History Resource Cupboard – lessons and resources for schools

History Resource Cupboard - lessons and resources for schools

Teaching Issues

5 ways to use retrieval tests to make knowledge stick

So, Ofsted published some research recently which underpins their new inspection framework. It’s reassuring that they agree with us about what makes good assessment. The research states, ‘Teachers can use assessment to help them plan lessons, adapt lessons to measured gaps in knowledge and skills, and if necessary re-teach where[…]

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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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Are Curriculum ‘Statements of Intent’ worth it?

Good intentions

Ever since teachers got a whiff that Ofsted was no longer just interested in ‘outcomes’ but was now focusing on the ‘Quality of Education’ and the three ‘I’s, there seems to have been a debate about what curriculum intent actually is. In the summer, before the start of this new[…]

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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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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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Reducing your workload and raising attainment with low stakes tests

HistoryHomework.com’s approach has been taken directly from research into how students best learn and retain knowledge in the long term. Cognitive science tells us that the two best strategies to boost learning are practised/ repeat testing and distributed practice. You can find out more about them here. Historyhomework.com has been[…]

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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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A key gap analysis tool for the GCSE history classroom

HistoryHomework.com has been designed to help you raise standards in your GCSE classes, dramatically cut your workload and provide you with crucial information about your individual students’ progress. Much thought and planning have gone into creating an assessment for learning tool that works for the GCSE history teacher. Unlike some[…]

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www.historyhomework.com is live

history homework

  www.historyhomework.com is live and ready for you to access. You can use it to help your students revise all of the content and many of the skills required for the most popular Edexcel 9-1 GCSE courses. AQA will be launching in September. To find out which topics are covered[…]

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What is history? Interpretations of course.

History

There has been some debate recently about whether or not we should use textbooks to teach history in secondary school. And, if we should use such books, which one should be the ‘core’ text, the one that might provide the backbone of a school’s KS3 history course. Let me start[…]

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Key Stage 3 curriculum map

Neil Bates and I have been working together from afar for many years. However, we are lucky enough to have been working together in the same school recently. We have used our frees carefully and have met once a  week in the late Spring and early in the summer term,[…]

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Giving effective written feedback and still managing workload

Marking

We are all told how important feedback is. Written feedback especially. The research. The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) research states “feedback studies tend to show very high effects on learning”. We know feedback is important. SLTs love looking for this feedback as they can make it part of their accountability[…]

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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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