May brings lots of exciting opportunities, but the highlight of the calendar for me has to be the Historical Association Conference . This year it is taking place on the 17th-18th May in Chester – a city steeped in History, which should inspire your teaching from Key Stage 1 through to A Level. Every year, I doubt that the […]
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In 2018 we surveyed over 1,300 primary and secondary school teachers about their experiences of the Word Gap in schools and collated our findings in the Oxford Language Report . The report found evidence of a significant word gap in UK schools, an increasing problem which is holding back children’s learning. Following on from this research, we partnered […]
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The way AQA have included the Historic Environment (HE) study in their specification is an absolute gift to students and teachers. Rather than having an extra paper to think about, the HE is embedded seamlessly into the highly engaging British Depth Study units. Our department ‘sells’ this section of the course to our budding historians […]
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AQA has released its examiner reports for the AQA A Level History exams which took place in the summer. The reports overall have been really positive, with students generally performing well. We have summarized the key issues that the examiners found students needed to improve, and collated some free content that address these issues to […]
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The last four years have seen a variety of events, projects and memorials to mark the centenary of the First World War. As we head into the autumn term, thoughts turn to how we as historians can commemorate the Armistice of 1918, a key turning point in ending the conflict. Although the war did not […]
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As teacher educators, working with PGCE trainees in many different History departments, we knew that a workshop which focused on supporting struggling GCSE students would draw people in when we presented it at the Historical Association Annual Conference. All new exam specifications create huge anxieties for teachers, but the sense of pressure associated with the […]
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17 July 2018 marks the 100th anniversary of the murder of the Russian Tsar Nicholas II and his family in a cellar in Ekaterinburg in the Urals. This centenary provides an opportunity to review the circumstances which led to the Tsar’s tragic end and to reflect on the importance of the event for the course […]
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I was not surprised when I finished reading ‘Why Closing the Word Gap Matters: Oxford Language Report’ , but it still made for sombre reading. The report put in black and white what teachers already know: Most of the students we teach don’t have the vocabulary they need to fulfil their full potential at school. The word gap affects students’ wider life chances. After […]
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As History teachers, we are just about to embark on ‘exam madness’ season. We have precious little time left with our exam classes. We will be prepping and delivering extra revision sessions on top of completing all of the other tasks that are part and parcel of our profession. So it is no surprise that […]
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In the AQA GCSE History specification, the Historic Environment element is integrated with the British Depth Study. This means that as students develop an in-depth knowledge of a British period, their understanding of that period would in turn help them to understand the historic site. It is useful to approach the study of a historic […]
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