Welcome to the Key Stage 3 section of the site. This offers a full and comprehensive source of good advice that should be seen as a form of ‘virtual adviser’. The issues I focus on mainly are those that preoccupy history teachers in 2020. High on the agenda is the need to sort out a clear rationale for our post-2014 KS3 curriculum . Plenty of advice, and examples of what other schools are doing, are given to set you thinking.
If we look beyond the curriculum you will find expert advice on the tricky issue of progression and the problematic one of assessment.In both cases you are given access to a clear and coherent alternative to the current obsession with now defunct National Curriculum Level Descriptions and their dubious sub-level cousins.
For those seeking an alternative to long over-prepared assessments that take ages to do (and to mark!), there is a coherent package of diagnostic assessments for you to consider. For each task there is a very thoughtful markscheme, examples of pupils’ work and even a commentary which enables you to compare with your own pupils’ work.
Many of you reading this will be subject leaders. You are well-catered for especially in the area of monitoring. You are given shrewd advice on classroom observation, feeding back to colleagues, carrying out pupil interviews and how to conduct an effective work scrutiny. When there is just so much to do when leading a history team, you will be grateful for the excellent advice on prioritisation and forward planning – advice that really works.
For those of you simply seeking inspiration for your own teaching, you will be excited to find that the teaching approaches section contains 100 great teaching ideas, all of which have been developed, tried and tested in successful history departments. On the key issues of enquiry, chronology, and the retention of interpretations, you will find expert advice and inspiring examples.
You will all certainly want to use the outstanding lessons section. There are high-quality lessons on all major topics-usually 6 o7 per topic. All these lessons have been validated by an experienced (65 OFSTED history inspections) and highly successful Local Authority history inspector/adviser who has seen history teaching at its best. The good ideas here become great ones when you use them and pass them on!!
This short but engaging task precedes any detailed analysis of the terms of the treaty itself. It has four distinct elements: prediction; analysis of a rarely seen German poster; attaching significance; and refining ideas based on most recent scholarship.
Firstly, students have to...
We thought we would offer you a range of different cameos showing how the history of the Olympics could be imaginatively integrated into your current teaching.
The teaching activities below have all be tried and tested in schools and have been judged outstanding by...
A quick small group starter task in which pupils collaborate to show what meaning they can make from an image taken from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. They use the PowerPoint jig-sawed slides to feedback, while you use the notes provided to take pupils from...
In addition to thinking of imaginative and motivating activities for our lessons, it is often helpful to think about the roles give to pupils. Dorothy Heathcotes' excellent work on the Mantle of the Expert convinced me that pupils often do their best work when...
Far from being 'just theory', understanding how children learn in history underpins all the decisions we make in our classrooms. It informs planning, differentiation, assessment, views on progression and, above all, what makes pupils want to learn. With the National Strategy now devoting considerable...
This short activity works best as a starter or plenary and is particularly effective in encouraging able...
