Thanks to Martyn Bajkowski, Head of History at Pleckgate High School and a member of HA Secondary Committee for this, the first of a series of three blogposts to help us to make the best possible use of mock exams. The Year 11 Mock Exam Season has hit. Whether your school does one, two or even three sittings of examinations I wanted to share what … Continue reading What to do with mock exams – part 1
This short blogpost is to draw your attention to source collections being produced by EUROCLIO on their Historiana website. The HA is a founding member of EUROCLIO – the European Network of History Educators. They exist to support and promote high quality history education in Europe and beyond. Richard Kennett and Helen Snelson are currently the HA’s reps and Rich has written a previous blogpost … Continue reading Spice up your sources!
Last week the Historical Association was contacted by a history teacher member wanting help. The department they work in is under scrutiny for ‘poor’ results. The advice the department had been given was to differentiate all GCSE lessons into 3 or maybe 4 pathways. The department has mixed ability teaching groups with targets ranging from 2-8. They just knew this didn’t seem like a good … Continue reading Help! – we’re under scrutiny for our poor results…
Thanks to Warren Valentine (@warrenvalentine), head of history and politics at Mayfield Grammar School for Girls, for this blogpost about a day spent thinking about the teaching of historical interpretations. This is an area that has been extensively discussed and theorised about for many years. You can find more help with this tricky concept on the HA website. In June a collection of history teachers … Continue reading Teaching interpretations – maximising potential and avoiding pitfalls!
The Secondary Committee at the HA is keen to challenge and support all history teachers to teach about the rich and multi-faceted past. Gemma Hargraves (@History__Girls) has written this blogpost to help colleagues teaching Chartism. In it she provides some interpretations and ideas for resources. As she says: “this isn’t just about pupils seeing themselves in the narratives of the past; be they working class, black … Continue reading Revisiting Chartism: The importance of teaching about the ‘Black Man and his Party’
There is currently lots of really good practice around the use of historians’ work in classrooms. Last weekend at SHP a few of us were talking about how useful it would be to have a list of short clips of historians in one place. This list has been started and is shared here as a Google-Doc that can be accessed, added to and improved. Google … Continue reading Historians: short film clips
Enquiry questions – the back story! Editors’ note: Thanks to Hugh Richards for organising all of us and co-ordinating this post. His lovely tables had to be posted as screen-shots. The Word Doc of the same material is here: Enquiry Questions Continue reading Ringing the changes: the power of enquiry questions that both chime and resonate
Thanks so much to Carmel Bones for writing this blogpost. Carmel shares with us loads of great strategies for motivating our students. Why not have a go at some of these and also share some of your favourites? #OBHD It might be surprising to discover that History is not everybody’s favourite subject?! And even if it is ‘building botheredness’ is still important to ensure learner … Continue reading Building ‘Botheredness’ making reluctant learners care about History
This blogpost describes a really effective school link up as a result of discussions at Teach Meet History Icons back in March 2018. Here, Martyn Bajkowski, HA Secondary Committee, describes how he and Alex Fairlamb, lead coordinator of TMHistoryIcons, worked together to motivate their students to put in effort and develop clarity with their historical explanations. A brilliant idea that is easily copied – thank … Continue reading North of Scotch Corner – a cross country approach to developing explicit explanations
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 come from. From June 2019 ‘Teaching History’ will have a … Continue reading Interpretations – the essential ‘how to’ for history teachers!
OBHD 