From the TeachMeet session at the 2012 SHP Conference, find out how Lesley Ann McDermott uses Spin PowerPoints to add spice to GCSE revision.
Resources include a ‘How-To’ guide and some additional comments - as well as a Spin PowerPoint on Crime and Punishment Past Questions from OCR (1999-2012)
See the resource [ here ]
Michael
Reporting the opening plenary at the SHP London Day Conference …
Michael Riley and Jamie Byrom - ‘People, places and pictures: creative and rigorous planning in school history’.
History needs beauty. History needs people. (And history teaching needs to sow acorns like these that Michael and Jamie are planting now in their session)…
A beautiful building: the Taj Mahal. A wondrous person: Shah Jahan. A painting that captures beauty and people - the birthday of Shah Jahan. Shah is being weighed because it was customary to give out ones weight in gold and jewels on one’s birthday. What stories does this tell us? What wonders does this reveal? …and how on earth would we plan to use this, Mughal history, in our classroom?
First, they say, we should start with principles which should shape our planning:
1. We must teach with a PURPOSE - why bother?
2. We must ENGAGE with subject knowledge - the more we engage with the knowledge the richer our subject, and our lessons, become
3. We must wrestle with the ENQUIRY
4. We must exploit the PARTICULAR
So, 1: why bother with the Mughals, especially when we have such freedom to choose whatever we want? Let’s think of the end result: would someone observing our lessons be able to detect why we selected that series of lessons? If they can’t figure it out, how can our students? With the Mughals perhaps there is a rationale in the fact that British history is incredibly entwined with Mughal history…. Right up to the present day, where our school populations benefit from the cultural diversity of links with India. Or maybe we should bother because at its height the Mughal empire was 100 million people? Take that Romans! Or maybe because it provides a terrific seam of eye-popping gems - art, music, architecture - that could lead to a fascinating comparison between English and Indian culture. This latter idea is a good example of engaging with the territory, the stuff, the nuggets and the issues of history which can give such energy to the enquiry. But whatever the purpose we must share it, and it must be evident and meaningful to us and our students.
Which leads to 2 - engage with the subject. If you’re reading a Mughal history book where would you make a mark in the margin? How about against the nugget that Akbar delighted in pigeons… A pigeon fancier! So much so that pigeon roosts were built in the Red Fort at Agra. They used these pigeons as part of their control of the empire, carrying messages. Imagine getting students to write pigeon-sized messages relaying the history of the empire to fly back and forth in their history lessons? The students would love this! So when we immerse in the subject, we find nuggets which can lead to wonder, to engagement.
I won’t dwell on the enquiry question (I’ll leave that to Michael and Christine and Jamie who express it far better than I can) but I will touch on the particular. If we consider a particular place, person or moment these are the points in our classrooms when history most comes to life. Every child knows their own place (like home, or their town), a person (like Mum), and moments (when I got caught nicking sweets from my brother) and so starting with the particular provides a concrete foundation, a sense of familiarity in some respects, as they have something to pivot from, to compare to. It’s not like starting with something as decontextualised as ‘power’, or ‘what is democracy?’ So let’s start with the particular. Let’s explore a painting of Jahangir. Put yourself in the painting. Walk through it. What can you see? What can you hear? What can you smell? Starting with the particular this enables the children to find the familiar and by making connections it gives them further reason, the want, to know more: were these lot really so different? What mattered to them? Is it the same as what matters to me?
So, sow these acorns from Michael and Jamie, and watch beautiful oak trees of passion for history grow in our children. Teaching Mughal history, whilst at first seemingly ‘too’ foreign, is actually as familiar in planning terms as any topic we might consider. But it provides such a fascinating, rich flora that I think we would be hard pressed not to include it in our curriculums. Send that by messenger pigeon to your SLT, with a little acorn too.
Esther
At last we’ve had an announcement on the future of the curriculum – well 14-16 at least.
At some point (either 2015, 2016 or later, depending on what the DfE decides following the consultation) GCSE will disappear and there will be a new EBC (English Baccalaureate Certificate) for history. The History EBC will be provided by the Awarding Organisation that puts forward the best ‘suite of qualifications’ in the subject.
The whole process of curriculum reform has been, and continues to be, a shambles. At the outset we were told that Niall Ferguson and Simon Schama would be fixing school history. Where are they now? Whatever happened to the worthy notion of coherent curriculum reform 5-18? We still don’t know whether revised A levels for History will start in 2014 or later. And we are still waiting to hear about the future of the National Curriculum. What will be the point of a new National Curriculum anyway if academies can teach whatever they like? The whole process of curriculum reform has been a messy muddle, and the lack of clarity and genuine consultation continues to be an insult to the teaching profession.
Rant over!
What we shouldn’t forget in all this confusion is that, as one of the six core academic subjects in the E Bacc, history now has a more secure place in the 14-16 curriculum than ever before. We don’t yet know the shape of the future accountability framework, but it’s clear that history will be part of it. This can only be good news for the position of history at Key Stage 3 as well as Key Stage 4. Hopefully, those schools that slid down the slippery slope into the skills mush at Key Stage 3 will now be clambering onto the firmer ground of subjects and rigorous disciplinary knowledge. The Schools History Project campaigns for a curriculum in which the distinctive contribution of history to the education of children and young people is recognised and developed. There’s further to go, but at least the distinctive contribution of history has been recognised through its inclusion in the EBacc.
For SHP, the priority now is to engage fully in the consultation process, to work with Awarding Organisations and higher education bodies in the development of specifications and, further down the line, to provide the resources and professional development that will guarantee an improved experience of studying history for 14-16 year-olds.
The DfE’s consultation document seeks our views on ‘the characteristics of the new qualification’. It demands ‘challenging requirements for content’ and requires that students develop ‘a sound understanding of the subject studied, and are ready to move on to further study’. Interestingly from SHP’s perspective, the consultation document states that the DfE expects Awarding Organisations to put forward a ‘suite of specifications’ for each subject. It’s perfectly possible, therefore, that Awarding Organisations will devise versions of existing SHP and Modern World specifications. However, the intention of the DfE is to aid the Awarding Organisations by setting out its ‘broad expectations’ for essential subject content may preclude this.
So, 2015 (or 2016, or later) may see the end of SHP specifications as we know them. Does this matter? My view is: NO, AS LONG AS WHAT IS OFFERED TO 14-16 YEAR OLDS IS BETTER THAN THE CURRENT MODERN WORLD AND SHP SPECS.
The Schools History Project has long-argued that a study of only modern world history at 14-16 limits students’ knowledge and understanding of the subject. But, let’s face it, for a range of complex reasons, the current SHP specifications only partially reflect the principles on which the Schools History Project is based. It’s time for a radical overhaul, and the most important thing to argue for is not the preservation of current specifications, but an experience of learning history 14-16 that is underpinned by SHP’s six principles:1.Creating curiosity 2.Developing wide and deep knowledge 3. Engaging in historical enquiry 4.Understanding diversity 5.Engaging with the historic environment 6. Learning history in enjoyable and rigorous ways .
Just imagine a situation three year down the line, in which both Modern World and SHP specs no longer exist, but have been replaced by a five unit History EBC which consists of: 1. A development study 2. A depth study of an early period of British History 3. A local study 4. A depth study of a later period of British history 5. A wider world study. Imagine that these units are linked and structured in order to build a coherent and worthwhile knowledge of the past And imagine too, that each of these units is assessed in creative and rigorous ways that allow all students to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding. Surely something like that would be an improvement on the current GCSEs? It’s crucial to grasp this opportunity to improve the experience of leaning history for the next generation of students. The Schools History Project is far more than the current SHP specifications. In the months and years ahead we’ll help to create a history curriculum 14-16 that all our young people deserve. More broadly, we’ll continue to be an innovative and creative force in history education 11-18. Our immediate priority is to provide an SHP response to the DfE consultation which runs until 10 December, so please read the consultation document [see it on the DfE website] and let me have your views by responding to this blog.
Michael Riley
Director, Schools History Project
The Holocaust is a statutory requirement of the National Curriculum at Key Stage 3. In teaching this sensitive subject wide, deep and accurate knowledge is vitally important.
Sharon Artley, an Imperial War Museum Holocaust Teaching Fellow, has produced a fascinating and detailed illustrated glossary for teachers of the Holocaust.
It contains a range of extended definitions and images that will enhance your planning and teaching.
See the glossary [here]
Michael
A new resource has been added on the site based on Donald Cumming and Dan Lyndon’s workshop at the 2012 SHP Conference: The Power of Two.
Donald and Dan teach in different schools in Yorkshire and London, but a conversation in the bar at a previous SHP Conference led to creative collaboration between Year 8 students in their two schools.
The guidance focuses on:
Donald and Dan’s workshop was the focus of a Triumphs Show in Teaching History, 148 (September, 2012).
We are grateful to the Historical Association for providing this resource.
See it at:
Michael
In September 2012, Chris Culpin, former Director of SHP, was the guest blogger for the Hodder History Nest. His blogs are a response to Michael Gove’s announcement that GCSEs will be replaced with a new English Baccalaureate Certificate.
Chris provides a long view of curriculum reform in England, helps us to make sense of the planned changes and explains how it could be done much better.
Chris’ blogs are reproduced in full on this site
And you can find more blogs relating to school history at the Hodder History Nest
www.hoddereducation.co.uk
Michael
Dale Banham and Russell Hall describe their workshop at SHP 12, Active Learning at A Level:
This article provides a brief synopsis of an action research project between two schools in Ipswich. Our aims have been to promote curiosity, intrinsic motivation and a greater degree of independence amongst our A Level students. We recently shared the findings from the first year of the project at a workshop delivered at the 2012 Schools History Project Conference in Leeds. Our intention is to continue to analyse and evaluate the impact of the project over the coming year and to deliver a follow-up workshop at next year’s conference.
We would like to thank colleagues who attended the workshop at this year’s conference for their positive response to the strategies that have been developed over the last year. We look forward to hearing about how these strategies have been adapted for use by other History departments at next year’s conference.
See the workshop in full at:
Pat
You may have missed Richard Kennett‘s resource that was added onto the site in July.
Describing his workshop at SHP12, ‘Students As Movie Makers, Picturing the past - helping students to communicate using visual media‘ he writes:
When I was a child ‘visual history’, on the whole, meant Ladybird books with their combination of text and illustrations, but in the words of Bob Dylan “the times they are a changing”. With video sharing sites like YouTube, students today have instant access to a vast array of audio-visual historical resources. Now is the time to take advantage of this revolution and, as history teachers, capitalise on these visual media to help our students communicate their understanding of history. Allowing students to make videos or slideshows that combine text, image and music can result in some truly outstanding outcomes.
See the resource at:
Describing his workshop at SHP12 ‘I’ve started so I’ll finish’, Jamie Byrom writes …
The idea for the workshop on starters and plenaries came from watching lots of really interesting lessons being taught by relatively inexperienced teachers. I noticed how often they seemed to be starting and ending lessons in ways that may have met school policies but that did not always serve the best interests of teacher or pupils. In particular they seemed to try to do several more or less contradictory things at once ie …
In the workshop we teased out the principles shown in Resource 1. To be honest that’s the most important of the three resources. It makes the point that almost ANY activity can be a good starter or plenary if it is sensibly chosen and timed to serve the needs of the learner. The list of possible starter activities was generated by those at the workshop. The list of so-called possible “plenary” activities was devised by Michael Riley and myself a few years ago when we were urging teachers to get pupils to do final activities that reflect what historians do or what historians may be asked to advise on. These are not really lesson plenaries but are “products” that draw together the learning from an enquiry in solid, worthwhile outcomes.
I hope something here helps!
Over to you …
See the guidance and resources in full here
Jamie
In his blog on the History Resource Cupboard, Richard McFahn reviews the two latest SHP publications …
If there is one thing that we stand for here at the History Resource Cupboard, it is teaching history through enquiry. After all, the word enquiry itself actually means history. It comes from those clever Greek chaps back in the day.
The problem with most textbooks, particularly at A Level, is that they seem to forget to take this enquiry based approach to learning. Instead the standard fare seems to be a slow but painful death by heavy text and note taking. That is until now …
Read the rest of Richard’s blog here …