"What do you do in the holidays?" Thanks to Jacob Keet, History Teacher at Christ's Hospital in Horsham, West Sussex, for sharing his film clips - getting big stories and concepts across to students in an engaging way. He picks up the important theme of engaging students with history around them and helping them to... Continue Reading →
How undertaking a Teacher Fellowship could change your life – in teaching, at least!
Thanks to Louisa Dunn, Head of History, Westcliff High School for Girls, for writing this blogpost. She's at @LouisaKDee (and says... "not that I am very active, but I am happy for people to contact me with questions etc.") A new Historical Association Teacher Fellowship has just been announced on the Korean War and applications... Continue Reading →
Exhausted and exhilarated! A personal reflection on HA Conference 2019
First-time conference attender and Chartered History Teacher Natalie Kesterton blogs about her HA conference experience. The drive across the Pennines was lovely and sunny; boding well for a great weekend in Chester; my first national HA conference and first time presenting. I went with the aim of ensuring my planning of the new KS3 curriculum... Continue Reading →
History teachers’ sources of support – part 2 – local history teacher networks
Continuing our celebration of sources of support for history teachers, this post takes up the theme of local networks. Thanks to Kate Smee, Director of Humanities at Fairfield High School, in the Bristol network for sharing with us how their network has supported her. Please let us know of other such networks so we can... Continue Reading →
Interpretations – the essential ‘how to’ for history teachers!
Historical interpretations are hard! Students and teachers struggle with the concept. Christine Counsell has been a leading light in thinking about and honing our practice in relation to this concept for many years. She recently posted a summary twitter thread to help newer history teachers to understand what teaching interpretations means and where we have... Continue Reading →
Where can I find…?
We are in the wonderful position where #OBHD is getting so big that it can be hard to find things. Here are some handy links to posts you enjoyed and might want to access again. Or perhaps you missed them first time around and can discover anew what a fabulous subject community we are part... Continue Reading →
How we are trying to design the best KS3 Curriculum ever
Following on from the Cottenham Village College team's blogpost about their experience with the Ofsted pilot, we are grateful to the team at Fairfield School for sharing with us their thinking and connecting and working journey to revamp their KS3 curriculum... Now that new A Levels and GCSEs are more set up, many of us... Continue Reading →
Reflections on our Ofsted pilot
In December 2018 our school was approached to take part in a pilot for Ofsted’s new framework from September 2019. This was not an official trial of the whole framework (the focus was the subject-specific curriculum in 2 subjects) and therefore has no official status. We received no judgements or written feedback. The following reflections... Continue Reading →
Polish students, Polish connections, Polish history, strong communities…
Perhaps you have Polish students in your history classroom and are worried their homeland only appears in history lessons when invaded by the Nazis and the USSR? Perhaps you want your students to realise that links with other countries go back a lot further than some current political voices might suggest? Probably you are very... Continue Reading →