Over more than 30 years of teaching I developed a whole boatload of prejudices about how to teach and tricks-that-work in the classroom, and recently I have dared to share them with other History teachers on the History Teachers' Discussion Forum.
All over the country, teachers are having ideas, developing practice, writing position papers, finding solutions ... re-inventing the wheel. And what they do gets lost, because they have hitherto lacked the means, and maybe still lack the confidence, to let others see their ideas. Well here - for what they are worth - are my ideas.
Do I credit them with any great weight? Probably not, I fear. I can't say that there is any deep pedagogical philosophy underlying them. I can't promise that they will work in your school, or impress the Ofsted inspectors. I sincerely hope that when you read them you will feel that you can improve on them, or at least adapt them to your particular situation.
So they are offered - humbly - for you to try out, reject, adapt and challenge at your will:
● Ideas about General Teaching Issues
● Ideas on the Teaching of History
● Teaching History to Special Needs Pupils
● Discipline in the History Classroom
● How to use this website in your teaching
I have played all these games successfully in the classoom, though some are easier than others for the students to grasp:
2. Versailles Negotiation Game
6. Nazi Soviet Pact Game (with ppt.)
Issues fundamental to all teaching:
3. Surviving
7. Planning Your Scheme of Work
10. Homework
13. A Checklist for Heads of Department
14. Struggling with Self-Evaluation
15. The Last Word
In October 2012, I was asked to deliver INSET for South Tyneside schools on 'Making Your GCSE Lessons More Fun'. Unfortunately, it wasn't the start of a lucrative lecture tour, but the teachers on the day seemed to like it! These are the ideas I presented:
In August 2011, I was asked to write the 'Expert blog' for the Hodder History Nest.
I chose the theme: 'What sort of history should school history be?' and thought you might be interested to read what I said:
2. The importance of being ... argumentative
3. Mr Gove and the Return of Facts
4. Selecting the facts = choosing the History you want
6. Autism and the Primacy of Analysis
7. How Enid Blyton changed my life
9. Indoctrination and the Pedagogy of the Individual
10. Fraught with danger and pedagogically shallow?
11. A few urgencies about interpretations
12. The misinterpretation of interpretations
13. Working with interpretations
14. Historiographers I: The Whig foundation
15. Historiographers II: The Marxist challenge
16. Historiographers III: The Advent of Postmodernism
17. Historiographers IV: A Postmodernism Glossary
18. Historiographers V: A Postmodernism Glossary continued
19. What postmodernism means for Mr Gove
21. Eyewitness
22. The rise and fall of the 'educated man'
23. The importance of being interesting
24. Historiography, Mr Gove and the new National Curriculum History
And here are some earlier thoughts on planning and delivering History lessons:
a. Teaching Objectives and Lesson Outcomes
c. Starters
d. The 'Blind Walk' - a quality starter
e. Teaching History using Analogy
f. Teaching how to do Sourcework Questions
g. Developing better Written exercises at Key Stage 3
i. Writing Poetry in the History Classroom
j. Using Drama in the History Classroom
k. Teaching Mixed Ability at GCSE
l. GCSE Exam 'Warm-Up' Sessions
m. Publicising History - quotes
Random 'rants' about aspects of 'History-Teaching-as-required':
o. Sources and Interpretations
p. Facts and the Teaching of History
Articles about various aspects of teaching History to SN pupils:
1. Teaching Special Needs - A Short Foreword
2. Teaching Special Needs Classes
3. Reading for Understanding - 'every which way but'
4. Mr Clare's 'Ten-Minute Write'
6. Helping Dyslexic Pupils Revise
8. Brain Function and Children's Behaviour
Discipline is just a facilitator for the much-harder job of teaching History, but it's an issue that many young teachers worry about, and which crops up regularly on the Forum. These replies all address different perspectives of the problem:
2. Controlling Difficult Classes
3. Quiz - How Much Am I to Blame?
4. Strategies which work with Year 11
5. Two problems about Boys and some possible solutions
6. Starting Off As You Mean To Go On
8. The Key to a Disciplined School
This website is used primarily by pupils as a revision site for Modern World Studies GCSE History - especially immediately before the GCSE exams!
the site receives more almost 3 million visits a
year (2012). One in ten visitors to the site spends longer than 30
minutes on it, so it is used intensively and actively.
However, the website is increasingly being used as a vehicle for teaching by:
•
Parents who have withdrawn their pupils from school and educating them at home;
•
Teachers who are using the materials with their classes.
•
Some of the elements on offer are also good for homeworks.
So whilst in no way wishing to be patronising, I wondered whether educators might welcome ideas on how to use this website in their teaching:
1. Using this website in your lessons