, making clear its commitment to revising the National Curriculum for schools in England and promising various reforms to public examinations. As they await new drafts (with publication of...
Teaching History 202: Out now
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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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Teaching History 195: Out now
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
Read Teaching History 195: Perspectives in Time
In the giant annual ‘card sort’ through which we editors shape numerous article proposals into themes, we found ourselves readily linking the pieces that now fall into this edition. There was a striking commonality; the theme was there. But what should we call...
Teaching History 195: Out now
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Teaching History 183: Out now
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
Read Teaching History 183: Race
Collectively, the articles in this edition say something profound about the joy and privilege of being a history teacher. In our intellectual journeying, none of us can ever stand still. Conversations within and across societies and cultures never stop. Such conversations interact with the work...
Teaching History 183: Out now
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Teaching History 182: Out now
Article
Read Teaching History 182
The editorial in the previous edition of Teaching History began by recognising that 2020 would go down in history as the year of the coronavirus pandemic. The words you are reading now were written in the aftermath of another long period of partial school closure in...
Teaching History 182: Out now
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Teaching History 181: Out now
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
Read Teaching History 181
Editorial: Handling Sources
While 2020 will go down in history as the year of the coronavirus pandemic, those who teach history may also remember this year for the impetus that it gave to calls for curriculum change. Petitions to the UK parliament demanding ‘compulsory teaching of Britain’s colonial past’ and greater inclusion of...
Teaching History 181: Out now
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Teaching History 178: Out now
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
Read Teaching History 178
Constructing Accounts
Teachers of history have long recognised the tensions inherent in our role. We must deal with the existence of notions of a core narrative (or narratives) of areas of the past, communicating what those notions are while enabling our students to engage critically with...
Teaching History 178: Out now
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Using the concept of place to help Year 9 students to visualise the complexities of the Holocaust
Teaching History article
Inspired by the work of the social and cultural historian Tim Cole, Stuart Farley decided to look again at the way he teaches the Holocaust. He wanted to focus on the geographical concept of place as a way of enabling his Year 9 students to build far more diverse narratives,...
Using the concept of place to help Year 9 students to visualise the complexities of the Holocaust
