Keystage history

Why did the US lose the war in Vietnam? A piece of cake?

In this lesson students focus on moving their understanding of the reasons for US defeat from simply listing and grouping, to prioritizing and linking. They are shown a variety of…

SMART TASK: Who said what at Versailles? A fun competitive team game with a serious purpose

This simple activity asks students to think who would be the most likely person to make this statement at the Paris peace conference that led to the Treaty of Versailles. …

How could you improve Ben Walsh's diagram?

SMART TASK: At what stage would you say it was obvious that the League of Nations would fail to keep peace?

This short task and associated homework asks students to beat the textbook. First they are reminded of the record of the League. It was not a complete laughing stock as…

Could the Treaty of Versailles be justified at the time?

This lesson was taught by Claire Conley-Harper and her excellent team of history teachers at Court Moor School in Fleet, Hampshire. Context This lesson is taught at KS4, as part…

Animation of labels for this cartoon allow understanding to be built progressively

Was it the Manchurian or the Abyssinian crisis that spelled the end of the League of Nations?

There is a website that offers GCSE students this essay but at a cost. It is fairly accurately called www.cheat.com. We don’t want to cheat, and we certainly don’t want…

Why did the League of Nations fail?

It’s a piece of cake (F.A.I.L.U.R.E. is not an option) Students have already studied the major episodes in the history of the League up to 1939 and in passing have…

Invasion of the Rhineland 1936 – a study in political cartoon analysis

All too often when the students see political cartoons in textbooks they focus on an oval shape in the centre of the picture, often missing peripheral detail and occasionally ignoring…

Outstanding Lessons: Key Stage 4

There is probably more material already on the web for GCSE history teaching at KS4 than for any other key stage. Much of it is written for students. This section…

Forward planning in history at Key Stage 4

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…

How might history targets be shared with students at Key Stage 4?

Target setting has now become a central feature of teachers’ professional life. With the advent of some pretty robust data for history, we can at last look at likely outcomes…

Progression in history at KS4 – general

Little has been written about progression in history at Key Stage 4, almost as if following the GCSE specification would take care of it. As many of you will know,…

APP in history: where are we now? Some key questions answered

Q1. What is APP? An old idea with a new name? A1. At present the plans to roll out APP across subjects have been stalled, even at KS3 let alone KS4…

Progression in history at KS 4 – skill specific

It is interesting to note that most of the recent focus on progression has been placed firmly on Key Stage 3. Some of us might say that this is because…

Assessment for learning at KS4

This section focuses mainly on peer assessment as I firmly believe that this is the best way forward at KS4. Not only are the students usually more mature, they have…

Judging students’ work at KS4

Most teachers will be familiar with marking KS4 answers. It is far less tricky than it used to be, given the publication of GCSE mark schemes and textbooks written by…

Assessment tasks in Key Stage 4 history

Now that all the exam boards make past papers available on-line, and that textbooks written by Chief Examiners all now feature typical questions and answers, we are not short of…

Principles of assessment in history at KS4

The key issues to be aware of at Key Stage 4 relate mainly to the way students are involved in marking their own work. No longer a secret garden of…

Explaining why there were so many casualties on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. SMART TASK

This task, suitable for KS3 Year 9 or KS4 students, presents them with something of a conundrum. When the Allies had far more men than the Germans and had fired…

Why are these accounts of the Battle of the Somme, written by the same person, so different? SMART TASK

This task, suitable for Y9 in KS3 or KS4, drives at the heart of source evaluation. Students explore two sources, authored by the same journalist, Philip Gibbs, but written 4…

Vesalius’ claim to fame. Using the B.A.D formula to prepare for a BBC interview

The BBC is making a documentary on Renaissance medicine in which they have devoted two minutes to the work of Vesalius. Unfortunately, their Vesalius expert is ill and they thought…

Prehistoric Medicine: Getting your GCSE course off to a great start

This lesson was taught by Mike Herrity when Head of History at Wildern School, Hedge End, near Southampton. On an OFSTED inspection the lead inspector pronounced the lesson quite outstanding…

Why was this World War One painting censored?

Students studying Britain during World War One, whether it be for AQA, OCR or Edexcel, need to know about censorship. This deceptively simple lesson asks penetrating questions which both engage…

How have cartoonists portrayed the Liberals Old Age Pensions reforms?

This lesson takes a familiar cartoon but gives it an original twist. Instead of seeing the cartoon all at once, students see it in four separate parts, which in pairs…

Battalion 101. Why did they shoot? A history mystery

This lesson could be used as part of a Year 9 course or with the Germany module of Y10/11 SHP or Modern World. Students are confronted with moral issues and…

What can we learn about the Empire from a Christmas pudding?

This lesson starts with a simple fun activity, working competitively in teams to locate the source of ingredients for an Empire Christmas pudding using a world map to help. Pupils…

What made runaway slaves successful?

This short enquiry enables pupils to come up with their own ideas about runaway slaves working from first hand evidence of adverts for the slaves ‘arrest’. They work in pairs…

If life was so hard in Victorian cities, why did Wilf move his family there?

If life was so hard for families in the towns why did so many leave the countryside and move to the towns in Victorian times? – a history mystery Starting…

The mystery of the empty Saxon grave

This highly engaging lesson places pupils in the role of detectives. After a short briefing they have to work out the significance of the various clues found in the bodiless…

Eric the evacuee

Extending the BBC website on Eric the evacuee The BBC children’s history section has been in touch with the school asking for their help in extending their website section on…

Florence Nightingale Lesson and sample planner

Fighting Fit. What did Florence do to improve the lives of the soldiers when she arrived in the Crimea? One example of a series of lessons for teaching Florence Nightingale…

Leadership in history

When looking at leadership in history a careful balance has to be created between offering generic advice (which you could get elsewhere) and very subject-specific advice, which in its attempt…

Assessment for learning in Primary history

Assessment for Learning is much vaunted and many faceted. If we break down what it means in its constituent parts, many of you will feel that you do most of…

Target setting in history at Key Stage 1

The setting of targets with this age group for Foundation subjects is problematic., not least because pupils’ experience of history tends to be episodic rather than continuous. Setting a target…

Progression in history at Key Stage 1

The problem Trying to secure progression within your Key Stage 1 history curriculum is not always as easy as it might seem. Sometimes it feels like trying to pick up…

Long term planning for history at Key Stage 1

Superficially, Key Stage 1 seems the least complex history curriculum to plan because the burden of content to be covered seems manageable. Scratch beneath the short section that describes the…

Medium-term planning for history at Key Stage 1

This part of the site contains a dozen detailed fully-developed enquiry-led, key question-driven medium term plans for all the major KS1 history -led topics. They have all been judged to…

Short-term planning in history at KS1

This site does not favour the publication of short-term planning, preferring instead to focus on very detailed medium-term planning and allowing teachers the space to create their own short term…

Creativity in History at KS1 and KS2

What follows below is an attempt to summarise the key points from recent research and to illustrate them with lively examples. I expect this area of the site will grow…

Thinking skills in history at Key Stage 1

There is nothing particularly radical about using a thinking skills approach to history at Key Stage 1, but there are certainly two main pitfalls that snare the unwary. The first…

Linking history and literacy

There is now a considerable amount of advice available to schools on how to link history with literacy, but OFSTED still finds that the opportunities are not being sufficiently exploited….

Opportunities for Citizenship Education in KS1 History

History offers an excellent context for developing many of the worthwhile skills and understanding that form part of the citizenship curriculum. If you want your pupils to see two sides…

Curriculum models for KS1 history

It seems a logical extension of the advice on long-term planning of the curriculum to offer you some models of what it might look like. As you know, the devil…

Curriculum Rationale

Rationale for KS1 history planning The KS1 history curriculum offers you considerable choice in which topics you choose and how you sequence them. Nowadays it involves a more thematic approach…

SMART TASK: Germany 1933-34 Revision Quickie

Which factors played their part in establishing Nazi dictatorship in 1933-4? Subscribers only: You must be logged in to view this content in full. Please Login or register

Views of learners in history at KS4

Over the past six or seven years interest in the pupil or student voice has soared. We are now fortunate in having the data from two major surveys conducted by…

Roles for Learners: Key Stage 4

When so much of Key Stage 4 time is spent making sure that students know enough to answer any GCSE question that might arise, it is tempting not to stray…

’50’ imaginative learning activities for Key Stage 4

We all know that the learning experience for students at Key Stage 4 could be more varied in some schools. Students have told us that, time and again. The lessons…

The learning approach in history at Key Stage 4

Learning in Key Stage 4 history lessons is nearly always good but rarely is it outstanding. Because we are so aware of the examination requirements and the need to induct…

Creativity in Key Stage 4 history

When the demands of the examination, and the results, loom large over our GCSE teaching, you might be forgiven for feeling that the last thing you want to be thinking…

What is history at Key Stage 4?

You may be forgiven for thinking that this is a really crass question. If you don’t know by now, and you’ve been teaching GCSE for years, what can this possibly…

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Written by Neil Thompson