Keystage history - Imaginative History Teaching in Primary and Secondary Schools
About Keystage History
Keystage history is the home of best practice in primary and secondary history teaching and learning. You can totally trust the up-to-date, authoritative, cutting edge, expert advice on issues such as deep dive inspections and you will be inspired by all the creative planning and teaching ideas. Subscribers love the hundreds of fully resourced history lessons, all judged outstanding by a vastly experienced LA history adviser who has observed over 2,000 primary and secondary lessons and has carried out 60 national inspections for OFSTED. Every aspect of leading history 5-19 is covered in detail from rationales for curriculum planning, through to raising standards, assessment, progression and inspiring colleagues. This site is a must for any forward-looking subject leader.
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10 Things to do to make your history teaching better at KS2
more1. Teach through historical enquiries.
Enquiries are the most effective subject pedagogy in history, not least because when well drafted, they make pupils think. You will notice that all the lessons on the site deliberately have as their focus a puzzling...
Mary Anning – KQ1 – Why do we remember Mary Anning?
This introductory session attempts to place Mary's life in a broader context of time and place and to whet pupils' appetite, without telling much of the story of her life. This follows in the next session. key to the introduction...more
Mary Anning – KQ2 – What did Mary do in her life that was so special?
Pupils move from the sequencing of the major events of Mary’s life to a more sophisticated understanding of which of these events were the most significant. By creating a fortunes or living human graph, pupils are able to see the...more
Mary Anning – KQ3 – What sort of person was Mary that helped her to succeed in a man’s world?
This a much shorter enquiry than the others, and comprises just three short activitiesmoreStep 1
Having recapped the story of Mary’s life, ask pupils to work in small groups to generate adjectives to describe Mary’s character.Step 2
Pupils are then shown a...
Mary Anning – KQ4 – Which other people were important in Mary’s life and why?
This activity is an interesting way of getting pupils to think about Mary’s life but in a non-narrative way. Instead of re-telling the story in sequence they have to look back over her life and to think about which characters...more
Mary Anning – KQ5 – How do we know about Mary’s actions which happened so long ago?
The main activity in this session is called Prove it! A number of pieces of evidence from Mary’s time are placed around the room, as if it were an art gallery. Pupils are not given 10 statements about Mary’s life,...more
Mary Anning – KQ6 – How and why should Mary Anning be remembered? Have your say.
In Lyme Regis they are going to improve their museum dedicated to Mary Anning. It will cost a lot of money and the Council are not sure she deserves all this money being spent on her. Pupils have been asked...more
Gunpowder Plot Smart Task: Dear producer
Over the last few sessions, the children have become familiar with the story of the Gunpowder Plot using a range of strategies from ‘A moving story' and 'Prove it!' (see Outstanding Lessons), to role playing the arrest of Guy Fawkes...moreHow to get KS1 pupils into history-13 ideas
If you haven't already come across this School Run website offers 13 different ideas for making history come alive with your pupils, including games, story books, visits, history re-enactments etc. What i like about the list...more
Common assessment tasks in history at KS1
It is often difficult knowing how to assess pupils’ historical thinking at KS1. Are we simply testing literacy and /or recall? But what about historical understanding? Faced with this problem, I have been working with two large London primary schools....more
Mary Anning – KQ1 – Why do we remember Mary Anning?
This introductory session attempts to place Mary's life in a broader context of time and place and to whet pupils' appetite, without telling much of the story of her life. This follows in the next session. key to the introduction...moreMary Anning – KQ2 – What did Mary do in her life that was so special?
Pupils move from the sequencing of the major events of Mary’s life to a more sophisticated understanding of which of these events were the most significant. By creating a fortunes or living human graph, pupils are able to see the...moreMary Anning – KQ3 – What sort of person was Mary that helped her to succeed in a man’s world?
This a much shorter enquiry than the others, and comprises just three short activitiesmoreStep 1
Having recapped the story of Mary’s life, ask pupils to work in small groups to generate adjectives to describe Mary’s character.Step 2
Pupils are then shown a...
Mary Anning – KQ1 – Why do we remember Mary Anning?
This introductory session attempts to place Mary's life in a broader context of time and place and to whet pupils' appetite, without telling much of the story of her life. This follows in the next session. key to the introduction...moreMary Anning – KQ2 – What did Mary do in her life that was so special?
Pupils move from the sequencing of the major events of Mary’s life to a more sophisticated understanding of which of these events were the most significant. By creating a fortunes or living human graph, pupils are able to see the...moreMary Anning – KQ3 – What sort of person was Mary that helped her to succeed in a man’s world?
This a much shorter enquiry than the others, and comprises just three short activitiesmoreStep 1
Having recapped the story of Mary’s life, ask pupils to work in small groups to generate adjectives to describe Mary’s character.Step 2
Pupils are then shown a...
10 Things to do to make your history teaching better at KS2
more1. Teach through historical enquiries.
Enquiries are the most effective subject pedagogy in history, not least because when well drafted, they make pupils think. You will notice that all the lessons on the site deliberately have as their focus a puzzling...
Outstanding medium term planner for Ancient Civilizations: Egypt Y3
At one point in recent years, there were real fears that Ancient Egypt would be axed from the KS2 curriculum. Mercifully it was reprieved so we now need to make sure that we do full justice to it. Full planning...more
Outstanding Scheme of Work for Stone Age to Iron Age
This scheme of work, judged outstanding by an OFSTED history inspector now links to all the fully-resourced outstanding lessons and activities making the teaching of this topic completely self-contained. Not only does it ensure that you cover all the significant...more
Teaching the British Empire KS3
In a recent article for the Telegraph, journalist and writer Jeremy Paxman made the following case for teaching the history of the British Empire: [It] explains so much about who we are now… Imperial history explains both why Britain has a...more
Teaching Industrial Britain to Key Stage 3
We all know that this is a vast topic and one that some colleagues have difficulty with in motivating some students. You will find very little on the Four Field crop rotation here, or mules and Spinning Jennies, but there...more
Teaching the 20th Century World to Key Stage 3
For many pupils this will be their last topic in KS3 history, though some history departments prefer to end with a retrospective long term study. Most pupils enjoy the 20th century, though we need to ensure it is not just...more
New evidence of Anglo-Saxon mutilations as punishment
Ninth-century England was a bad place to be a criminal, new findings suggest. The skull of an Anglo-Saxon teenager discovered in Hampshire shows that she had her nose and upper lip cut off and may have been scalped too.Written evidence of...more
Teaching Germany 1919-45
Hodder produce some of the best GCSE books on Germany whether for the Modern World and for the SHP Depth Module. They have now added an innovative digital dimension with great web links and activities. Resource on Hitler...moreEvaluating websites in history at KS3-5: 3 pieces of top advice
Students are too trusting of what they read on the Internet. Most striking, they implicitly trust Google to verify sources for them--whatever Google lists first must be a good source. As we know, many are there because they paid to...more
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About Me
Neil acts as an educational consultant for history for schools throughout the country. After teaching for 12 years, during which time he ran two departments and was a member of the Senior Leadership, Neil moved into advisory work,
For 18 years, he supported 70 secondary and 450 primary and special schools in Hampshire during which time he carried out over 60 national OFSTED inspections. More recently he has been heavily involved in running about 40 highly acclaimed national training courses a year for primary and secondary history teachers, as well as bespoke whole staff INSET days in primary schools.
