History Resource Cupboard – lessons and resources for schools

History Resource Cupboard - lessons and resources for schools

Blog

8 examples of big picture​ overviews

History teachers in England seem to agree that planning and teaching is best achieved through the Enquiry Question. And they are right to. A Rileyesque enquiry works (Riley 2000). Full stop! It is all very well to be looking for that killer enquiry question. But if you never show your[…]

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Don’t let the curriculum control your pedagogy

control

Some people say knowledge is power. Others say powerful knowledge is power. But that is another debate. But how is the history teacher being controlled? We know we are being controlled by Ofsted. SLTs react to what they think Ofsted are looking for.  This is then forced upon teachers through teaching[…]

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Barriers to teaching Wider World Histories (2)

There is a strong case for English pupils studying more Wider world histories. I outlined in the previous blog post on this topic. The National Curriculum at Key Stage 3 gives schools ample scope for such a study. Nevertheless, diverse world history units, in general, are somewhat hard to find[…]

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What strategies work best to boost learning?

Practised testing

What strategies work best to boost learning? This is the million dollar question that teachers and students need to answer to so they can be successful at school/university/ in life. Here at HRC we believe that the knowledge required to do well in history – the substantive ‘stuff” and disciplinary[…]

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15 Tips for Assessing at KS3

Assessment at Key Stage 3 has always been a challenge. And there always seems to have been a tension, a tug of war between doing what is right for the students, helping teachers assess the quality of their curriculum against doing what SLT require to please Ofsted and to report[…]

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Assessment at Key Stage 3: The problems

Ever since I started teaching, assessment at Key Stage 3 has proven to be a thorny issue. National Curriculum levels were introduced way back in 1995. And, they were contentious, to say the least. Their abolition in 2014 should have been celebrated. Yet, according to the brilliant annual HA survey,[…]

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Five New Year’s resolutions for SLT

Fingers crossed!? This is what one successful head of history hopes SLT will do in the New Year: Cancel your PiXL subscription and stop spending money on exam board spec courses. Put the £s of savings into department budgets. Give time for teachers to digest the spec materials and other[…]

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The dangers of whole-school curriculum planning days

Yesterday we had an INSET day focusing on curriculum planning. We enjoyed the second collaborative day whereby the local primary schools attended the secondary school for joint CPD. The afternoons are fantastic! Fantastic CPD Secondary and primary classroom teachers attending sessions together, delivered by colleagues. My NQT and PGCE trainee[…]

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Using enquiry to succeed at 9-1 GCSE history

Reading

I think I might be out of fashion.  Come to think of it, on a sartorial level I have never been in fashion. But that is a digression. You see I have always been an advocate of enquiry based history. I gardened in Michael Riley’s enquiry garden way back in[…]

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What is all the fuss about? Rosenshine’s principles for instruction

Clearly many schools across the country have been sharing Rosenshine’s principles with their teachers during CPD sessions recently. Twitter is full of education guru’s retweeting how Rosenshine is the next best thing in education since sliced bread (or feedback, or metacognition). So what are these revolutionary principles for teaching? Well[…]

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So what is ‘powerful knowledge’?

Recently, with the focus  centring on the curriculum again, the term ‘powerful knowledge’ seems to have entered educational parlance.  It appears in discussions on in the echo-chamber that is Edutwitter.  The  phrase ‘powerful knowledge’ seems to hold magical, untouchable qualities in general, and in particular when it comes to history teaching.  It seems[…]

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How to plan a broad and balanced curriculum 4: What about substantive knowledge?

knowledge

Thanks to the changes proposed by Ofsted to their framework and handbook, the history teacher should be thinking hard about curriculum planning. To be honest, the history department should always be thinking about curriculum planning as curriculum intent, implementation and evaluation as this is their core business. One essential aspect[…]

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