Why did England’s first colony fail? A version of this enquiry appears in the SHP publication ‘The Impact of Empire’ byJamie Byrom, Chris Culpin and Michael Riley. The enquiry provides a detailed exploration of the encounters between the first English colonists in North America and the indigenous people. It is structured around a narrative account of Walter Raleigh’s attempt to establish a colony ...
Read More »This Key Stage 3 enquiry from Alison Kitson focuses on the historical significance of Charles Darwin. By the end of the enquiry it is expected that students will: Know who Darwin was and what he was like Understand why some people at the time found his ideas threatening Realise that people can change the world by big ideas Explore why Darwin is considered significant today Identify what is worth k...
Read More »This guidance is based on Jamie Byrom’s workshop at the 2012 SHP Conference: I’ve started so I’ll finish. Jamie writes… A lot of attention is now given in schools to the way we start and finish lessons. The language of “starters” and “plenaries” is now almost universally embedded into planning sheets and teachers’ minds. The guidance certainly involve activities that...
Read More »Two items by Ian Dawson on Teaching about the Industrial Revolution: • What would we like students to remember about it? More … • What kinds of stories should we tell about it? More … This guidance and the accompanying outline activities are on Thinking History, Ian’s free website.
Read More »The big task in ‘King’ Cromwell? is for pupils to research, plan and write their own biography of Oliver Cromwell. These worksheets are designed to support their work by providing a structured writing frame for each chapter. You can download them onto your school intranet and, if appropriate, customise them to suit the needs and abilities of your pupils. The Certificate is a colour version of Work...
Read More »Unit 12 in the SHP publication ‘The Impact of Empire’ (2nd edition), by Jamie Byrom, Chris Culpin and Michael Riley, explores the experiences of Britain’s Commonwealth migrants in the period after the Second World War. Students are helped to understand the development of ethnic and cultural diversity in post-war Britain by engaging with the general narrative of migration and with the stories of in...
Read More »In ‘The Holocaust’, by Ann Moore and Christopher Culpin, (in the SHP series for KS3: “This Is History”), pupils are invited to create their own Holocaust website. Putting it together not only keeps the pupils driving through their enquiry, it encourages them to evaluate the material provided in the book. This “Big Task” is outlined on page 7 of the Pupil’s Book. The idea is that pupils collect evi...
Read More »An enquiry for the end of KS3 This enquiry from Jo Philpott, AST at Dereham Neatherd High School, Norfolk, was specifically designed as a last experience of taught history for a group of Year 9 pupils with Special Educational Needs. At the time of teaching these pupils were disapplied from the KS4 history curriculum. The aim was for the pupils to apply their KS3 history curriculum to their own loc...
Read More »The enquiry by Richard Harris helps pupils to deepen their understanding of the Britain’s transatlantic slave trade by focussing on the life history of an individual. Once pupils have grasped the general features of the triangular trade, they investigate the life history of Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, an eighteenth-century slave, through extracts from his autobiography. Pupils consider how far his story f...
Read More »Why did Richard Whiting die a terrible death in 1539? This enquiry resulted from Michael Riley’s work with the history department atPreston School in Yeovil. The focus was on helping students to write causal explanations, and the particular context was the English Reformation. The enquiry uses a local case study – the murder of the Abbot of Glastonbury – in order to develop a broader understanding...
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