01.

My top tips for other History teachers

Firstly, I would say always count the number of weeks ahead, work out from the school calendar which ones will be lost due to PSHE days, awards assemblies, bank holidays and the myriad of other events that can interrupt teaching. Then work out how the time will be used to cover each topic, and plan on that basis. Many teachers simply work on a half-term scheme of work, which is okay for the big picture, but all it takes is a couple of interruptions before the half term of work drags into the next half term and then, once again, the old mantra of ‘I can’t believe we only have X weeks left and I haven’t covered Y’ is heard. I have said that enough times myself! Planning for the actual number of weeks, rather than on the grounds of half term blocks reduces this pressure.

My other top tip would be to talk positively about the end of year situations and exams. We all know that this has been a crazy period of time, unprecedented in our professional careers, and that there are still questions the exams. But how the students feel about it all will be influenced by the way that teachers talk about it. If we give the impression that it is all a disaster and an impossible challenge, that will affect the confidence that our students feel.

Finally, I always recommend for teachers to take a look at the exam board support. All the exam boards offer different types of free support. Sometimes teachers overlook these resources, but it is written by subject specialists who want to help teachers to be successful. This is especially important in such a high pressure year – don’t miss out on the resources that are there to help.

02.

What I have learnt about teaching over the past 18 months and how has it changed the way I teach?

I think that this has affected how I think about classroom assessments, and the importance of using these, not just to fulfil school requirements, but to track the progress of students. Assessments have always been important, but the use of evidence from ongoing assessments as the basis for teacher assessed grades has made me think differently about classroom assessments. I will be looking at how I use these in order to make sure that I am getting the most out of these opportunities.

03.

The most important things to bear in mind when preparing your students for exams this year

It is worth thinking about the fact that lockdown learning has meant that GCSE students have had a much reduced experience of classroom learning compared to other cohorts, and this has affected things like their experience of answering questions in ‘exam conditions’. Normally students would have gained experience of this pressure in a progressive way in the classroom and through the school assessment scheme, building to the mock in Year 10 or 11. This cohort have missed that progressive development, so it will be important to help them to gain confidence in answering questions in an exam-type situation, rather than waiting until late in Year 11 to introduce this crucial factor. Similarly, students preparing for A Level exams may never have sat an exam in formal conditions.

Aside from this, teachers need to remember that the knowledge is only part of the assessment in GCSE History. The AO2, AO3 and AO4 skills are about how they use their knowledge to write analytically or to analyse sources and interpretations. Therefore, in the rush to cover content this year, it is important not to lose sight of the goal, which is to help students to be able to use the knowledge, rather than just to know it.

04.

What I will be doing different to help students over the exam finishing line this year

I always like to use self-assessment grids to review the content by seeing what students think they are missing, rather than what I think is missing. I have grids for each exam topic, which lists every point of content. My students rate themselves on each point of content on a scale of 1 (I can explain this topic to someone), through 3 (I can write about this topic with my book to help me) to 5 (Did we learn this topic?). Normally I do this at the end of the year as a tool for planning my final revision lessons, but this year I will be doing it much earlier with each topic, to give me time to build in any differentiated homework tasks that are needed to fill the gaps, where students will receive an assignment equating to areas that they have identified a weakness.

05.

The most difficult aspects to teach!

I think that the two hardest things to teach are historical narratives, and AO4 skills (interpretations). With the historical narratives, students need to be able to understand how a web of events and developments interlink and this is challenging. Students are a lot better, in my experience, at limited concepts like causation and consequence. For example, it is easy to make a spider diagram of five reasons why Hitler was elected in 1933, or five consequences of the Cuban Missile Crisis on international relations. But to write an analytical narrative, students use the same skills and historical concepts but in a less limited fashion, since there are more steps to the process.

I would also say historical interpretations are hard to teach. Students often try to treat interpretations as contemporary sources, and whilst there are some commonalities, they are not the same type of material. When I speak to teachers, I often find that teachers themselves are not entirely clear on the difference, so I always recommend that teachers make sure that they understand the difference, before they try to explain it to students. One way that it was presented to me is that if the contemporary sources are the bricks, then the interpretations are houses which historians build out of the bricks. I find that this analogy, backed up by suitable clipart images, makes sense to many students.

06.

The most common misconceptions

I think that misconceptions are most common when students struggle to comprehend the mindset of a society in a different period or culture. For example, to use an example based in gender, students are usually quick to understand that the Nazi policies for women were restrictive, or that many women were pushed out of employment in Britain following the First World War, and this is correct. However, students often struggle to grasp that there were women, not just men, in these periods who were relieved to see this happen, despite our modern perspective that this was an unfair and unequal treatment of women by society. The misconception caused by the difficulty in comprehending a different mindset can be a stumbling block in writing balanced essay answers. In a similar vein, when studying long, thematic topics like medicine or crime over an extended period of time that includes medieval societies, students can struggle to understand that less intelligent and less educated are not the same thing. Therefore, students can interpret, for example, the fact that Medieval people tried to treat plague with prayers and charms as a result of simple stupidity, rather than a consequence of the limitations of the understanding available to people in the Medieval world.

07.

Tips to reduce workload?

I always like to use self-assessment grids to review the content by seeing what students think they are missing, rather than what I think is missing. I have grids for each exam topic, which lists every point of content. My students rate themselves on each point of content on a scale of 1 (I can explain this topic to someone), through 3 (I can write about this topic with my book to help me) to 5 (Did we learn this topic?). Normally I do this at the end of the year as a tool for planning my final revision lessons, but this year I will be doing it much earlier with each topic, to give me time to build in any differentiated homework tasks that are needed to fill the gaps, where students will receive an assignment equating to areas that they have identified a weakness.