Leading History

Prioritising in history at Key Stage 4

As always there is a balancing act to be done. On the one hand you have to deal with the immediate and the urgent; on the other you know that you cannot afford to ignore the important issues to do with improving teaching and learning....
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Developing your staff ay keystage 4

KS4 lesson
Teaching GCSE presents its own set of challenges, not least learning the code that you will need to crack to bring your students GCSE success.  Because the GCSE  history exam has become so formulaic, it is crucial that all teachers feel that they have the...
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Monitoring performance in history at KS4

KS4 lesson
The best way of monitoring students' performance is to set frequent exam based activities, broadly under test conditions and then to mark them WITH the students using GCSE criteria. Students should be asked to IMPROVE their answer, there and then so that you can be...
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Using data in history at Key Stage 4

using data in history
Twelve years or so ago the only meaningful data we had for GCSE was the percentage of students achieving each grade. The headline everyone was interested in was of course the A*-Cs. Then NFER started producing statistics which became known as residuals. These gave a...
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Forward planning in history at Key Stage 4

forward planning
There are probably four separate strands that you need to weave into your forward planning. To start with there will be the need to plan for any externally imposed curriculum change. The way needs to be paved well in advance of introduction and not just...
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Raising attainment at Key Stage 4

KS4 lesson
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 been...
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Self-evaluation in history at Key Stage 4

KS4 lesson
Getting ready for a history subject review: knowing what OFSTED inspectors are looking for and the criteria they are using   It is essential that you keep up-to-date with current OFSTED thinking against which your department will be judged. There are 2 ways of doing...
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Policy and vision at Key Stage 4

KS4 lesson
Many of you will feel that having a separate history policy at Key Stage 4 is unnecessary, and yet you will be surprised how many departments have never really articulated the aims of their GCSE teaching beyond getting the best results possible. Some questions to get...
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