Thanks to Vicky Bettney (@missvichistory) for sharing with us her macro on Religion in Elizabethan England. Vicky was inspired by reading an article by Hugh Richards (@MisterHistry) in the recent Teaching History 172. Hugh writes about his department’s thinking and work to develop their enquiries at Key Stage Three. They have found that using a ‘macro-micro’ approach has helped students to retain the bigger picture of an enquiry. They give the whole story at the start of an enquiry to provide students with a framework on which they then build their detailed knowledge throughout the sequence. His team are finding that students can gain, and start using, new knowledge more quickly, which leaves more lesson time for using that knowledge to analyse sources and interpretations. In his article he shares examples of macros on the British transatlantic slave trade and World War Two.

Vicky has tweaked Hugh’s idea and is asking her students to engage immediately with whether change was positive or negative – in this case for Roman Catholics or Puritans. A simple way to get students to see change which can then be transferred onto a living graph. The graph can then be referred to constantly as students are learning about the detail of opposition to Elizabethan Religious policy in order to keep the bigger picture in mind. Religion in Elizabethan England MACRO

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