All parts of this site have been written and quality assured by Neil Thompson, who has vast experience of history teaching from years in the classroom, leading a department, and being part of SLT. For even longer he was an OFSTED history inspector, the county history adviser to Hampshire primary and secondary schools and consultant and author for the BBC, DFE, exam boards, publishers, and QCA. Neil continues to support teachers by running national courses and works with teachers in schools. He also runs school-based INSET and acts as ‘virtual adviser’ offering crucial support to new subject leaders.
This skilfully differentiated lesson places pupils in the role of detectives that have to find evidence to back up statements that have been made about the Gunpowder plot. They are given responsibility for a range of statements carefully matched to their learning needs. ...
This is the first lesson on an enquiry into Grace Darling: what she did, and why she was famous. The kernel of the lesson is a slow reveal activity which works really well on an Interactive White Board. The key image comes from the...
This section of the site contains four different types of advice. There is general advice, outlining factors that usually explain success at GCSE and a short paper entitled 'Smoking Out Underachievement'. Then there are five really interesting case studies of best practice. Each has...
The downloadable six page document on answering source-based GCSE questions: matching learning strategies to question type, summarises the best advice from the examination boards all in one place. It gives you the sort of hints you should be passing on to your history students,...
You recognise the problem. No sooner have you set a piece of open-ended enquiry work with you initially as facilitator, than the hands go up. Please Sir/Miss, “How do I start?” “I don’t get this.” etc.
One department I...
