Subject knowledge updating is enjoyable and a huge challenge in a busy teacher life. There are fantastic initiatives, such as The History Teachers’ Book Club which featured in a previous post, which make this more collegiate. Connected to this, some historians are super generous with their time and engage with history teachers on social media and at conferences. Nevertheless, there can’t be many of us … Continue reading Reading list with reviews!
… In which I was inspired by Ruth Lingard’s post to take Michael Riley’s analogy way too far!” As someone with responsibility for the History curriculum at my school, I often worry about the quality of what we do. This is no false modesty, there are aspects of our curriculum that really aren’t that good. Michael Riley’s conceptualisation of curriculum as a garden continues to … Continue reading “The curriculum garden…
Thanks to Hugh Richards, Head of History at Huntington School for this blogpost. Despite this vision statements appearing across Twitter and in schools all over the country (as well as their being external CPD courses on writing them) there is little published about the thinking behind them. Here Hugh shares the process that he and his team went through to create a vision they are happy … Continue reading Process of constructing a vision statement
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…
Ever doubted that your contribution could make a difference? In this short blogpost, Katharine Burn explains how the HA survey was crucial to defeating the mad National Curriculum plan of 2013 – just ask an older colleague if you were not teaching then! The HA Survey window must end in the middle of October and this is a plea, if you have not yet had … Continue reading What has the HA survey ever done for me?
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
Thanks to Alex Fairlamb and Andrew Sweet for this blogpost about the wonderful TMHistoryIcons. What a superb example of subject specialist community in action and the next in our series of blogposts about sources of support for history teachers: History and history teachers are at the heart of TMHistoryIcons, a not for profit organisation, founded by Tom Rogers four years ago. The philosophy of the … Continue reading History teachers’ sources of support – part 3 – TMHistoryIcons
“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 be curious about how the past connects to the present. … Continue reading ‘Mr Keet on Location’ – creating documentaries as a History Teacher
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