Keystage history

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…

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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….

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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 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…

Eric the evacuee

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

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…

Leadership in history

When looking at leadership in history a careful balance has to be created between offering generic advice (which you could…

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

APP in history: where are we now? Life after levels This section is no longer current, of course, so please…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Short-term planning in history at Key Stage 1

This site does not favour the publication of short-term planning, preferring instead to focus on very detailed medium-term planning and…

Creativity in History at Key Stages 1 and 2

What follows below is an attempt to summarise the key points from recent research and to illustrate them with lively…

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…

ICT and history at Key Stage 1

There are lots of opportunities for pupils to use a range of applications at Key Stage 1 that go beyond…

Linking history and literacy

There is now a considerable amount of advice available to schools on how to link history with literacy, but OFSTED…

Opportunities for Citizenship Education in Key Stage One History

History offers an excellent context for developing many of the worthwhile skills and understanding that form part of the citizenship…

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…

Curriculum Rationale

Rationale for KS1 history planning Of all the key stages KS1, came off lightly from Gove’s reforms of the history…

SMART TASK: Germany 1933-34 Revision Quickie

Which factors played their part in establishing Nazi dictatorship in 1933-4? Subscribers only: You need to be logged in to view…

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…

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…

’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….

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…

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…

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…

SMART TASK: GCSE questions on Renaissance Medicine

Using Zones of relevance to answer two possible questions on Renaissance Medicine. Have you ever despaired of GCSE history students…

KS1 | Great Fire interactive resource

Just thought I’d bring to the attention of those who haven’t yet seen it the interesting resource put together by…

Defenders of the new history curriculum have their say: a dozen dons can’t be wrong?

In this morning’s Times, supported by a front page and leader aticle, a dozen dons have come out of the…

Smart Tasks – Minted: Telling the story of changing British rulers by exploring 10 significant coins

If you are looking for an interesting way of offering pupils overviews or of looking at the concept of significance,…

Dread of the lash: How harsh were punishments on slave plantations?

This enquiry-led lesson really does make pupils think as historians. Not only are they introduced to authentic slave punishment records,…

Reasons for the abolition of the slave trade: poacher turned gamekeeper

This lesson turns on a paradox. If the transatlantic slave trade was prospering in 1787, why was it abolished just…

How should we film the Middle passage? How accurate are Roots and Amistad?

This varied lesson challenges pupils to use evidence constructively to create their own version of conditions on the Middle Passage….

What can we learn about the slave trade from just one poem?

This lesson uses a very simple source to help pupils to get a feel for some of the issues they…

Rosa Parks – the true story

This open-ended enquiry explores one of the most abiding stories of American Civil Rights. Students are invited to advise a…

SMART TASK – How did a small country on the edge of North West Europe manage to rule a quarter of the world’s land surface and 400 million people?

This lesson asks an important question that the textbooks rarely cover and comes after students have looked at events in…

Smart Task: End of Empire: Why did it all end so quickly?

This SMART task ask pupils to classify a number of different smaller reasons why The Empire declined and fell, under…

Smart Task: Popping corks? What is the best analogy to explain the causes of the French Revolution

A smart task for Gifted and Talented pupils in Y9. Towards the end of your study of the causes of…

Keystage history

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