Post written by Emma McKenna, Head of Department at the King’s School, Grantham

Inspired by @YorkClio and wanting the opportunity to talk about history teaching to other enthusiastic practitioners, I established a network for history teachers from other Grammar Schools in Lincolnshire. This was in 2023. We try to meet three times a year, and the meetings are always a truly uplifting experience, with lots of support and sharing of ideas. We have amazing teachers in the group, with varying levels of experience, yet everyone respects what others have to offer. As such, we always have plenty of suggestions from the group for future agenda items. Nevertheless, when we were approached and asked to trial the discussion cards, it seemed to be a good opportunity to enhance our meetings with some expert ideas!

We had focused our first meeting on the KS3 curriculum; however, the cards prompted a discussion about including the KS3 curriculum as a topic for discussion each year as it is something that is constantly evolving. Consequently, we decided to use the cards as an opportunity to share our KS3 curriculum plans and to discuss any successes and challenges we have encountered. The cards also contain a QR code linking to several articles. These range from ideas about including women’s history, diversifying history as well as articles on specific topics, and even a film on making an effective history curriculum. One colleague at our meeting said she is now in a different position since our previous KS3 curriculum discussion and thought the questions were really helpful for her to discuss with her department. We have used these questions in our own department meetings too, to help us review our work so far and consider what we need to do next.

Literacy, and trying to encourage our students to read more and to be enthusiastic about reading is a problem shared by all members of our network, so we added this as an agenda item for our next meeting, using the discussion card on Creating a deeper use of literacy as a prompt. The questions and ideas on the card helped us to scaffold our discussion, from ideas about what we thought a deeper sense of literacy should look like – an insightful conversation as we shared common challenges and aspirations. The card also contains some helpful ideas to encourage reading, for example, using a core text within the curriculum. This has been highly successful as our Year 10s sigh in good humour when we ‘must see what Marc Morris has to say about this’ while learning a new aspect of the Normans topic. This also prompted colleagues to share their own experiences and experiments with different methods. I was particularly inspired by one school’s success with a voluntary A-level reading group which has increased students’ knowledge of the examinable components whilst encouraging more students to read.

One of the discussion cards considers Curriculum Development, specifically focused on Teaching Empire. One colleague had not addressed this area of the KS3 curriculum and was feeling nervous about tackling such a large topic. The card provided an opportunity to share concerns, ideas and support at our meeting. However, there are also helpful questions to discuss at department level about aims of the SoW/enquiry question, scale of the enquiry and advice on making curriculum links and delegating workload. It was also felt that this card might be adapted to address other substantive concepts, such as Revolution, Power or Democracy.

Finally, the discussion card on Ofsted preparations has been really helpful at both a network and department level. Colleagues who have had a visit from Ofsted recently concurred with the card’s materials that they had been asked the questions listed and this was helpful for preparation. There are a range of suggestions to help Heads of Department and teaching staff prepare for a visit but ultimately, to make us more informed about why we teach what we teach, the way we teach it. Using this as a guide, has certainly helped prompt conversations across our department, making everyone much more confident about the work we do and our rationale.  

A link to the Driving Your Discussion cards is here. Please try them and get in touch to let us know how they worked or what you would like to see more of. https://www.history.org.uk/secondary/categories/402/resource/11229/driving-your-discussion