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What can you do at KS3 to make your history curriculum more representative?
In a recent article for the Historical Association ( HA news- Autumn 2020) Jake Subryan Richards offers his advice: " For teachers it is at KS3 where there is most flexibility. Stress the interconnections between Britain...12 things you need to know about the Mayan civilization before you teach it at KS2
- 1.In the year 1000 settlements like Chichen Itza were among the largest settlements anywhere in the world. Tikal was thought to have a population as large as 60,000
- Chichen Itza is probably the best...
Full sample recent primary history report January 2020
Pupils in your school thoroughly enjoy learning history. They like the enquiry-based approach you take to learning in the history curriculum, as they learn to ask and answer questions about history. Several spoke about the...
Beyond Face Value KQ6: Photographer Fred’s clever way of beating the censors
In this fascinating lesson pupils learn how photographers avoided the censors they saw in KQ5 and how the government used certain images of the Blitz as propaganda, even though they didn’t happen as they...Plotting your pupils journey in history learning across the school
Just came across this visual depiction of the history curriculum at Springfield School in Hackney and thought I'd bring it to your attention. It has the great advantage of being able to see the sequence of...
Terror of the Tramp: Why did vagrancy become such an important issue in Elizabethan England?
GCSE lesson in which students work through a range of differentiated clues to work out 8 reasons which help answer the lessons’ enquiry question before evaluating how well a recent textbook explains it. So often I...
How close to World War Three has the world come since 1945. A Year 9 enquiry.
Just as the United Nations is marking its 75th anniversary, so the world peace it was set up to maintain is yet again under threat. The United States and China are at loggerheads over a...
OFSTED’s view of deep dives in history
Recently Matthew Purves , the Deputy Director for Schools, set out OFSTED’s latest thinking on deep dives in primary schools. He makes reference a number of times to what that means in history. Here are...Report on leadership of primary history 2020
One of the key features underpinning the high quality of history learning was that history has a high status throughout the school, recognised by the headteacher. The subject leader attended local network meetings and time was made available for feedback...Analysis of OFSTED reports November 2019- February 2020, with my commentary
Analysis of OFSTED reports November 2019-February 2020, with my commentary By trawling through the most recent pre-Covid reports from November 2019 until February 2020, I have started to form a picture of the most commented on...Meeting OFSTED’s criteria for a good history curriculum at KS1 and 2 during extended transition period
Now that schools have an extra year’s grace from OFSTED to refine their curriculum that is being worked on, it is worth reminding ourselves of the key indicators that inspectors will be exploring.broadening the...
Deep dive issues: progression and assessment in primary history
One of the features of deep dive subject inspections is that the two hardest areas of a primary history leader’s role are in danger of being painfully exposed. One is the thorny issue of progression. How do...OFSTED’s early EIF (2019) primary history deep dives
What do the first 3 months’ of reports tell us?
Although there is even less detail in the new shorter OFSTED reports than in the previous ones, there are still some clear indicators of what OFSTED...What do deep dive OFSTED inspections look like for history?
What does a new deep dive 2019 inspection look like for history? Basically, there are 6 areas that the history subject leader may expect to be involved in- Exploration of medium/long term plans for history
- Meetings...
Intent, Implementation, Impact to be more representative of the BAME in secondary history
Intent
- What do you want your students in your school to know by the end of KS3? Why is this important?
- What are the historical topics that are fundamental for your students to know? Why...
What does INTENT actually mean for primary history in the new OFSTED Framework for 2019? Building blocks and the Big Picture
What does INTENT actually mean for primary history in the new OFSTED Framework for 2019? Building blocks and the Big Picture Nothing could be simpler: intent is everything up to the point at which teaching happens...10 things history leaders need to know about the new OFSTED 2019 Framework
10 things you need to know about leading history and the new 2019 OFSTED framework- You will have to show that you are in fact teaching history(and not just doing literacy disguised as history, or very tenuous...
Indian Mutiny/rebellion of 1857
This lesson is aimed at Y9/GCSE students. It addresses three principal aspects of history teaching:- How to be thoughtful and discriminating when selecting evidence that is relevant to answering two different questions on the same...
British Empire – How can we infer so much about the empire from a study of just one map and the person who created it?
This session starts by looking at the information to be gleaned from a well-known 1886 map of the empire and ends with them writing an evaluative expert caption to accompany a textbook image which refers...
Richard I: Lionheart or loser should we keep his statue – SMART TASK
This short task puts pupils in the role of spin doctors who have to ‘big up’ the reputation of Richard the Lionheart. There is a lobby of people who feel that his statue outside the...
Changes for the 2021 GCSE History examination announced by AQA today
AQA GCSE History (8145) Students entering for GCSE History exams next summer will have a choice of studies with one compulsory study. This means that in summer 2021, AQA GCSE History students will only have to...Victorian poor and the workhouse; what does Martha’s story tell us? NEW September 2020
NB This is an additional lesson that does not appear on the planner.
This topic couldn’t be more relevant to today. We frequently hear it said that the... 
Medium Term Planner for Thematic unit Beyond Face Value Year 6
This end-of-key stage unit fulfils the post-1066 thematic requirement of the National Curriculum, but it does so in a particularly imaginative way. Instead of looking at just one period, here we look at three. Each...What does good leadership of history look like at KS 1 and 2 according to recent OFSTED deep dive reports
My analysis of all the recent 'pre-Covid19 ' reports reveals the following comments about primary history leadership, both positive and negative. None of you have the time to trawl through these reports, but they do...
KS1 Medium Term Planner for Spreading the Word: Caxton to Bell
The ‘significant people’ element of the KS1 history curriculum now requires pupils to compare achievements of individuals within a linked theme - in this case communication in a topic called ‘spreading the word’. We have...
