Teach Now! History

Becoming a Great History Teacher

Mike Gershon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317677475
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Being taught by a great teacher is one of the great privileges of life. Teach Now! is an exciting new series that opens up the secrets of great teachers and, step-by-step, helps trainees to build the skills and confidence they need to become first-rate classroom practitioners.

Written by a highly-skilled practitioner, this practical, classroom-focused guide contains all the support you need to become a great history teacher who inspires and motivates students to critically and creatively explore the past. Combining a grounded, modern rationale for learning and teaching with highly practical training approaches rooted in the realities of the classroom, the book guides you through all the different aspects of history teaching offering clear, straightforward advice on classroom practice, lesson planning and working in schools.

Teaching and learning, planning, assessment and behaviour management are all covered in detail, with a host of carefully chosen examples used to demonstrate good practice and show how to facilitate outstanding historical enquiry. There are also chapters on dealing with pressure, excelling in observations, finding the right job and succeeding at interview. Throughout the book, there is a great selection of ready-to-use activities, strategies and techniques which will help put you on the fast track to success in the classroom; and ensure your students are doing the very best learning possible.

Covering everything you need to know, this book is your essential guide as you start your exciting and rewarding career as an outstanding history teacher.

1 Curriculum essentials

Introduction

We begin with the curriculum, because this underpins everything else you will do as a teacher. Ultimately, we are here to help our students to learn. And what will they learn about? The past. And what aspects of the past will our teaching encompass? Those laid down by the curriculum.

At present, in British schools, there are two alternative legal positions regarding the curriculum. If you work in a school that is responsible to the local authority, such as a traditional comprehensive, you are bound by law to teach the National Curriculum. If you work in an academy, free school or independent school, you are under no such obligation.

With that said, the freedom afforded to academies and free schools by the current Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, has not as yet resulted in masses of innovation. In fact, most schools in England and Wales continue to teach the content set out in the National Curriculum.

So what is this National Curriculum? Well, it was introduced by Kenneth Baker, one of Margaret Thatcher’s Secretaries of State for Education, through the Education Reform Act of 1988. The purpose was to standardise the content of schooling across the country, such that students in one area would be guaranteed, through the legal requirement of teachers adhering to the curriculum, to be taught the same material as students in other areas.

Immediately, you will see some of the benefits and some of the limitations this model throws up.

On the one hand, we have a sense of equality, a formalisation of that which was previously open to ambiguity and vagueness, as well as a means by which to hold teachers, managers and local authorities to account.

On the other hand, we have a potential for rigidity, the stifling of innovation and the possibility that the curriculum will not take account of the lives that children lead. Oh, and, of course, in terms of history, we have the political dimension.

As you know, history is an inherently political discipline. Any account of the past is predicated on selection, interpretation, omission and so forth. Thus, any national codification of the past, in the form of a curriculum or anything else, is likely to throw up political argument, controversy and debate.

To give an example, consider the competing histories of Britain put forward by the Labour Party and the Conservative Party. Now, compare these with those histories that the Scottish National Party or Plaid Cymru might advocate.

There is no single history. Yet, despite this philosophical reality, the machinations of men and women often result in the idea being propagated that there is, and that it is particular, partial and tied to the beliefs and interests of the speaker.

So, three questions arise. First, how do we reconcile competing histories within a national curriculum? Second, how do we take account of the different experiences and pasts children and families around the country have? And third, how do we navigate these waters in order to teach well, fairly and honestly?

Regarding the first question, we must point out that, at the time of writing, the history curriculum is in a state of flux. Curriculum reform is currently on the agenda, and so changes to the content of what we teach are likely. However, in terms of avoiding onesidedness and promoting depth and nuance, we as teachers still have interpretation of the curriculum in our hands. Thus, we remain in a position to introduce students to different histories, competing perspectives and alternative readings of the commonplace.

Further, there remain at all times various forces acting on and influencing history teaching in schools – charities, non-governmental bodies, historical associations, to name but a few. All of these avert the potential for hegemony – this is the open society after all, and the status of, and debates around, the history curriculum show this in microcosm.

In terms of the second question, one of the great benefits of teaching history is that it encompasses the local, and we can use this aspect to engage and enthuse our students by connecting them to their own pasts, the pasts of their families and of the areas in which they live, or, indeed, in which they have previously lived.

Finally, our third question. I leave the answer to this, ultimately, to you. I have no doubt that you will be able to answer it well. Suffice to say that all that follows will aid you in your task, helping you to teach in a way that is indicative of the careful, measured, critical and creative approach of the greatest historians.

So, with our groundwork done, let us move on to specifics.

Content of the curriculum

As was noted above, the curriculum, at the time of writing, is in a state of flux. A new programme of study is due to be brought in from 2014. However, this fact will not cause us problems here, as we can focus on the nature of the content, the overarching framework in which it is held and the practicalities of the content.

At present, the curriculum consists of key concepts, key processes and specific content. The last category is the stuff of the past – events, peoples, experiences, and so on. The first category is the basis of the abstract thought we use to engage with this stuff. And the middle category – processes – concerns the skills we use to combine the concepts with the content.

If you have not done so already, you should visit the Department of Education’s website and familiarise yourself with the current curriculum; you can find it at www.education.gov.uk.

In your school, it is likely, if not certain, that a programme of study, mapped against the National Curriculum, will already have been put together by your head of department and, perhaps, fellow team members. This is what you will teach to your students.

Compare this with the full National Curriculum. You will notice that there is actually quite a degree of flexibility. It is not expected that every single aspect of the past be taught, through some sort of chronological dirge. Nor is it expected that schools go completely their own way. Rather, the curriculum is a framework in which individual teachers, departments and institutions can make choices and decisions, based on their expertise, interests and students.

This brings us to a couple of important points.

First, you will inevitably find yourself teaching topics that you have not previously encountered (or, perhaps, only come across in passing). There will be a learning curve, and this will be steeper, the higher up the school you go.

So, for example, if you are asked to teach an A level class on an area of history you know nothing about, you will have to do plenty of reading in your spare time. However, if you have a topic that is new to you at Key Stage 3 (Years 7–9), then things will be a lot simpler.

Second, you have specialisms. You have areas of the past about which you know a lot. Share these with people in your department. Make sure they know what your specialities are. This way, they will be able to tailor units of work so they take advantage of these, or even ask you to plan units of work based around your knowledge and understanding.

Let us take a step back for the moment though.

Having familiarised yourself with the National Curriculum, the next thing to do is to familiarise yourself with the schemes of work in your department. Begin by focusing on those that you will be teaching. You can find out which these will be through your timetable. If you are uncertain, speak to your mentor or your head of department.

Here are some of the ways to explore the schemes of work:

1. Look through the resources in your department.
2. Look through the electronic resources created by your department.
3. Read relevant textbooks.
4. Go online and see what other teachers have done (see the list of websites below).
5. Find out which exam board you are following for Key Stages 4 and 5 and visit their websites. The three main exam boards are AQA, OCR and Edexcel.

Point 4 indicates that your school is not alone. Teachers all over the country are producing materials for teaching history, and many of them will be doing the same topics as you. Here are some great websites you can use to get, mostly free, resources to help you teach the content of the curriculum:

• www.tes.co.uk/resources
• www.schoolhistory.co.uk
• www.teachithistory.co.uk
• www.teachingideas.co.uk/history
• www.historyresourcecupboard.co.uk

The first two are my personal favourites, and I would advise you to have a look at those first.

In point 5, we noted that students studying at Key Stage 4 (Years 10 and 11) and Key Stage 5 (Years 12 and 13) follow a syllabus set out by an exam board. The main exam board websites are:

• www.ocr.org.uk
• www.aqa.org.uk
• www.edexcel.com

When teaching exam classes, you will find the relevant exam board website of great assistance. They contain material such as:

• detailed specification of content
• past exam papers
• past mark schemes
• sample material
• teacher support materials.

As you will infer, they are a really big help for getting to grips with the content you will be teaching, as well as for making sure you and your students are on the right track.

Skills of the curriculum

Good history is skills-intensive. Anyone with a half-decent memory can recite a list of facts or provide a chronology of events, but high quality requires analysis, synthesis, evaluation and interpretation.

The current curriculum breaks historical skills down into three distinct strands:

• historical enquiry
• using evidence
• communicating about the past.

We will look at each of these in turn, thinking briefly about what they entail and then providing some starting points for how you might get students to develop their abilities.

Historical enquiry

This is the investigation of the past: the creation of hypotheses and questions, as well as the research that follows. It is the essence of the discipline, the starting point from which all else tends. Here are some simple ways to help students develop their skills of historical enquiry:

• Present your class with a series of questions or hypotheses about a topic and ask them to rank these according to how good they think they are. Lead a discussion looking at the various strengths and weaknesses of each question and hypothesis.
• Put students into groups of three. Give each group a piece of stimulus material. This should be something that catches their attention. Perhaps it will be surprising, unusual or ambiguous. Next, ask each group to develop a question or hypothesis they would like to follow in order to find out more about the stimulus material. Ask groups to share with the class what they come up with, and, if there is time, lead a discussion about the quality of the questions and hypotheses.
• Divide the class into six groups. Give each group a different question or hypothesis connected to the topic, and ask them to research this. In the second half of the lesson, invite each group to present its findings. Conclude by leading a discussion on the influence that different questions have on the direction and findings of historical research.

Using evidence

Evidence is the stuff of history. It is through sources that we come to know the past. Therefore, engaging with these critically is of the utmost importance. If we fail to do this, how well can we really say that we understand the past? Here are some simple ways to help students develop their skills of historical enquiry:

• Pin up a series of different sources around the room. Ask pupils to work in pairs. Explain that they need to visit each source in turn and make a note of what it is, what it is about, and what its potential limitations are. Follow this up with a discussion in which the class ranks the sources from most to least useful.
• Divide the class into groups of three. Give each group a series of sources. Display a series of categories on the board connected to the evaluation of sources. For example: reliability, validity, bias, authorship, age and relevance. Invite the groups to use the categories to assess each source. You might like to ask them to rate each source out of ten in relation to each category and then to compare the results.
• Present the class with a visual source and a written source pertaining to the same event or person. Invite students to comp...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series editor's foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Curriculum essentials
• 2 Pedagogy essentials
• 3 Planning essentials
• 4 Assessment essentials
• 5 Differentiation essentials
• 6 Using language to explain, to question and to give feedback
• 7 Ensuring good behaviour
• 8 Dealing with observations
• 9 Dealing with pressure
• 10 Applying for your first post
• 11 Interview advice and likely questions
• 12 Your first term in post
• Final words
• Bibliography
• Index