The HA has launched resources to support beginning teachers and those who work with them. Are you thinking of becoming a history teacher? About to train as a history teacher? In your training year? In your first year in post? In the first three years of your history teaching career? Working with beginning teachers? If the answer to any of these Qs is ‘YES!’ than … Continue reading NEW! Support for beginning history teachers
Thank you to Sarah Jackson, Head of Department at Sawston Village College in Cambridgeshire for this blogpost. Sarah has been imbibing the wealth of CPD on offer to history teachers. Here she explains how this has shaped her thinking, her experience of trying out ideas to reveal the constructed nature of the curriculum with her own pupils, and her current thinking about best ways forward … Continue reading Decolonisation in the history classroom: wider perspectives and more critical questions
Here, Anne Hudson and Gabrielle Reddington, who have taught pupils and trained teachers for decades, continue their reflections on teaching history well. In the first part of our blog, we shared our conversation about the importance of a rich diversity to our history curriculum. We have continued talking and, in this blog will share some of our conclusions based on our work as, with and … Continue reading 3-Dimensional history teaching for inclusion and diversity
Thanks to Sian Ayling (@MsAylingHist), history teacher at Blackfen School for Girls in Sidcup for this blogpost. Sian has wrestled with the need to enable students to see the inter-connection between Britain’s industrial revolution, Empire and transatlantic slave trade. She describes the way that she has planned and developed this work in a way that will be very helpful to colleagues planning the same journey. … Continue reading How can we foster students’ understanding of the Industrial Revolution, the British Empire and the Transatlantic Slave Trade as interconnected?
In this blogpost, Jen Thornton (@jen_a_thornton), Head of History at Loreto Grammar School, shares her recent work to improve the history curriculum. Jen started by listening to students, she has gone back to the scholarship to gain the knowledge she needs, she has consulted and worked with colleagues, and she is clear that this is work in progress. Her description of this work and her … Continue reading Decolonising the curriculum one step at a time: lessons on race in the early British Empire
Heather Sherman (@HeatherLaws88) teaches history at York College. In this blogpost, Heather persuades us to use local archives to improve our teaching of GCSE topics and to prepare students for further study. Heather argues that local archives challenge, diversify and humanise broader narratives, she explains how to go about contacting your local archives, she generously gives a link to a workbook you can take and … Continue reading Amazing archives: working with local history at GCSE and beyond
Thank you to Kate Smee, Head of Humanities at Fairfield School in Bristol for this blogpost. Kate encourages us to keep on thinking and planning and doing what we need to do to teach better history, despite Covid-19. Her twitter handle is on the end of her blogpost. I am going to start by saying this is not a blog with a definitive road map, … Continue reading Empowering ourselves to create an anti-racist curriculum: picking off the obstacles one book and one conversation at a time
Thanks to Anne Hooper of Secondary Committee for delving back into those Teaching History archives again. Here she learns more about the very topical matter of reading in the history curriculum from the history teaching past. In a recent ResearchEd talk Clare Sealy talked passionately about the importance of reading in the curriculum. In recent years we have seen a renaissance regarding the importance of … Continue reading The importance of reading
As we come to the end of a very long term and the end of a very long year, Anne Hudson and Gabrielle Reddington share an important conversation. It will hopefully summarise messages received in 2020 and provide food for more thought as we unwind in the break and start to look ahead to 2021. Anne and Gabrielle have taught pupils and trained teachers through … Continue reading Teaching history well – a reflection
Thanks to Gemma Hargraves (@History_Girls) for writing here about here takeaways from the HA Conference. The conference sessions will be online until 4th January 2021, so there is still time to catch-up on other sessions once the rush of term is ended. Now is actually a great time to learn We’re all tired, busy adapting to blended learning, and facing various COVID related challenges… but … Continue reading Reflections on the HA Conference 2020
