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Making substantive concepts (do the) work
Teaching History article
Several years back, Alistair Dickins and Tommy-James Alexander realised they wanted to incorporate explicit consideration of substantive concepts into their Key Stage 3 teaching, to enable students to make sense of and order information about the past and to offer students a usable language that would support their historical reasoning. In reality,...
Making substantive concepts (do the) work
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Using the present to construct a meaningful picture of the medieval past
Teaching History article
In this article, Jessica Phillips returns to a theme explored in the Historical Association’s publication Exploring and Teaching Medieval History in Schools – the challenge of teaching about the medieval past in ways that acknowledge its vibrant complexity and create a genuine sense of resonance rather than condescension or blank...
Using the present to construct a meaningful picture of the medieval past
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Challenging stereotypes and avoiding the superficial: a suggested approach to teaching the Holocaust
Teaching History article
Alison Kitson provides a rationale for a scheme of work for Year 9 (13-14 year-olds). She argues that teachers should analyse the kind of historical learning that is taking place when the Holocaust is studied. Critical of the assumption that learning will take place as a result of exposure, she...
Challenging stereotypes and avoiding the superficial: a suggested approach to teaching the Holocaust
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The First Fifty Years of the Historical Association
Classic Pamphlet
It was in the 19th century for the most part that the study of the past was revolutionized through the progress in criticism, the opening of archives and the great development of what we call ‘historical thinking’. In the same century the historical approach produced a transformation in many branches of...
The First Fifty Years of the Historical Association
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Trade – lifeblood of the empire: how trade affected life in Roman Britain
Primary History article
The Ofsted Research Review: History highlights the importance of developing children’s understanding of key substantive concepts, ideas that are woven through historical content such as settlement, invasion, power. Children’s understanding grows more complex as they encounter these ideas in different contexts, enabling children to grow increasingly sophisticated schemas that support future...
Trade – lifeblood of the empire: how trade affected life in Roman Britain
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Significant people: Mary Wollstonecraft
Primary History article
‘I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves’ – Mary Wollstonecraft
The National Curriculum gives the freedom to select any significant individual and many schools have already chosen those outside the commonly-used ones such as Florence Nightingale, Christopher Columbus and Queen Victoria. There is also...
Significant people: Mary Wollstonecraft
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Children in the Second World War
Lesson Plan
This resource is free to everyone. For access to hundreds of other high-quality resources by primary history experts along with free or discounted CPD and membership of a thriving community of teachers and subject leaders, join the Historical Association today
These lessons with Year 6 children at a voluntary-aided primary...
Children in the Second World War
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On-demand webinar: Interpretations: complexity without confusions
Embracing messiness: teaching disciplinary thinking in history
Embracing messiness: teaching disciplinary thinking in history
Session 3: Interpretations: complexity without confusions
This session delves into interpretations. It analyses how we can be both too simplistic and too complex with our approach. It will explore a different approach to interpretations and give practical approaches to exemplify what this could...
On-demand webinar: Interpretations: complexity without confusions
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On-demand webinar: Keeping sources messy
Embracing messiness: teaching disciplinary thinking in history
Embracing messiness: teaching disciplinary thinking in history
Session 2: Keeping sources messy
This session looks into how source work has often been too tidy in the classroom setting and the reasons behind this. It will explore a different approach to working with sources and evidence and give practical approaches to exemplify what...
On-demand webinar: Keeping sources messy
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My Favourite History Place: Tivoli Theatre
Historian feature
The Tivoli Theatre opened on 24 August 1936 with Jean Adrienne in Father O’Flynn and Shirley Temple in Kid in Hollywood, with film star Jean Adrienne appearing in person. It was designed by Bournemouth-based architect E. de Wilde Holding. The front of the building was an existing Georgian-style building named Borough House. Inside the auditorium there...
My Favourite History Place: Tivoli Theatre
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The Bigger Picture: Curriculum Overview
HA Primary Subject Leader Area
In this piece Stuart looks at the ‘bigger picture’ of curriculum overview and how, through careful curriculum mapping and the exploration of key trends, topics can be structured to fit together within a wider chronological narrative. He provides practical approaches and examples, as well as discussing historical concepts that occur in...
The Bigger Picture: Curriculum Overview
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Primary Teacher Fellowship Programme: Local history
Teacher Fellowship Programme 2021-22
At the heart of this Teacher Fellowship programme in partnership with the British Association for Local History was the concept of integrating local history into the classroom through the stories of the people and places which make the history of your school's community exciting and unique. Through the lens of local history...
Primary Teacher Fellowship Programme: Local history
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HA awards evening 2021 round-up
1st October 2021
Finally it happened – the HA annual (usually) awards evening, known to many as ‘the Medlicott evening’. Normally held in summer, the event is an opportunity to recognise some of the incredible contributions that people make to the continuation of history for all in this country, as historians, writers, educators...
HA awards evening 2021 round-up
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Drilling down: how one history department is working towards progression in pupils' thinking about diversity across Years 7, 8 and 9
Teaching History article
Matthew Bradshaw shares the early, tentative efforts of his history department to shape a new Key Stage 3 workscheme in the light of the 2008 National Curriculum for England. While his department's scheme is designed to secure progression in all conceptual areas, he chooses to focus here on the concept...
Drilling down: how one history department is working towards progression in pupils' thinking about diversity across Years 7, 8 and 9
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Teacher Fellowship Programmes
Information
The Historical Association's Teacher Fellowship programme is a fully funded, in-depth CPD programme focused on providing sustained, subject-knowledge-based professional development for history teachers.
We bring our academic partners together with experienced teacher educators to design a programme that brings your research to the teachers involved and always ensures there is...
Teacher Fellowship Programmes
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On-demand webinar: Curriculum coherence and transition to Key Stage 1
Teaching ‘past and present’ in EYFS
Teaching ‘past and present’ in EYFS
Session 3: Curriculum coherence and transition to Key Stage 1
This webinar will support you to ensure well-planned transition to Key Stage 1, and will give advice on planning for mixed-age Reception/Year 1 classes. It will reflect on developing a coherent history curriculum across all...
On-demand webinar: Curriculum coherence and transition to Key Stage 1
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The Historian 147: Out now
The magazine of the Historical Association
Read The Historian 147: The Historic Environment
The town centre of Middleton, Greater Manchester, was reshaped in 1970 to allow for the building of an Arndale Centre. The now-unprepossessing centre of town belies a ‘golden cluster’ of heritage in the area which includes a seventeenth-century pub, several architectural gems designed...
The Historian 147: Out now
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The First Crusade, 1095–99
Historian feature
As Christianity had spread across Europe, Islam had spread across the Middle East. At the end of the eleventh century the relationship between the Muslim leader of Jerusalem and the Christian communities and travellers to the city fractured. Along with other key relationships across Europe, the Middle East and around...
The First Crusade, 1095–99
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Recorded webinar series: The history that Shakespeare gave us
Multipage Article
To mark the anniversary of the publication of Shakespeare’s first folio in 1623–24, our 2024 winter webinar series focused on ‘The history that Shakespeare gave us’. The representation of the past in Shakespeare’s plays has shaped many people’s understanding of history. In this webinar series, leading academics explore the history that is...
Recorded webinar series: The history that Shakespeare gave us
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Exploring diversity at GCSE
Teaching History article
Having already reflected on ways of improving their students' understanding of historical diversity at Key Stage 3, Joanne Philpott and Daniel Guiney set themselves the challenge of extending this to post-14 students by means of fieldwork activities at First World War battlefields sites. In addition, they wanted to link the study...
Exploring diversity at GCSE
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Teaching history and geography together in a meaningful way
WHEN 2 + 2 = 5!
This article explores some of the ways history and geography can be taught side by side, so that the sum of the parts adds up to more than the original. How can we teach history with geography and vice versa, to the benefit of both, while fulfilling the aims of...
Teaching history and geography together in a meaningful way
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A history trainee early in their teaching placement
HITT Film 1
This film series was produced to accompany materials in the Beginning Teacher units. It contains a Key Stage 3 history lesson and lesson debrief. The materials are not designed specifically to be examples of good practice; rather they are to promote discussion about good practice in teacher training.
The films show a lesson taught...
A history trainee early in their teaching placement
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Making pupils want to explain: using Movie Maker to foster thoroughness and self-monitoring
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Sally Burnham shares her practice and reflections on the value of the software, ‘Movie Maker', for developing particular aspects of historical thinking and learning. In Teaching History 130, in the context of her Key Stage...
Making pupils want to explain: using Movie Maker to foster thoroughness and self-monitoring
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Recorded webinar: Maya ruler King Pakal II of Palenque
Article
The discovery in 1952 of the tomb of King Pakal II of Palenque has been called the most important archaeological find in the history of the Americas. Protected by a magnificently sculpted stone sarcophagus depicting Pakal’s descent to the underworld and re-birth as the maize god lay the body of...
Recorded webinar: Maya ruler King Pakal II of Palenque
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Vera Ignatievna Giedroyc: her missions of mercy, 1899–1932
Historian article
Historical research takes place in many forms and in many locations. This research, which has been translated for us, introduces us to an heroic pioneering Ukrainian woman surgeon.
During the Spring of 1932 in the Ukrainian city of Kiev, on a sunny day in March, a very small group of...
Vera Ignatievna Giedroyc: her missions of mercy, 1899–1932
