A Practical Guide to Teaching History in the Secondary School

Martin Hunt, Martin Hunt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781134199679
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This practical workbook contains all the advice, guidance and resources new and student history teachers need to reflect on and develop their teaching practice, helping them to plan lessons across the subject in a variety of teaching situations.

Helpful features include:

• case studies
• examples of pupils' work
• examples of existing good practice
• a range of tried-and-tested teaching strategies
• photocopiable resources and training materials
• activities in each chapter to help student history teachers analyze their learning and performance
• web links for further reading on evidence-based practice.

Designed to be used independently or as an integrated extension of the popular textbook, Learning to Teach History in the Secondary School which provides detailed examples of theory in practice, this book is packed with examples of how to analyze practice to ensure maximized learning in the classroom.

Chapter 1
Introduction

MARTIN HUNT

In learning to teach history, the trainee teacher will experience a range of concerns, which change over the course of the training year; some are general to trainees of all subjects, others are specifically related to history and will differ from one person to another. This book attempts to offer guidance towards meeting the subject-specific concerns that surface during the course of the year. Also important is the work of practising teachers who also have experience of working as mentors with trainees.

A book of this size has to be selective and no attempt has been made to cover several important areas such as post-16 teaching. The focus is rather on those years of the secondary school likely to involve the trainees for most of their time and the subject-specific challenges they are likely to face. To a degree, the sequence of chapters follows that of Learning to Teach History in the Secondary School, 2nd edn (also published by Routledge). However, this book confines itself to the practical dimension with an emphasis on activities for the trainee while offering practical advice. While all chapters could be of use to trainees at any time, it is intended that the first three chapters concentrate more on the concerns of the early stages of the training year, while the rest offer guidance for that time when the trainees feel more comfortable in the classroom. Thus the chapters range from the beginner’s concerns with exposition and presenting a historical narrative, teaching content that they always thought uninspiring, identifying appropriate objectives, questioning, setting purposeful tasks and group work to the more sophisticated challenges of planning for inclusion, differentiation, teaching a second-order concept such as causation, historical interpretations and their significance and using formative assessment, several of which continue to challenge more established teachers. A further strand of the book is an attempt to encourage the trainee to use a range of approaches within a selection from larger topics; hence concentration on role play, presentation technology and peer assessment. All chapters contain exemplar material but most curriculum materials, which support the chapters have been placed on the companion website http://www.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415370240.

While it is not intended to present ‘off the shelf’ lessons, such examples show the application of general principles into the everyday practice of experienced teachers. Thus the book is both a practical guide and a workbook. The activities are intended to complement exercises already offered by a course and to be used usually as part of the trainee’s school-based work. They are designed to help trainees clarify their thoughts about the issues and the approaches they will meet, especially current debates and challenges of teaching history, to reflect on what is seen and done in the secondary school and to encourage experimentation. It is hoped that they will also help history subject mentors in their work with the trainees.

While most chapters present a mixture of activities, they also reflect the separate individuality of the authors with their own ideas and enthusiasms. Even so, several themes recur across the chapters, which are of significance for the trainee history teacher. These include the necessity of ensuring students possess adequate historical knowledge before moving on to consider the second-order concepts; the need for precision and clarity in the articulation of objectives and outcomes to promote a better quality of learning and the assessment of that learning. Several authors stress and illustrate the importance of starters in lessons, the use of key questions, the relationship of lessons to larger themes and, as several exemplar lessons allocate what seems a generous amount of time to a topic, the conviction that this is time well spent if historical understanding is developed.

The activities and ideas in the book are there for you to develop and apply to different content and contexts. Some will probably work at once but others will need refining. There are times when even the best-planned lesson does not meet your expectations, but do not be too hard on yourself, as some very able trainee teachers sometimes are. Think about the approach, analyse it, adjust and try again.

Good luck!

Chapter 2
Why learn history?

MARTIN HUNT

INTRODUCTION

There will be times when you feel you have to explain the value of learning history in the secondary school to a variety of people: senior staff, colleagues teaching other subjects, parents and your pupils, so it is important that you have a good grasp of the varied aims of history (see Haydn, Arthur and Hunt, 2001, Learning to Teach History in the Secondary School, Routledge, p. 20). However, here the concern is confined to establishing the value of learning history in the eyes of your pupils. Pupils need to know the answer to the question ‘Why are we doing this?’, especially if they are considering taking history beyond the age of 14 (see Biddulph and Adey, 2003). You need to have thought through those aims in such a way that they are easily understood by the pupils. Furthermore, the process of such articulation at the level of individual lessons, or a series of lessons, not only will clarify in your own mind what you are trying to achieve but will also enable you to emphasise those aims in the way in which you construct and deliver the lesson. Vagueness of purpose can lead to uninspiring lessons.

Chapter aims

By the end of the chapter you should be able to:

• select from a variety of aims for the teaching of history those which are particularly related to a specific lesson or series of lessons;
• be precise in identifying the range of key concepts, which are fundamental to the learning of history within a lesson or series of lessons;
• be able to articulate the aims of history in everyday language, accessible to most secondary school pupils;
• be able to identify the key skills, i.e. communication, number, ICT, problem solving, learning to work with others, that require further development in a lesson or series of lessons;
• show how a history lesson or series of lessons has significance, noting precisely how events and issues in the past contribute to pupils’ understanding of the world in which they live.

THE VALUE OF LEARNING HISTORY

In this chapter, the focus will be on the value of learning history as it emerges from individual lessons. We begin by considering a couple of lessons on the Agricultural Revolution for a Year 8 or 9 class. This topic has been chosen as an example because in recent years there has been a tendency for trainee history teachers to view this topic as being dry and dull in the same way as the Industrial Revolution. One recent trainee wrote, in a questionnaire asking trainees to identify the challenges they had faced, of the difficulty of ‘getting pupils to understand the relevance of farming in the eighteenth century to today’s modern world’, while admitting that his own lack of enthusiasm for the topic would not have helped. Thus there is a real challenge to trainees to realise just how relevant a topic such as the Agricultural Revolution can be to the development of the pupils’ historical understanding. Without such conviction, lessons on the topic would indeed be dry and perfunctory. The contention here is that this topic offers plenty of scope for interesting and lively lessons and moreover provides good examples of why pupils should learn history. The two lessons involve the class using information to advise a fictitious farmer on how he could achieve the profits from his farm to improve his lifestyle. The two lessons used 13 PowerPoint slides and worksheets.

For the curriculum material associated with these lessons, see: http://www.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415370240

EXEMPLAR LESSON ONE

Starter	Using the PowerPoint presentation, the class is presented with a decision-making exercise involving a tenant farmer, Jacob Newmarch, in the early eighteenth century. Slides 2,3 and 4 describe his situation, his farming and his ambitions. The information on these slides may also be presented in a handout.
Phase 2	Slide 5 shows Jacob’s balance sheet for 1725. Pupils have a copy of this on a worksheet. After the items have been explained, pupils, using calculators, work out the total costs and sales and discover the annual profit. Differentiation is achieved by giving more or less information.
Phase 3	Slide 6 moves the story on to 1730. The price of grain has fallen although costs and the yield per acre remain the same. The class work out, again with the information on the worksheet, details of the new sales and profit figures and realise Jacob faces a real threat to his ambitions, even to his livelihood.
Phase 4	Jacob has a crisis. What can he do? In groups, pupils have five minutes to work out ’a business plan’ at first without using textbooks. Then, using textbooks, they look for other suggestions. Each group needs to be able to present a six-point business plan for Jacob.
Plenary	Teacher fields responses and summarises what has been covered.

EXEMPLAR LESSON TWO

Starter	Recap Jacob’s problems (slide 6) and the suggested improvements summarised on slide 7.
Phase 2	Distribute second pupil worksheet. This includes a new balance sheet (slide 8), noting the increased costs but also the greatly increased yield from 12 bushels per acre to 24. (A bushel = ¼ hundredweight or 28 lbs.) Pupils calculate the new income and profit. Can Jacob now meet his ambitions?
Phase 3	Brief survey of pasture farming changes, using textbook.
Phase 4	Matters arising: developing historical understanding Using notes on their worksheets, pupils in pairs suggest reasons for the farming improvements. Give target of five reasons. Field answers (slide 9 has some, there could be others). Ask supplementary related questions. What was the most important reason? Was there one single cause that would have produced these changes? Pupils note the points on the worksheet.
Phase 5	Developing historical understanding Pupils asked to consider what the consequences of the changes were (slide 10). Question and answer to tease out five or six consequences, noting their long-term effects and thus their continuing impact. Pupils make notes.
Plenary	Developing historical understanding Show completed slide 11 (details on pupil worksheet 2). Explain each of the points in turn linked to ‘why ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series editors’ introduction
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Why learn history?
• 3 Planning
• 4 Learning strategies and approaches
• 5 Role play as active history
• 6 Teaching causal reasoning
• 7 Teaching historical interpretations
• 8 Ensuring inclusion in the classroom
• 9 ICT: using presentation technology
• 10 Peer assessment
• Bibliography
• Index