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 »Teaching to develop chronological knowledge and understanding can appear both a vague and a complex task, much less straightforward than teaching about a historical individual, topic or period. So one aim of these brief notes, by Ian Dawson, is to be helpful and reassuring. Children will learn most effectively if their school has undertaken long-term planning of work on chronology across KS1 and K...
Read More »This unit for Upper Key Stage 2 pupils, written by Ann Moore, can be used either as an aspect or theme of British history that extends pupils knowledge beyond 1006, or as a Local Study. It incorporates some useful cross curricular links with popular WW2 literature, such as ‘Carrie’s War’ and Anne Frank’s Diary. Download the Resource Download the resource [ click here ]
Read More »‘Sally’s Special History Lesson‘ introduces Key Stage 1 children in a ‘fun way’ to the historical vocabulary and the types of sources that they will be using in their enquiry about significant historical events, people and places in their own locality. This activity helps teachers to plan and prepare this subject content, through the medium of a story (written and illustrated by...
Read More »This useful ‘aide memoire’ put together by Ann Moore, allows teachers to engage their pupils in observing a picture or artefact more closely than if they were asked general questions. Over time, children will begin to ask and answer these questions themselves Download the Resource Download the resource [ click here ] Historical Questions to ask about Pictures and Photographs What can you can see i...
Read More »This table, put together by Ann Moore, gives teachers an ‘at a glance’ overview of what programmes of study (now called subject matter) remain the same in the revised National Curriculum for primary schools what subject matter has changed, or no longer needs to be taught and what subject matter is new. It also offers brief suggestions on how some of the old programmes of study can be used to teac...
Read More »An HMI view on ‘Securing Outstanding Leadership in History’ from Michael Maddison (HMI). Michael is Ofsted’s Specialist Adviser for History. See the Plenary PowerPoint
Read More »The plenary lecture by Peter Mandler, Professor of Modern Cultural History, University of Cambridge and President of the Royal Historical Society. Read the lecture
Read More »A former colleague told me on hearing I was pregnant with my first son, that being a parent doesn’t make you a better teacher but makes you a more understanding one. Sixteen years later I continue to echo his thoughts and as my children advance towards public examinations, nevermore have I been more appreciative of the challenges our young people face. Faced with the prospect of 26 examinations th...
Read More »Christine Counsell, (University of Cambridge Faculty of Education) `Interpretations of history` first gained formal curricular presence in the History NC for England and Wales in 1991. It has never gone away and it returns as a glorious, explicit plural in the 2014 NC. What have history teachers achieved with it? How have they developed it? Why is this tradition precious? Why is it admired ab...
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