The 9-1 GCSE are content heavy. Fact. To ensure that teachers cover all of this content well, there is less time at the end of the two years to be able to re-visit and revise. So what do we do? How should we go about planning and teaching 2016 GCSE[…]
Six steps for teachers to plan, organise and make the most of history field trips and visits to historic sites.
Running a successful revision information evening. When we get to the weeks leading up to Easter revision season is upon us. In schools all over the land colleagues find themselves somewhere on the spectrum between being inundated with eager students to dragging them kicking and screaming to revision classes. There[…]
After marking our mock exams a few years ago something struck me. Our students were often failing to get high marks on questions about source evaluation (this was the source paper for OCR Modern World). After closer analysis of examiners reports, mark-schemes and student responses, I realised that we needed some[…]
Data, spreadsheets, tracking, CAT scores, Progress 8, levels of progress, intervention strategies, Pupil Premium….ever feel like your department time is eaten up with things a million miles away from the love of History and the love of teaching it to students that first brought you in to the job? We[…]
Twenty strategies for successful GCSE history teaching – this includes ideas on enquiry, revision and meta cognition. And our top 10 tips for great results.
What 2016 History GCSE offers the best approach to assessment? We offer you a simple comparison tool. You may well have already decided what you think the best course is for you and for your students. I have blogged about this before. But, just to remind you, I think you need[…]
Effective marking by Pam Canning Every half term I say I won’t do it, and every half term I do. And I can’t be the only one. I left all of my marking until the last minute, and spend the last 3 days trying to give meaningful feedback to 50[…]
Creating the Big Picture of the Past. I sometimes dream that in 30 years time, some adults surveyed in tabloid newspapers will know that the Battle of Hastings took place in 1066. They will know that the Romans invaded England before the Vikings and they will flippin’ well know where[…]
How will interpretations be assessed at GCSE in 2018? Teaching historical interpretations at GCSE in 2016 will be more important than before. There is no getting away from this. As we stated in our last post, this has got be a good thing. After we really should be teaching students[…]
Teaching Historical Interpretations at GCSE. I am really, really pleased that Historical Interpretations has been placed at the heart of the 2016 GCSEs. After all, as Neil Thompson and Christine Counsell have stated, interpretations has always been the jewel in the crown of the Key Stage 3 concepts. Previously we[…]
Teaching historical Interpretations. If you want success at GCSE and beyond you need to think about how you teach what you teach and why you teach what you teach! Fact. This means developing a great Key Stage 3 curriculum and building on this into Key Stage 4. Recently Ofsted have[…]
You know one of the things that really annoys me? It is watching a lesson where so called less able students are given low level work to do (a gap fill maybe), while those the teacher perceives as bright are given more challenging and harder work. Often the so called[…]
Neil Bates and I have been working together from afar for many years. We have taught in different schools but have always met up to swap resources. However, we were lucky enough to have been working together in the same school. Poor Neil had me as his Head of Hums! We have[…]
Let me let you into a little secret. One that I have kept close for long time. I haven’t given an individual piece of work a national curriculum level for about 15 years! In that time I have been praised in Ofsted inspections for giving high quality feedback and having[…]
One of the million reasons I love history teaching is the fact that we use so many different subject areas in our lessons, often without realising it.Here are History Resource Cupboard we adore using paintings, visual sources and art. We love using music. Clearly literacy is high on our agenda[…]
Links to some useful case studies on the Ofsted website: Making the most of local history Meaningful history for all Outstanding history in 100 minute lessons Successful 2 year Key Stage 3
For those who are new to history teaching, understanding what skills or concepts one should be developing can sometimes be confusing. The fact is that the main skills or concepts that make history a discipline haven’t really changed for twenty years at least.These concepts should be taught and developed across[…]
I thought that this simple guide to what ‘school’s history is’ might be useful to all of those non specialists out there. I have tried to summarise what I think schools history is in a few pages of a PDF. It is really hard if you are a non specialist[…]
I know we would all love to teach local history. After all, there are fewer ways to make history resonate with your classes than teaching them about the interesting things that happened literally under their feet. Kids who have looked at some really good local history about their own city,[…]
About seventeen years ago, my then Head teacher issued an audit of ICT use within the school. At that time the History department recorded an ICT usage of 0%. Admittedly, this was in the days before data projectors and the internet had only recently slipped out of the hands of[…]
Ever wondered what your students think about your GCSE history lessons? Do you think they are really engaged and interested in the course that you teach or are they bored by answering exam question after exam question and covering the dreaded content? A few years ago two researchers from Nottingham[…]
There appears to be widespread agreement among teachers, academics and researchers about what good assessment practice is. However, someone somewhere seems to have forgotten to mention this to Senior Leaders who are desperate for data they can use to measure progress. Often the data they are using to measure history[…]
Questioning – how to think like DI Jack Frost Teaching is a funny old job. We spend our days asking tens or even hundreds of questions that we generally know the answers to. Questioning is the strategy that we probably rely on most in our teaching. In every lesson that[…]
‘Bovvered?!’ How to make history meaningful These are just some of the comments made by students when asked why they study history a few years ago. Richard Harris from Reading University and Terry Hayden, from the University of East Anglia asked 1700 students. Clearly some of the responses make sobering reading. Never[…]
Whenever a new national curriculum is proposed, it isn’t mathematics or science that make the headlines in the newspapers, it is history. Heavy weight historians speak up about what students should learn in schools. Funny that, when many of them have never stepped inside a classroom in the state sector. They[…]
