Thanks to Alex Fairlamb (@lamb_heart_tea) of HA Secondary Committee for putting together this reading list for anyone teaching history in schools. It will help us learn, talk and think deeply about why and how we are teacher of reading. Reading is a central part of student learning. We are ALL teachers of literacy and therefore how we explicitly teach reading and use this to develop … Continue reading What to read about reading
As we near the end of the long autumn term, subject leaders may be starting to think about preparation for INSET time at the start of January. The HA is here to help with a range of CPD guides that SLs can use to structure learning together as a department. You can find the currently available guides here. The most recent guide focuses on literacy … Continue reading Literacy and Oracy in History – a new HA CPD guide
Thanks to Martyn Bajkowski, Head of History at Pleckgate High School and member of HA Secondary Committee for this blogpost. He encourages us to remember the joy of history and to use historical fiction to encourage our students. As someone with a surname that translates as ‘The son of a story teller’ it may not surprise you to learn that I love using stories in … Continue reading Bringing facts into the classroom through fiction
Thanks to Richard Kennett for continuing his series of blogposts about teaching the British Empire… The difficulty of literacy and the teaching of the British Empire Teaching any historical topic is hard as it requires a lot of disciplinary vocabulary. Those pesky words that enlighten a subject, bring it to life and really allow you to get your teeth in. Revolution, peasant, autocratic, industrial, agricultural, … Continue reading Empire blogpost 3: the thorny issue of literacy when teaching the British Empire
Thank you to Sarah Jackson, Head of History at Sawston Village College in Cambridgeshire, for this blogpost sharing some more of the work of the department… As a department we have often talked about the huge impact that cultural literacy has on the achievement of our pupils. Students who don’t have ‘pictures of the past’ find it hard to understand new content as it doesn’t … Continue reading Developing substantive thinking: a project to create connections through a KS3 curriculum
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
Thanks to Anne Hooper (@Hoops752), Lead Practitioner in History at Sandhurst School and member of HA Secondary Committee, for this reflection on Teaching History 111. Anne continues our series of looking back in the archives and reflecting on what colleagues have written that we can learn from today. As a history teaching community, we are in exciting times regarding reading and scholarship. The History Teachers’ … Continue reading Pearls of Wisdom from TH Journal 111
The Historical Association Secondary Committee have put together this HA_Historical_Fiction_list for people to use with their students. It is designed to help history teachers to inspire students of all ages in secondary school to read historical fiction for pleasure and also to get better at doing history. Please share it! Historical fiction works very powerfully to help some people do even better at history, including … Continue reading FREE – Historical Fiction list from the HA
This week there was a great example of OBHD in action on @twitter. It goes like this… a history teacher reads a Teaching History article, has a great idea and produces a nifty resource to help her students. Thank you to Rachel Lines (@historyweights) of Purbeck School for this super idea. Here in her own words… Preparing my Year 12s for their coursework and tackling … Continue reading A Level bookmarks – OBHD in action!
The Historical Association at Stratford last weekend was a happy and enriching experience. So many people passionate about history teaching learning from each other. We had chance to update our subject knowledge, share great teaching strategies, think about progression, talk to examiners, find out about new resources, feel less alone… One session I was inspired by was Sally Burnham’s session (@salburnham) about teaching interpretations at … Continue reading Historians for your classroom – free resource!
OBHD 